56 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE CLASS STRUGGLE 57 which the coming generation will face with the equipment which their school is to give. They would say, if they were cross examined that a person trained to face real problems in a realistic way is fitted to attack the high cost of living or the struggle of capital and labor. And we should be forced to agree that a young scientist is better fitted for life than a young linguist. But we can surely do most for our young people if we begin our educational thinking by taking a look at them. We must study their present limitations. We must know their tastes, their ambitions, and the future that awaits them. Then the special school environment which we provide can be so fashioned as to fit them for the problems which they will face. This is what Dr. Eliot and Dr. Flexner have not done. Dr. Flexner, in fact, bases his theorizing on the supposition that education normally should come to an end at the age of twenty. Much of what he proposes would be applicable equally to those who leave the schoolroom at fourteen.
But surely the programs for the two classes would differ in many points. And there are many suggestions which lead one to think that he has in mind the professional classes rather than the manual workers There is a lack, it should be noted in conclusion, of recognition for the intellectual and spiritual stimulous which comes from som cial ideals. What are the young people to be educated for? What is to be the end of it all? Efficiency? Efficiency in what or to what end? What is to rouse the kindling enthusiasm of our aspiring boys and girls? There is to be a breaking away from the past, progress. Toward what? This lack of a social concept is the fundamental weakness of the whole project.
The Red Cross and War BY JAMES PETER WARBASSE Modern wars are economic at heart. The day has long since passed when people take religion or king so seriously as to go forth and die for them as once they did. Such wars have ceased, even before the last king is hung with the guts of the last priest.
Modern war is an expression of the complex economic struggle.
The soldier is the dupe of the war making forces. He is an incident. The bankers, the producers of war supplies, the politicians, and the privileged owners of property are his betrayers.
They give him the necessary urge to keep him going. In war his function is to do the atrocious deeds. With the delusion that he is to protect his home, he is sent out to destroy life, to maim or otherwise incapacitate his fellow human beings whom he is taught to call the enemy, to destroy property, and to appropriate whatever may be of aid in these operations.
War is to be expected as a natural result of the present system of production and distribution of the necessities of life for profit.
It is not to be wondered at. The wonder, or rather the pathos, is that working men, who are the victims of the system of production for profit, should be willing to go out and lay down their lives in the interest of the system which makes them slaves, which keeps them poor, which deprives them of their liberties, and which could not continue without their poverty. There is only one war which working men should consider; it is not this sort of war.
This sort of war continues until one side or the other has lost so many lives, has so many human beings incapacitated, and so much property destroyed that the remaining people are no longer willing to venture the hazard of being called upon for further sacrifices. The remnant of the nation then stops the war; it ceases to fight, and the war ends.
Certain external agencies keep the war going and postpone the armistice which ultimately brings peace. One of these factors is the Red Cross and the non combatant activities allied with it.