evident that she did not have the vitality that she had previously had. Her personal appearance gave evidence of her condition. Parents began to talk. Children began to notice and to talk. She should have withdrawn for the time being, both for her own good and for the good of the schools, but she clung on until asked to leave by the school board. The board then and there made a rule that married women should not teach in the schools.

Other instances are usually those where the teacher gave her first interest to her home and did not do good work. But the point is this. Probably there had been many other married women employed in these same schools who had given good service. The board had deprived itself of the services of excellent teachers because some of the same class of employees had been unsatisfactory.

Let us look at the other side of it. Miss Green is unmarried but has temporarily fallen in deep love. Her physical presence is in the school house, but her mind is on a bench in the park. A lovers' quarrel occurs and she is cross and irritable. Shall we make a rule that no teacher shall receive attentions from young men?

Miss White is more interested in church work than in teaching. She is always planning church socials in school time. Her devotion to her church is a distracting influence. Shall we make a rule that no church workers shall be employed?

Some unmarried women do indiscreet things, or are inefficient, or do not attend to business. Many married women have a sympathy for childhood which some unmarried women lack. Is it not better to face the issue? If there is good cause, the undeserving must be removed whether married or single. It may cause temporary trouble, but in the end it will work for good.

The answer to the question of married teachers depends upon the teacher. Has she ability? Has she personality? Is she industrious? Is she of good moral character? Is she efficient? If the answer to these questions is Yes, she is the person for the job. Her matrimonial affairs are her own.

In the struggle for leadership,-in the ambition to send out year by year those who should be selected by their fellow citizens to fill high official positions in Federal, State or local governments, or those who should distinguish themselves in the realms of Art, Science or Letters, some schools and colleges-to say the least-have gone to a regrettable extreme in raising their standards of admission, abnormally increasing the scope of their curricula, and stiffening their yearly examinations until only geniuses can keep up and graduate.

We do not wish to overstate this tendency. We only wish to call attention to it as a tendency which has manifestly grown rapidly of late years. It should be watched with care and thoughtfulness in the interests of truth, righteousness and the real good of society. We need geniuses and leaders. But are we not in danger of "seeing crooked" if we look upon our schools and colleges as primarily and chiefly devised, endowed and conducted for an aristocracy of wealth, or even of scholarship? America is a Democracy. The needs of the people as a whole are the schools' greatest responsibility and incentive. An average intelligence, a diversified industrial activity, the real welfare of the masses, should be our supreme objectives. This is our pride and boast, as compared with the effete and unhappy aristocracy of not a few foreign nations. And when we turn boys down and out because they do not measure up to an ideal standard which we have set in the schools of today, we are assuming a great responsibility. We feel that in very many cases this is just the point at which some schools absolutely fail and become unworthy. Above all others, such pupils are just the ones who most need the influence and aid of the schools. Why then turn them out?

The graduate of almost any American school or college, who has been out of college for forty or fifty years and who has watched the careers of his classmates and other contemporaries in the same college as they have also gone out into real life, will tell you of the large number of successes that they have scored all along the pathways, in business, statesmanship, social and professional life, even though their earlier scholastic attainments were not spectacular. These boys were received and welcomed by their college officials; and their professors and instructors buckled down to the task of helping, developing and inspiring them. Thereby they won their respect, confidence and love. And, in our opinion, this was a much greater, grander service than to have built an institution for rulers and aristocrats.

The People should support democratic institutions, the schools and universities. If millionaires give their millions to such institutions, they should still expect the People to manage them. In the long run, the People are better qualified to get practical results. America is not an aristocracy of either rank, statesmanship, scholarship, or culture. We believe in those colleges and schools which welcome and serve those who need their influence and aid, irrespective of their brilliancy, social connections, or wealth.

The following editorial from The New York Times for July 6 will be of interest to teachers and students of the Spanish language in our schools and colleges. We quote it in full, because we believe that it strikes the right note and forecasts a great future of friendship and mutual helpfulness between the United States and our southern neighbors.

"Spanish Studies Here. Our neighbors of South America have been drawn closer to us of late by the thread of language. Not so long ago the republics to the south were further from us than was Europe. Many young gentlemen used to seek the completing touch to an American education in the universities of England and the Continent. Parties of young ladies, judiciously chaperoned, traveled abroad for just the right amount of knowledge of the ways of the world. In those days Spain was closer than Mexico, and France held nearer, dearer charms than the tropical glories of New Granada.

"A glance at a recent bulletin* of the Pan-American Union is enough to show how Spanish studies in the United States have brought our friends into an intimacy that is closer than one made possible by mere geography. Americans have always had an interest in Spanish history, literature and folklore. Prescott, Irving, Ticknor, Longfellow, Lowell, Howells, John Hay, are representatives of our Spanish scholars of the past. Today fifty notable names might be listed as leaders in literary economic and political connections between the Americas.

"The great increase in Spanish studies has come in our secondary schools. Colleges and universities have, since the establishment of a professorship at Harvard in 1816, gradually enlarged the facilities for the study of the language and the literature, until it is now in a flourishing state. German, French and Latin had, until 1915, been

The "Bulletin" referred to contained an article on "Spanish Studies in the United States," contributed by Prof. Henry G. Doyle (Romance Languages), George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

the principal foreign-language studies in the secondary schools. From that time until 1922 the students discovered in great numbers that Spanish had certain fundamental attractions, and the figures given by the Federal Bureau of Education show the tremendous shift to its study. The decline in the number of students taking German was doubtless a contributory cause of the increase in Spanish, but it is far from accounting completely for the change. As early as 1900 the appeal of Spanish had been felt in the colleges, and it naturally worked down through the preparatory schools during the decade following.

"The prospect of commercial and political relations with Spanish America is a consideration of importance with many young people today. Romance and novelty are also offered to new soldiers of fortune who sail south rather than east when they leave college. Their chances of success and of establishing friendly, comfortable relations are greater because of their preparation for the sally to South America."

LIBRARIES AND THE PER CAPITA INTELLIGENCE (From a Circular Letter from The American Library Association).-For our youth of America there exists today an investment of nearly $6,000,000,000 in facilities for formal education,-in textbooks, in buildings, in machinery and equipment. What is the return upon this huge investment, as an index of the national culture of the American people?

A study of the available statistics shows that although the American system of formal education offers an opportunity to all, it actually produces the following results among an average group of 100 children of school age:

36 are not attending school at all.

54 are attending public elementary school.

7 are attending public high school.

3 are in public night school, vocational school, etc.
Only 2 enter college or university.

Yet public school education represents the maximum organized education open to the people. It reaches but 64 per cent of the youth of America. Even this 64 per cent does not, on the average, receive a complete public school education; their average is seven and one-half years. College and university education reaches but 2 per

cent.

In a democracy educated intelligence seems scarcely less necessary in the followers than in the leaders. Upon education largely depends the future of our civilization, the trend of our institutions, the kind

of society and the measure of its opportunities under which our sons and daughters and their children shall work and live.

What other means are at hand which will give to our present and future citizens an understanding of life, prepare them to function as proficient individuals, constructive producers and intelligent citizens, a task which formal education today only partly succeeds in doing

Aside from the influences of the home, the church, business, societies and clubs, the principal channels of education open to the American people are books, magazines, newspapers, moving pictures and the radio.

Of these, the moving picture and the radio are largely recreational rather than educational. And although magazines and newspapers are one of our most important sources of education, they are of value chiefly to those who are already well begun on the path of education: they presuppose the groundwork of knowledge.

It is books which seem to hold the possibilities of widest usefulIn them all the great aggregations of knowledge are embodied. All new learning eventually finds its way into book form. They supply knowledge in units; they tell a whole story as no other medium can. And most important of all, books can furnish, as no other agency, the materials either for beginning an education or continuing its progress at any point.

If books could be brought within the reach of all, together with some form of advice and guidance in ordering and correlating that knowledge, a real contribution to the present problem of national education would be made. Is it a task for the American public library?

The public libraries are free to all. They possess the organization and experience for giving each individual the necessary guidance through the various fields of knowledge. They hold the essential resources of book knowledge. And the library provides a path to education which need not exclude any other activity, but which may accompany it, make it more valuable.

There are, however, in the United States and Canada today, nearly 50,000,000 people, according to a recent survey, without access to public libraries. To bring the library system within the reach of this group, and establish library contacts to further the education. of the 36 per cent of our American boys and girls now out of school. would constitute an important step toward the goal of national education.

The American Library Association, a national advisory body of 6,800 libraries throughout the country, is engaged in a program