Builders of Democracy

to shoulder in a fight that has been theirs for ages,-all this is an inspiring and impressive lesson to be burnt upon the consciousness of all those youth whose eyes shall also see, before they reach the three score and ten years of the psalmist, that dream come true of the "The United Peoples of the World."

Finally, the book illustrates certain conceptions about the teaching of English. For example, it is not a textbook of English, as the analysis in the preceding paragraphs will show, yet it is a collection of what are sometimes called "masterpieces," and it will undoubtedly help pupils who study it "to speak and write the English language correctly." Literature is in this book regarded as the bible of the human spirit, its records as authentic as battle records or dynasties or constitutions, its interpretations as divine as the spirit of man. Facts of literary history, facts of style, facts of verse-form are all subordinated to the conviction that the chief aim of the pupil should be to ascertain the meaning of what poet or story-teller has to say, and its application to his life. The poem or story will be read not as a source of pleasure and refreshment alone, a dessert, something to break the monotony of serious study, but from a broader point of view. In this particular selection of literature, for example, two special purposes, described above, have dictated the choice of material. Through this choice it has been possible not only to make use of the power of imagination and beauty concentrated in the individual poem, but also to construct new units, by which the poems help interpret each other and help also to bring a new imaginative and dramatic conception to life in the minds and hearts of boys and girls. The Studies and Notes have been designed to make these ideas,

and the applications of them, as clear as possible. They should be carefully studied, as they are essential to the plan. They are not supplied everywhere, because in many cases the nature of the selection requires no such comment; they are not supplied merely for purposes of examination. Of course others may be added at the discretion of teachers, and those that are given may be used in a variety of ways,— for oral discussion by pupils in class, or for written exercises, or as the basis for talks by the teacher. The plan of the book is such as to stimulate composition, both oral and written, by giving pupils interesting things to talk and to write about.

It remains to add a few words of personal acknowledgment. For the use of copyrighted material, the author is indebted to the following authors and publishers:

E. P. Dutton and Company: "The Beloved Captain," from A Student in Arms, by Donald Hankey; and "A Chant of Love for England," from A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems, by Helen Gray Cone.

The John Lane Company: Certain passages from The Glory of the Trenches, by Coningsby Dawson, copyright . 1918.

Miss Theodosia Garrison: "The Soul of Jeanne D'Arc," from Scribner's Magazine.

The New York Tribune and Mrs. Grace Ellery Channing-Stetson: "Qui Vive?" by Grace Ellery Channing. Payson S. Wild: "File Three," from The Chicago Tribune.

To Mr. W. H. Elson, the author is under obligations too

varied and numerous to admit of detailed statement.

For a considerable portion of the time during which the book was in active preparation, daily conferences were held at which the wide experience of Mr. Elson as a school man and as author of the Elson Readers was generously and unreservedly placed at the service of the author.

The last of these special debts is one that has just been transfigured by death. In the tragic passing of Mr. Charles E. S. Fielden the author has lost not only a much-loved friend but a wise and helpful co-laborer on this book, all of which, save only these paragraphs, he had read in type. His special work, outwardly, had to do with types and forms, mechanical details of book manufacture. But such a description conveys no sense of the love that he had for his work, or of his fine judgment and wide knowledge and never-failing patience, or of that rich personality that made him like one of the old books that he loved so well. Many were the books that he made, in the course of a long life, for thousands of regiments of school children who never knew his name. And the builder of beautiful books for children is surely, of good right, one of the Builders of Democracy.

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