our great daily papers.[1] It is to the general American public absolutely unknown. Let it be your task—you who happen upon this volume—to make it known,
One cannot read these idealistic experimental decrees of the Soviet Bureau of Education, and the firm clear-minded report of the humanitarian scholar, Lunacharsky, without travelling back in his thoughts to Plato's Republic—the great book of the political hopes of mankind. For in that book these hopes rested altogether upon the faith of its author in the power of education. He believed a republic to be possible in which men should be happy in a common ownership of capital, and in which there should be an "aristocracy," not of wealth, but of real merit and ability. But he knew that such a republic would never be realized in human history until someone who desired it came into the possession of absolute power and immediately devoted himself to the problem of education. He thought of this "someone" as the son of a king. He thought that the world must wait until by some grand lucky chance a "philosopher"—that is, a man of the highest impersonal wisdom and motivation—should be born to the throne. And he was so sure that even this almighty imaginary savior could do nothing except by revolutionizing the educational system, that he declared, with humorous exaggeration, that the first act of his government would be to "send out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents."
The aspiring heart of the world has never for a single moment forgotten Plato’s hope. It has steadily refused to believe that the ideal republic is merely an abstract dream. In its dark sorrow
- ↑ We were learning some time ago to discredit the picture of events that is presented in our daily papers. We supplemented that with the reading of news-articles in some of the popular magazines, whose editors assumed a more serious responsibility for statements of fact. The degree to which these editors also have thrown all truth and honorable responsibility to the winds in the matter of Russia is suggested in this statement signed by the editors of McClure's (January, 1919): "Throughout Russia tens of thousands are being officially executed merely because they are educated."
Compare that statement with the facts reported in this volume, and estimate the editors of McClure's accordingly. It would not have taken them two hours to possess these facts at the time they made that statement.
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