A PRACTICAL INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM
or woman who believes in international co-operation ought to help to remove this impression and make people understand that no great peace advocate is urging that the United States, for instance, shall disarm before the other nations disarm. Certainly internationalists agree that there should be universal disarmament; but they also agree that no nation can disarm first,—that all nations must disarm together. We are idealists; but we must impress the world with the practicability of our ideals, and especially with the practicability of the immediate means which we advocate for the attainment of them.
Perhaps the greatest thing that can be done in bringing about an era of international reason is the education of the young in the public schools. The young boy and girl should be taught how much the culture, the civilization of every nation owes to the culture, the civilization of every other nation of the world, so that he shall not feel that the peoples of other nations are really aliens, but shall realize that to his own country's upbuilding have been contributed thoughts and deeds from those whom he is accustomed to call "foreigners." American history is rich in opportunities for this sort of teaching. We sometimes speak of America as being the melting pot of the various races of the earth; but it is also the melting pot of all the various cultures of all times and of all peoples. Once a people appreciates what it owes to another people in great ideas, it will be very reluctant to start on a killing expedition against those to whom it owes such genuine obligations.
One of the most encouraging aspects of the American public schools is the fact that their pupils are made up of the children of all races and of all nations. Slav, Teuton, Anglo-Saxon, Latin study side by side and
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