The New Ideal in Education | Page 5

all know, or, if they have no such common prayer in their creeds, let them just kneel and silently pray! Such a silent prayer will do more good than any thousand years' old discussion about religion. It is very easy to convince all the children of the world, just because they are children, that they have one Father in Heaven, and that they shall send their prayers to Him. But even if they send their prayers in different directions, they will arrive at the same place. All prayers, whenever and wherever sent, go always the same way.
Let the children from the northern ice and from the tropical heat carry on a correspondence. Millions of letters are written and sent every day, which mean nonsense and evil. The post communication will justify itself much more by bearing the children's mail, with truth and love, than by bearing perfidious diplomatic notes or letters which mean nonsense and evil. One of the unforgettable events in Serbia during this war happened in 1914 on Christmas Day, when an American ship arrived and brought gifts and letters from the children of America to the children of Serbia. This wonderful mail produced the greatest imaginable excitement among the Serbian children. They were busy, very busy for some weeks, reading the friendly letters from so far, and answering them. I am sure they will forget many sad events of the war, but they never can forget this wonderful and surprising mail, which made for peace more than any of the costly commissions for the investigation of war cruelties, or any of Carnegie's empty, although wonderful, luxurious halls of peace.
Let the children, the representatives of all the countries in the world, come to The Hague to hold the International Peace Congress. The programme of this Congress should be: Singing, playing, dancing, smiling and praying. They will meet as friends and speak every one in his native language, and they will understand each other very well as friends always understand each other. This Children's Hague Conference will promote the world peace more than The Hague Conference composed of enemies, mutually annoying themselves by obligatory politeness and bad French.
But, you will ask, who is going to arrange and execute all this? The International Board of Education.
But, you will say, it will be very expensive? Yes, but, supposing it will be as expensive as the war, for which of the two do you prefer to give money--for such a salvatory experiment or for the war? Yet, I am sure of one thing, it will cost less than a war.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION.
If you do not watch the education of a country all other international precautions for peace and mutual understanding will be wholly illusory.
An International Board of Education should control the programmes of education of all countries. It should watch that one principle prevails in every educational programme, i.e., the principle of Panhumanism. It should not interfere as to the form of education, no, far from that, but look to the unity of the principle of education upon the whole globe. It should carefully avoid all the watchwords which make for separations and wars, like "Germany, Germany _over all!_" The child must love its own country, but it must know also that its country is not the thing over all other things. It must be taught that God and mankind are something which stands above its country.
It should control not only the governmental programmes of education, but it should also watch the mothers, patriots and priests. It should try to have these three world-powers not for the enemies but for the allies and missionaries of a higher, and a panhuman education.
THE THIRD STAGE OF THE EUROPEAN EDUCATION.
There are three stages of the Christian European education:--
1. Compulsory obedience. This was in the Middle Ages when men were compelled to do the common work by the authority of the church and nobility.
2. The experiment with Individualism. This has been since the Renaissance, especially since Rousseau--a personality put as the centre and aim of education, the abhorrence of every compulsion whatsoever.
3. Voluntary Obedience. It is the education of tomorrow. It is a stage where all men will see their mission in their collective work, and therefore voluntarily enchain themselves into the panhuman organism, plunging their imaginative, pointlike personalities into a big and mystic personality of mankind.
The Voluntary Obedience will mean a voluntary slavery. We are going to be slaves again, but not by royal or papal compulsion, but by our good will; we are going to be slaves as the parts of a body are slaves and servants of each other, and as the bricks are slaves and servants of a great building. We are going to be "prisoners of the Lord," as St. Paul says, instead of being as now the prisoners