The New Ideal in Education | Page 5

singing the Serbian
and the Serbian singing the English National Anthems, and you would
have been fascinated by the sweet revelation of the future world.
Let the children from the East and West and South and North, pray
together. Why not? Bring them, thousands of them, to a mountain,
upon which our ancestors prayed, and let them at sunset kneel down
and sing some common prayer that they 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