and all the world will have to take into reckoning this new Spain in the pregnant years of the coming decades. A people that possesses the qualities that I have mentioned has indeed much to contribute to the sum total of the world's progress. And for a broad and deep comprehension of Spanish America, the first essential is an understanding of the ideals and history of the mother country.

But much more shall we have to take into account the daughters of Mother Spain, those Spanish-speaking republics to the south of us, with whose fate our own is inextricably interwoven, come what may out of the present world crisis. If there were ever any doubt of the truth of such a statement prior to August 1, 1914, that doubt has now forever vanished. These republics are the incarnation of the best of Hispanic thought and culture and in addition they have deeply drunk of the New World freedom. Before many months shall have passed there probably will be thousands of the young men of Hispanic America in training on our own soil to help us fight in Europe the battles of liberty. All but three of the countries. of South America have either declared war upon Germany or broken off relations with her. Countless currents of common interests are daily serving to draw all the twenty-one cis-Atlantic republics more and more closely together. Our ideals are the same, our hopes are identical, our lines of progress are parallel if not convergent.

Experts in law know how great was the service of Spain ia preserving to the world the best of Roman law, today the basis of the legal procedure in Spanish lands. Spanish painting and Spanish architecture have given to the world some of the choicest media of culture to which I can but allude now in passing.

There is but one instance in the history of the modern world in which eighteen nations have sprung from one mother nation. and have continued successfully as independent nations, individual and separate, and yet bound by the ties of high ideals and a common language. That mother is Spain and those eighteen nations are our Spanish-speaking sister republics of the New World. And yet there are those who would belittle Spanish civilization! It is high time that any attitude of superiority on our part were stopped effectually and once for all. There existed once a slanderous lie that said that France was a decadent nation. And all those who so thought have been forced, some in sorrow, others with joy, to re

fashion their opinions. Those who would say that Spanish peoples are decadent or uncultured will, likewise, in due course of time, be compelled to change their manner of thought.

So I say that the cultural value of Spanish is very great, for (1) it offers us a literature that is one of the great literatures of past and present times, and (2) it offers a medium of close contact with a face that has spread its civilization more widely, perhaps, than any other race except the Anglo-Saxon.

Spanish for training and culture is beginning to be appreciated as it ought to be. And yet there are those who claim emphatically that it deserves a place in our schools only in commercial courses. It is, of course, inspiring to know that in teaching Spanish to our youth, we are teaching the language of nineteen independent nations, that we are, therefore, teaching a language of great practical and commercial value. In port cities and in manufacturing centers where articles are made for export to Spanish lands, Spanish will continue undoubtedly to be of more importance in the conduct of business in the Western World than any other foreign language except English. Our imports from the South American countries, not including Central America and the West Indies, jumped from 217 millions in 1913, to 542 millions in 1917, and our exports increased from 146 millions to 259 millions. Of course, the circumstances have been peculiarly favorable for this wonderful increase in trade. And we cannot hold it easily after the war. To hold it, to increase it, we must adopt the methods of some of our competitors. Our traveling salesmen, like those of Germany, must be fluent in Spanish, acquainted with the customs, the ways of doing business, the likes and dislikes of South American peoples, for all of which the very first requisite is a knowledge of the Spanish language. We must train our young men so that they may do business in Spanish America. We must train our young men and our young women in Spanish correspondence and in South American economic and political history. It is absurd to say, as some do, that a training in French provides a means of contact and correspondence with Spanish America. But the study of Spanish offers far more than a means of increasing national or personal efficiency or wealth. This is the era of the practical that is also disciplinary and cultural. Therefore Spanish with its admittedly great practical value and its disciplinary and cultural values, which I believe I

have demonstrated, is peculiarly suited as a subject of study in every American school from the junior high school to the university. Mr. McAdoo, in the same speech to which I have already referred, said:

The teaching of Spanish should be made compulsory in our public schools; in fact, a resolution was unanimously adopted by the International High Commission at Buenos Aires recommending to each Government that in all schools supported by public funds or aided in any way by public funds the study of English, Spanish, and Portuguese should be obligatory.

I do not know whether Mr. McAdoo had in mind at the time he spoke the elementary schools as well as the high schools. If so, I beg respectfully to dissent from that view. I believe no foreign language should be taught in the elementary schools. Americanism. and the three R's, if you will, should be the subjects taught and taught thoroughly well in such schools. There is no room or time for teaching foreign languages. I also would amend his statement to read that either Spanish or French, or Spanish and French, should be made compulsory. For I believe that these two languages should go hand in hand in our curriculum. There can be no quarrel possible between the advocates of these two languages, though there are those specialists in German who have sought to sow dissension between these two groups of teachers. I speak at this moment as the president of The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and as a trustee of the French Union of the French Institute in the United States.

I cannot close without a word of warning to teachers of Spanish. Already the demand for teachers of Spanish exceeds the supply. Already teachers born in Germany are said to be writing Spanish textbooks for use in our schools. Already teachers of German who find themselves without classes are turning to the teaching of Spanish and are going in large numbers to summer schools and extension courses in order to learn Spanish. I say beware, if these teachers are of German birth or German sympathies. Beware of this "peaceful penetration" lest the teaching of Spanish in this country, while still in its early stages, undergo the fate of Spain, a nation that is inhibited from being herself, because of German influence and propaganda. You see how peculiarly attractive, then, the Spanish language is to German teachers. We do not want Germanic Spanish. We want the Spanish language taught in this country by teachers born and trained either in the United

States or in a Spanish-speaking land. We do not want the Spanish word cultur to be written with a k or pronounced with a German. accent. I speak frankly, for it is a time that requires frank speech.

In conclusion: We have in this country overrated the value of German and underrated the value of Spanish, as media of discipline and culture. The times have changed. We now see this matter along with many others in its true perspective. The highest interests of our own people and of all the peoples of all the Americas demand that the youth of our land become acquainted at the earliest possible moment with Hispanic civilization, Hispanic peoples, Hispanic literature and language, all taught so as to contribute to the betterment of our own national life. They will then be trained and cultured in the way the times demand and they will help to spread in this hemisphere in a most effective manner not Pan-Germanism, but Pan-Americanism.

LAWRENCE A. WILKINS

NEW YORK, N. Y.

NOTES ON CLUB WORK IN ELEMENTARY YEAR

(A paper presented in the Spanish Round Table Conference of the Modern Language Section, Pittsburgh meeting of the National Education Association, July, 1918.)

It goes without saying that activities outside the classroom and the regular routine promote to a marked degree effectiveness in the acquirement of the language, and, above all, stimulate a real and active interest in the Spanish-speaking world. Spontaneous outside activity, apparently managed by the students themselves, does a great deal to counteract the attitude taken by so many high school pupils, i. e., that their school studies are a thing apart, identified with their teacher's peculiar point of view, to be tolerated with a good grace forty-five minutes a day, but "nothing in their lives," as they say. They are apt to class Spanish as one of the most interesting of these necessary evils, but consisting, in the nature of the case, of certain stories to be reproduced and of a large number of elusive words and combinations of words, all dying a natural death after the examination. To take away this almost inevitable note of artificiality and make their work in school seem a part only of the effort they mean to make to gain a new power, and almost to enter a new world, is the purpose of clubs or any kind of outside activity. Their need is felt especially in the elementary year when but little power is yet attained, when the way seems long, and when the pupils are especially susceptible along imaginative lines.

These notes are rightly named merely sketches of what we have wished to do in this connection in our school. I use the pronoun "we" purposely to include the pupils, because it is their coöperation and often their planning what they would like to do that have made possible anything we have been able to carry out.

Club activities in the elementary year (that is, those which we have already tried) may be divided into four categories: dramatic. musical, correspondence, and the manufacture of Libros Azules, as we have christened them. Our ideal was to have four groups, each meeting weekly, and about twice a term to hold large open meetings to which would be invited all the Spanish students in the school, and all the important guests, like teachers, whom we could persuade to