a universal truth-the necessary greatness of Rome, or the foreordained fate of mankind. The question, therefore, arises whether it would not be simpler and better to say merely that the drama tends to be logical, while the epic contains a large element of faith or assumption than to try to distribute the forms among time-categories.

On the whole, it seems obvious that the fundamental distinctions between the kinds of poetry must be distinctions of function or purpose. And it appears, at once, a trifle absurd to say that the purpose or function of epic poetry is to point toward the future, or that the human need satisfied by the drama is the need of reflecting upon the past.

The remaining essays treat of the teaching of poetry, the "new poetry," and the relation of scholarship to poetry. They are characterized by a fine mingling of discrimination and common sense. Professor Erskine is wise in requiring some sort of real definition of poetry and of its genres, and in not being satisfied with a mere historical account. He is wise in attempting to make the definition broad enough to correspond with real human instincts. His breadth of view, his refusal to rest content with mere special scholarship, gives value to his advice about the teaching of poetry. "Instead of teaching poetry as philosophy or literature," he writes, "we need to draw on history and philosophy in order to understand poetry." Looking at the new poetry from much the same angle, he points out acutely the relation between all poetry and a broad and humane scholarship.

"When the language of poetry was developing toward the hope of complete communication between man and man, the confession that you did not quite understand him would have worried the poet. Nowadays the confession only indicates to him that you do not move in this world." The criticism is fundamental.

THE COLLEGE AND NEW AMERICA. By Jay Williams Hudson, Ph. D., New York: D. Appleton and Company.

When will men generally come to realize that abstractions are practical things? The fact has a two-fold meaning: It means that abstractions are of no use in themselves, and that they are of use as means to ends. The academic mind tends to regard its own abstractions as having intrinsic value and truth, and to ignore the more vaguely conceived, but absolutely essential human notions of worth: it is guilty of "hypostasis of function." The ordinary mind tends to reject abstractions as having no direct connection with its ideas of value and practical truth. Thus life and learning grow apart and it is possible for Veblen to maintain that they have not now, and never have had, any necessary interdependence, the higher learning being motivated solely by "idle curiosity."

Of course, the solution of the difficulty does not lie in making learning subservient to immediate practical ends, in shackling education with vocational restrictions. To do so would be to stultify the teacher and to discourage in the pupil that intellectual curiosity which, in any view, is of value. The real problem is to discover an ideal of

worth that shall include scholarship, since scholarship can neither include our ideal of worth nor be safely substituted for it.

To find such an ideal is not easy, because learning does not readily submit to a process that subordinates it to other aims. "Higher knowledge is generally brought to light by men who seek it for its own sake, and is seldom really understood except by those who study it for its own sake. If we ask what made Newton discover the law of gravitation, or urged Darwin to formulate the theory of evolution, or Morse to invent the telegraph, the answer must be that, while these men were well disposed toward mankind, their primary motive was not anything like philanthropy or good-citizenship, but rather a passionate interest in their special subjects.

Let us be content, however, with the rejoinder that the college is not intended for the genius, and that there is little danger of thwarting the intellectual enthusiasms of the few by establishing an educational system really conceived in the best interests of the many. "Education," says Dr. Hudson, "is the teaching of right wants and of how to get them," and the formula is acceptable. The exercise of a special talent may be a right want, but it is not the right want.

That some change of policy on the part of the colleges is desirable becomes more and more evident, as the young men and women of this country crowd into our class-rooms in ever-increasing numbers. The pure-scholarship ideal, which never appealed to more than a moderate percentage of undergraduates, tends now to become grotesquely irrelevant as applied to large numbers. Dr. Hudson has analyzed the condition with uncommon penetration. His criticism of American college education is at once sensible and radical. "The college graduate attains not only one, but two great modern abstractions: not only the abstraction of subjects from one another, but the abstraction of all of them from life." Little or nothing is done to correct these unfortunate separations. "We may have one reason for including mathematics among the things the student must master; and another, perhaps a wholly contradictory reason, for including political science; but no one reason or ideal that might create a unified curriculum." Finally, to express the severest and least answerable criticism in a nutshell: "Perhaps there is only one thing worse than that the college student should forget his subjects; and that is that he should remember them. For to remember them is most often to go into life confidently solving its problems with abstractions that do not fit."

In thus formulating the educational problem of the colleges, Dr. Hudson has performed a real service such as one could scarcely expect from any one but a practical-minded philosopher, at home alike with realities and with abstractions. It is almost an inevitable criticism, however, of any such attempt at analytical plus constructive thinking that the constructive part is not equal to the analytical. Dr. Hudson's remedies are not so convincing as his criticism.

There can be no quarrel with the suggestion that "the aim of American education is to produce a definite American social order, in relation to a definite world order." The proposed ideal, it is well said, is "not too narrow, as the utility of vocationalism; nor too broad and vague, as the familiar slogan of education for character' or 'edu

cation for social service' or 'education for democracy '-vagaries in terms of which most well-intentioned reforms in education have been damned." No one who understands this ideal will consider it too narrow, and if it seems, on slight consideration, a trifle vague, one may defend it, first, by saying that Dr. Hudson does succeed in making it fairly definite, and, secondly, by calling attention to the fact that every true ideal becomes clearer as we approach it-the main thing being to start in the right direction.

It is only when one considers the practical working out of the theory, the means to be employed, that one becomes skeptical. When one thinks what is implied in the (ultimate) rewriting of text-books and in the giving of thorough and comprehensive correlation courses through the co-operation of several departments, one is somewhat disheartened. When one reflects upon how little is likely to be accomplished by correlation courses that are merely added to the special courses-the latter remaining, as they are now, the core of the curriculum; and upon the probably slight effect of further tinkering with the group system of electives, or of teaching ethics in a somewhat more vital way, one is not encouraged.

Every special subject probably leaves in the mind of the student a residuum of knowledge that is of general use, that can be readily correlated with other knowledge, be made to serve a general ideal, be transmuted into wisdom. As civilization advances, this residuum tends to become larger; yet it must always remain relatively small. May it not be, then, that anything like advanced instruction (such as colleges profess to give) in special subjects, is incurably special; that education and "life" do necessarily tend to part company at about the high-school stage, and that the only way in which to obtain that broader education toward a worthy life which Dr. Hudson wants is to live?

If this be true, then, granting the truth of Dr. Hudson's criticism, one might conclude that the real trouble with the colleges is that they are trying to teach too much, and to teach it-not, indeed, too thoroughly but too minutely. And the corollary would be that if the high-schools and preparatory schools would do what Dr. Hudson says the colleges ought to do, the colleges would be relieved of the dubious task of making special and advanced subjects, numerous and varied, serve the ends of "general education.'

THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO. By Robert T. Kerlin. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.

The collection of extracts which Professor Kerlin has taken from the colored press to form his volume, expresses the negro's views on a great variety of subjects. Some of the principal topics under which the excerpts are grouped are the new negro and the old, the negro's reaction to the World War, the negro's grievances and demands, riots, lynchings, labor unionism and Bolshevism, negro progress. The clippings cover the four months immediately succeeding the Washington riots; they are designed especially to show the negro's reaction to that and like events following, and to the World War.

The significance of the book is two-fold and lies, first, in the character of the negro papers themselves, and, secondly, in the facts that they emphasize.

The ability and influence of the colored press is well worth noting. Its unanimity is remarkable. Every unprejudiced reader will recognize that despite uncouthness, it is extremely capable, and that despite errors of judgment it is well-meaning. We may not ignore or attempt to brush aside anything so obviously real in a moral, intellectual, and practical sense.

The tone of the papers is predominantly one of outraged pride. This pride is, perhaps, somewhat crude and excessive-what else could one expect of a people so notoriously abused? But it is, on the whole, a better sort of pride than one might have feared it would be. At any rate, there it is; and it is a force to be reckoned with. While the ideal of "social equality" is disclaimed by practically all the papers, one cannot resist the feeling that it is very close to the heart of the whole problem. Social equality is not easy to distinguish from recognition of manhood and womanhood, and such recognition the race certainly craves. What the colored press distinctly says that the negroes want is justice, civil rights, freedom from persecution, a square deal.

For the rest, whoever thinks that the negro is not foully abused will find Professor Kerlin's book wholesome, though unpleasant, reading.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

NOVEMBER, 1920

THE BETRAYAL OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE

BY DAVID JAYNE HILL

IN discussing the League of Nations much emphasis has been placed on the consequences of accepting Article X, which binds every member of the League to preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of every other member. Very little attention has been directed toward the origin and development of this article, which has been called "the heart of the Covenant," and yet it is only in the light of the motives that inspired it that its real purpose and true import can be comprehended.

In order to comprehend the development of this provision of the Covenant, it is necessary to recall some almost forgotten incidents of recent American history, which, disturbing as they were to thoughtful persons at the time of their occurrence, have since been obscured by events of greater magnitude.

As the oldest and most powerful of the American republics, until 1913 the United States had always held resolutely to the declarations of President Monroe, of December 2, 1823, which had come to be regarded as expressing the settled policy of this country in relation to the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, in which it had maintained a moral primacy never more firmly asserted than by President Cleveland in demanding arbitration of the boundary claims between Great Britain and Venezuela in 1895.

Copyright, 1920, by North American Review Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VOL, CCXII. No. 780.

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