The American democracy is not so much an achievement as a prophecy. Its chief glory cannot be in what it is, but in what it is to be. It has not attained the measure of its growth till every man in it has a fair chance and an open field to make the most of himself, and has done so with reasonable completeness. It is therefore essentially idealistic, and, however deeply concerned with the present hour’s duty and work, its face is ever set toward a larger future for itself. But this larger future can only be realized in a finer and more efficient quality of the men and women who are to do the work and continue the unfolding life of this free democracy of equal opportunity,—equal opportunity not for the few favored by fortune or circumstance, but for every child born in it. No democracy dare have any other mind with reference to itself. The most necessary, as the most inspiring, work therefore which a democracy assumes to do is that of seeing to it that all its children are rightly trained for intelligent service and skilled efficiency. This task it undertakes not only that it may live as a collective body but also that each citizen may in the best and fullest manner express his own individual life. In this two-fold view of the matter popular education, the putting of all the children of all the people into the best possible schools, under the best possible teachers, for the longest possible time, becomes the sacred and imperative duty of a democracy that cares for to-morrow as well as for to-day. And the to-morrow of a democracy, in all the manifold activities of its complex life, is determined by what it does for the child of to-day. From this viewpoint no democracy ever had a better opportunity to test itself and its ability to control the future than that phase of democratic life working out its destiny here at the South. For the conditions are such as to make the task of training the citizenship of the future almost the one thing to be done. The figures representing those conditions have been so often used of late that one is really inclined to resent the very mention of them. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the conditions entering into this, as into any problem, is the first step toward the solution. Moreover, in this struggle now on for popular education at the South, it is no part of courage to blink a fact because it is ugly, nor of sane judgment to let anything or anybody beguile us into fighting our battle in the dark. We should keep steadily before us the facts as they are, the stupendous nature of the work that lies ahead and how it is to be done, and withal the eternally vital need of doing it now and in the right way.