Of course those who believe, or at least seem to practice the belief, that the schools are to lag far behind every economic, industrial, and social movement and are to be mere looking-glasses for the workaday world,--such people would not be expected to bring the war into the schools until some historian had written a text setting forth the dates, drawing the battle lines, naming the commanding generals, and picturing the final boundaries determined by some Hague conference. It is such professional obstructionists who make no provision for the millions of our foreign born to learn the English language and American customs through the establishment of up-to-date methods in teaching the adult illiterate. It is such _laissez-faire_ persons who allow children to slide out of school unprepared physically, mentally, or vocationally for the life ahead. It is such who insist upon the disciplinary-value idea of subject-worth in the face of modern psychological thought. It is such conservatives who say that agriculture can be taught only on the farm; that it is the business of the factory to teach the trades; that girls may learn to cook from their mothers; that elementary courses in woodworking and freehand drawing constitute vocational training; that algebra, Latin, ancient history, and trigonometry are essential features of the curriculum for training capable stenographers. It is these people who say that "the public schools of America are bulwarks of the nation," and consistently erect bulwarks against every agency which actually reflects the social and economic needs of the day. But those who believe that the school should study the past and live in the present and strive for a better future will find that the war brings out for the schools not only the lessons of a day, but the needs and opportunities of a decade. It has been stated that movements or men unresponsive to the present world crisis and failing to meet present needs and opportunities do not deserve to exist. Whether the statement be exactly true or not, it is evident that the up-to-the-minute man or the live school or the progressive industrial establishment or the efficient department of government is responding to the national need in exact proportion to the response made to the needs and opportunities existing before war was declared.