Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of race-experience in all the complicated life of international relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure under its domination an eternal peace." It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of cooeperation for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother State a worthy member of the Family of Nations. =Vows of Civic Consecration.=--The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a "Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City," as follows: "I believe in myself--in my mission as defender of the liberties of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism. I believe in my people--in the sincerity of their hearts and the sanity of their minds--in their ability to rule themselves and to meet civic emergencies--in their ultimate triumph over the forces of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity. I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates; and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished and my mission unfulfilled.