This great development of civilization among the peoples we are to study, of course implies long preparatory ages of slow and bitter struggle upward from savagery. These stages may be hinted at enough to make the pupils reflect that there has been such a weary fight in unrecorded days. And now our story begins in the middle and not at the beginning of things. In our year’s work we are to take up the study of some eight or ten of the great peoples who have helped make our modern world what it is. We are to note what is like and what unlike our own ways of doing things; what we owe to these bygone folk. Many mighty peoples are to be passed by. Why do we begin west of the Indian peninsula, and ignore the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese? Because these peoples are out of the great stream of development. The progressive life of to-day’s world owes little to them, if anything. But the nations we are to take up have had a direct connection with us. One has handed on to another the torch of progress which now burns with electric splendor in our hands. The Race Question. The old confident classifications of mankind into races, save for those made by the obvious test of color, have been given up. Yet it is wise to use the main lines of cleavage as a working basis. The Hamitic, Semitic and Indo-European distinctions are useful as guides. And the primacy of the last named must be taught, not as a thing whose causes we can trace, but as a sober fact. And while there is such a primacy I think one of the worthiest things the history teacher can do all through his work is to emphasize the good that has come from other races than our own. Probably every good history teacher has been appalled by the Chauvinism of Young America. The study of history is its best corrective. The Use of Geography. To make these people of antiquity anything but mummies we must compare them and their doings constantly with ourselves. We speak much of our American resources: our broad prairies, our mighty water-powers, our fine harbors, our majestic rivers. These largely condition our lives. Before the coming of modern means of communication and transportation, natural surroundings had even more to do with the destiny of nations. The use of the map (preferably, by all means, the outline map, whether on board or paper, so that it may be drawn on) will be an early essential. And the study of the two great valleys, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile, will be emphasized. A good subject for special report in these connections would be a comparison of the Nile with the Hudson; of the Tigris and Euphrates with the Mississippi and the Missouri. A Few Concrete Bits of Knowledge. In many of our schools the whole Oriental period is merely skimmed, with the idea of leaving simply a general impression. The demand on time seems to render this imperative. What can we pick out from these earlier lessons and insist on its being retained?