Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save democracy from itself--from being destroyed by forces which accumulate in the cities. We must keep life from becoming sophisticated before its time. We must prevent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and from becoming attached to wholly material interests. _There must be found, in some way, means of causing counter-currents to set in against the tide that flows so strongly from country to city._ Germany's fate should teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how the forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in the direction either of fanatical nationalism or toward the lowest of all forms of internationalism, in which all form of government is thrown down. It must teach us also how to catch the note of new "dominants" that are concealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail. The control of the formation of the city moods, and the direction and utilization of the great energies contained in them, now require, if ever anything were demanded of conscious creative effort, _more power on the part of all our educational factors_. The school appears now to be at the parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children for life, or become a far greater power in the world than it has as yet been. We must decide whether the school is to control, or to be controlled by, the political and industrial forces of the day. We must see whether the school is going to reflect the culture and the moods of the environment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence upon its surroundings. It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in the school can now greatly alter its position, and release it from its bondage to politics and from the overwhelming influences of its environment, and prevent the leveling downward and the stereotyping process that is taking place in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral product and the training and selection of teachers. Nothing less than a movement which shall break up some of the deepest and most firmly rooted habits and conventions of the school and throw the school back, so to speak, upon more generic and primitive motives than those that now control it will be sufficient. _The school needs more than anything else a change of scene_--a change of _venue_, if a legal term be allowed. The school everywhere, but especially the school of the city, is surrounded by influences that prejudice it to fixed habits of thought and keep it true to a type which has long since ceased to be necessary. The school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in all the great industrial countries.