“Soldiers and patriots thus educated (in free schools) are better than all armies, arsenals, armories, munitions, alliances and treaties that can be had or imagined in the world.” Those words, written three hundred years ago by a man who had devoted his life to the study of the rights and wrongs of the common man, sum up the whole story. How his eloquent common sense contrasts with the shrieking of those little Americans who think that a cannon shot can penetrate further than a noble idea! How this old friend of freedom rebukes the puny, alleged statesmen who fancy that the manhood of this republic was developed on the battlefields, instead of realizing that military prowess is only one matter-of-course evidence of its existence! Enlightenment and Democracy make men who _live_ for their country--and that is the new force in the world. Let the people who fear for the future of the democratic spirit of this people look upon the spectacle of our free schools, those millions of young heads bent over books, those millions of young brains learning to think, to reason, learning to use mind and body in the service of civilization, real civilization. Enlightenment has won all the victories of the republic in the past. Its eternal warfare upon ignorance and incompetence, upon craft of plutocrat and craft of demagogue, and plausible idealism of reactionary, is the safeguard of the republic’s future. And one of the great agents of enlightenment, of Democracy--not the only great agent, not the greatest agent--is formal education in school, academy and college. And more important even than the formal education of the boys is the formal education of the girls. The other means to enlightenment are more accessible to the men--indeed, they compel the men to become less ignorant and less prejudiced in spite of themselves. But to reach the women, the formal education is almost indispensable, for their ignorance and their prejudice are more sheltered, less open to the light of Democracy that floods the arenas and the market places. And educated, enlightened, democratic women are of the highest importance to America, whose mission seems to be to lead the world in the march upward to that Arcady where every human unit shall have the chance to count as one.