One who has stood with Socrates in the common criminal prison in Athens and watched him drink the hemlock poison, saying “No evil can happen to a good man in life or after death,” who has heard the oration of Paul on Mars Hill or that of Pericles over the Athenian dead, who has thrilled to the heroism of Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell, the noble service of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the high appeal of Helen Hunt Jackson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has heard Giordano Bruno exclaim as the flames crept up about him, “I die a martyr, and willingly,” who has responded to the calm elevation of Marcus Aurelius, the cosmopolitan wisdom of Goethe, the sweet gentleness of Maeterlinck’s spirit and the titan dreams of Ibsen, can scarcely fail to appreciate the brotherhood of all men and to learn that reverence for the true moral leader, that dignifies alike giver and recipient.

XX

TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP

Since the path of democracy is education, moral leadership is more necessary to it, than in any other form of society; yet there are exceptional obstacles to its development.  We speak of “the white light that beats upon a throne”:  it is nothing compared to the search light played upon every leader of democracy.  With our lack of reverence, we delight in pulling to pieces the personalities of those who lead us.  Thus it is increasingly difficult to get men of sensitive spirit to pay the price of leadership for democracy.

Is it not possible to do more than we have done, consciously to develop such leadership?  Where is it trained?  In life, the college and university, the normal school, the schools of law, medicine and theology.  Yes, but if not one boy and girl in ten graduates from the high school, surely we want one man and woman in ten to fulfill some measure of moral leadership, and the high school is directly concerned with the task of furnishing such leadership for American democracy.

If that is true, is it not a pity that the high school is so largely dominated from above by the demand of the college upon the entering freshman?  It is not to be taken for granted that the particular regimen of studies, best fitting the student to pass the entrance examinations of a college or university, is the best possible for the nine out of ten students, who go directly from the high school into the world, and must fulfill some measure of moral leadership for American democracy.  The presumption is to the contrary.  College professors are human—­some of them.  They want students prepared to enter as smoothly as possible into the somewhat artificial curricula of academic studies they have arranged.  The Latin professor wishes not to go back and start with the rudiments of his subject, as the professor of mathematics with the beginnings of Algebra and Geometry.  The result is they demand of the high school what fits most smoothly into their scheme.