The emotional coloring which gives these things their subjective worth is a matter very largely of contrast.  Success must stand out against a background of struggle, or the chief virtue of success—­the consciousness of conquest—­will be entirely missed.  That sort of success means strength; for strength of mind is nothing more than the ability to “hew to the line,” to follow a given course of effort to a successful conclusion, no matter how long and how tedious be the road that one must travel, no matter how disagreeable are the tasks involved, no matter how tempting are the insidious siren songs of momentary fancy.

What teachers need—­what all workers need—­is to be inspired with those ideals and prejudices that will enable them to work steadfastly and unremittingly toward the attainment of a stated end.  What inspired Rowan with those ideals of efficiency that enabled him to carry his message and bring back the answer, I do not know, but if he was a soldier, I do not hesitate to hazard an opinion.  Our regular army stands as the clearest type of efficient service which is available for our study and emulation.  The work of Colonel Goethals on the Panama Canal bids fair to be the finest fruit of the training that we give to the officers of our army.  If we wish to learn the fundamental virtues of that training, it is not sufficient to study the curriculum of the Military Academy.  Technical knowledge and skill are essential to such results, but they are not the prime essentials.  If you wish to know what the prime essentials are, let me refer you to a series of papers, entitled The Spirit of Old West Point, which ran through a recent volume of the Atlantic Monthly and which has since been published in book form.  They constitute, to my mind, one of the most important educational documents of the present decade.  The army service is efficient because it is inspired with effective ideals of service,—­ideals in which every other desire and ambition is totally and completely subordinated to the ideal of duty.  To those who maintain that close organization and definite prescription kill initiative and curtail efficiency, the record of West Point and the army service should be a silencing argument.

And yet education is more important than war; more important, even, than the building of the Panama Canal.  We believe, and rightly, that no training is too good for our military and naval officers; that no discipline which will produce the appropriate habits and ideals and prejudices is too strenuous; that no individual sacrifice of comfort or ease is too costly.  Equal or even commensurable efficiency in education can come only through a like process.  From the times of the ancient Egyptians to the present day, one vital truth has been revealed in every forward movement; the homely truth that you cannot make bricks without straw; you cannot win success without effort; you cannot attain efficiency without undergoing the processes of discipline; and discipline means only this:  doing things that you do not want to do, for the sake of reaching some end that ought to be attained.