Published January, February, March, April, May, June, September, Composed and Printed By The spirit of the year 1917 confronts us English teachers in council with the same challenge that has halted men in every path of life "Where do you stand with regard to the war?" Unless this question can be squarely answered all our discussion of aims and values, of courses and methods, seems trivial, drowned out by the tramp of marching men. I ask you, therefore, to consider this morning some of the directions in which we may seek our places and our justification beside those who are offering their lives for the nation. And if in so doing I say merely what is well known, what we have always taken for granted, it is because this war has revealed that much that we have so taken is by no means granted, that the very axioms of personal honor and of international faith, the heritage of the centuries, need constantly to be reaffirmed. When an English teacher in college actively foments opposition to the draft; when an English teacher in high school assigns as a composition subject "Was Abraham Lincoln a Murderer ?" it is time for us as a National Council to speak out in language that admits of no misunderstanding. For this war, more than we could have imagined, turns out to be in large measure a schoolmaster's war. It is a war of ideas, a 'The President's address at the seventh annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, Chicago, Illinois, November 30, 1917. |