ought to be some rules but the chief end is to educate a boy or girl and to make a first-class citizen, not a machine that has been through a shop and perfected by a certain routine method or for a certain definite purpose. Administration may well be directed to one point and that is the payment of professors so that they may have enough to live on with leisure to think about their profession. That is a fundamental question before the American people. If it is answered properly, good men will turn naturally to the teaching profession instead of turning first to commercial positions as giving them a better chance to bring up their families. We have too many cases of poverty among teachers.

The tendency of modern times is towards scientific methods. Everything is reduced to a statistical or tabulated basis. and it does not seem to be worth anything unless placed on the ordinary rectilinear curve. It is a good thing in any country to get rid of illiteracy and to train every youth to do something so that his hands may not be idle but any system that shrivels up the soul is essentially bad for humanity and for the individual. Furthermore, any development that lacks the spiritual element renders science a real danger to mankind. We have evidence of that in this war. I have asked the question in another place "Is science safe for human beings?" It has been used for the last four years in destroying property and in shedding the blood of the finest that our nation has produced. Every invention and energy has been put to making science destructive rather than constructive. We have the element of danger always before us by putting into the hands of a few unbalanced extremists power to destroy men, women, children and property. The newspapers are filled with stories of crimes perpetrated by those who have used science without conscience. What gives this whole Bolshevik movement its hold but science combined with ignorance and a lack of conscience? Our ideals in engineering education should take account of this fact and the system should be primarily a training in conscience and the will to do right first, and then a technical education.

It is well worth while to review briefly the types of organization to be found in education. Reference has already been made to the most flourishing period of Greek history when the Greeks rapidly came to the front in everything that lies at the basis of human life and happiness. The only thing they did not have was the example of Jesus Christ but Christ patterned his methods on that of the Greek schools. A man like Socrates would set up what practically amounted to a course of lectures in the market place or elsewhere and his disciples would follow. Education has never flourished as it did under those men. There was no thought of efficiency or system or organization-it was master and pupil or master and disciple. This type of school has extended down to our own times. It is what is meant by the saying that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other constitute a university. That seemed to be Mr. Agassiz' theory when he went in 1847 as a professor to Harvard College. He practiced exactly that type of teaching-master and disciple and under him natural science immediately became popular in the United States. His pupils have been marked men especially those who studied under him in the little old wooden museum at Cambridge. Every one of them achieved distinction. There is an example of this in the German universities where the professor gives his lectures to those who choose to enter his courses. In a university, where there are many professors and many students some system has to be adopted so that the lectures are not all given at the same hour. Organization and administration, however, are never concerned with the class-room work. That is entirely a function of the professor. Even in the technical schools of Germany something of this idea prevails. I well recall some lectures that I attended in Charlottenburg when I was making a study of the German technical school system. One lecture on the compound engine was given by a professor who invited me to go into the class room with him. He was polite and there he introduced me to the two hundred and fifty students sitting in front of him. The lecture lasted one hour

and a half. There was no textbook, no record of attendance, no conversation with the students. The lecturer simply went into the room, gave his lecture, and then walked out, the students being left to do the best they could to study up on the subject through text-books that they found in the library or elsewhere. I do not recall even any conferences with the professors and I did not see such a thing as a recitation. The main evidence of administration at Charlottenburg was the annual report written by the rector.

A modification of the German system was found at Harvard University under the unlimited elective system where a student could take practically what he wished and graduate after four years of study, having completed seventeen and a half courses. This system has been modified so that all students are required to concentrate on a major subject and to skate around many minor subjects, but at Harvard the attendance was taken and there was some requirement as to annual examinations. The proposed new system at Harvard is to have examinations at the end of the four years of study on all the major subjects that students have taken. This means of course that no student can get through without a good general knowledge of at least one subject. Of one thing a visitor at Cambridge might be certain-he would find the class rooms of professors crowded if the lectures were presented by a man of real gift.

The most organized type of higher education is found in the prescribed systems of small colleges. They used to be classical and some still are classical but we have added all kinds of up-to-date subjects in most cases with a little election during the junior and senior years. Engineering schools, however, have as a rule a rigidly prescribed course of study beginning where the high schools leave off and continuing through four years gradually becoming more and more professional. Usually the first year is the same for all branches of engineering and the last year is exclusively technical.

The net result of this preliminary consideration brings us to the question, What is the place of an engineering school

and what should it acomplish? This has a very direct bearing upon its administration. Another question might be added, Must there be only one type of engineering school? It seems to me foolish to lay any stress on the method or type as being the final word. No engineering education can be standardized without running the risk of losing much that is valuable in the individuality of different teachers. As a matter of fact most men make themselves and a course of study has little to do with the magnitude of their careers. Often it has nothing whatever to do with their occupation in life. Any school will prove this fact and make plain that a man's chief education comes with experience in life and from study after graduation, sometimes retarded by a course of study which has to be unlearned. The man's education, however, must be his own if he is to achieve any distinction whatever.

I take as an illustration of a rigidly prescribed course, the United States Naval Academy, because I am familiar with it and because it is one of the best examples of a curriculum that has no elasticity. In the first place it is strictly utilitarian in the sense that no attention is paid to anything that does not count towards the training of a naval officer for sea duty and for a limited number of international problems that may arise between our country and foreign nations. Everything that does not find a use is excluded. There is no great attempt at real teaching. It is a "sink-or-swim" method. The lessons are given out and the midshipman must learn them for himself or fail. It is really a case of intensified training and discipline and then of careful weeding. Our courses in engineering schools must necessarily be on a broader basis because we never know beforehand just what branch of the profession our graduates are going into. That often is a question of opportunity and the industrial condition of the country. Nevertheless the great majority of engineering schools are like the Naval Academy minus the discipline. The Navy always knows what its graduates are going to do and the energies and organization can therefore be

directed to that one thing-to make men for the best fighting machine in the world and to fulfill its purpose and function better than any school in the United States or perhaps in the world. Theodore Roosevelt once told me that he considered the Naval Academy the finest school in the world, meaning by that that it carried out its function better than any place else in doing what it set out to do. And what is the result? It produces good officers who have shown in this late war their capacity to work efficiently and enthusiastically. But it goes further in that it graduates a large percentage of men who leave the Navy and go into other professions entirely outside of the course of study. They obtain their education for their work on top of the Naval Academy training which is valuable only through its discipline. It is easy to show what graduates of the Naval Academy have been capable of doing by simply naming a few of them: In history, Alfred T. Mahan, who opened up a new field for historians. In literature, Winston Churchill, Cyrus Townsend Brady, whose novels most of us have read. In invention, Frank J. Sprague, the father of the trolley system. In education, Mortimer E. Cooley, who built up the first great engineering department in a university. In business, Homer L. Ferguson, lately elected president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

It is not intended here to give any list of the graduates of the Naval Academy who have distinguished themselves outside of the Navy and the purpose of this reference is only to show that men who have acquired the power of application and the initiative to do something with themselves are not dependent in any way upon the curriculum of any school, its organization, or its administration. They find their chief stimulus either within themselves or from teachers like Louis Agassiz. We get back then to the question asked beforeWhat is the purpose of an engineering school? It is to train a large number of men for the ordinary business of engineering, leaving to the exceptional who are capable of striking out into new fields the education of themselves. An engineering school may well have a semi-military character as the