The author, a former president of Harvard, framed the question he believed would decide the war: Would conscripted workers produce as strong an economy as those who could act of their own free will?
“There are too many histories, too many new sciences with applications of great importance, and too many new literatures of high merit which have a variety of modern uses, to permit any one … to believe that Latin can maintain the place it was held for centuries in the youthful training of educated men.”
“More and more, as time goes on, this war develops into a conflict between free institutions and autocratic institutions.”
“The condition of secondary schools in the United States is at present one of inferiority; ... the country ought not to be satisfied with that condition.”
“A system of education which attracts no great number of boys, which unites its disciples in no strong bonds of common associations and good-fellowship, and which, after years of trial, is not highly organized … has no strong hold upon the community in which it exists.”