before them as a many sided, many colored place, in which all races and nations have their part to play and their contribution to bring.

Still other internationalizing agencies are the permanent centers of international life, such as the Cité Universitaire in Paris, the various Studentenheims in Germany, and a Students International Union, in Geneva. There students make contacts with young people of other lands, and with leaders of thought and work in the international field. There they engage in constant study and discussion of other peoples and spend hours in the attempt to understand sympathetically what are often not only geographically but sometimes spiritually alien points of

view.

Finally, there are the actual centers of international education, and the work of international education done in national centers. This work is closely related to the work of the League of Nations, which in every country has youth branches and societies. These branches which operate both in the secondary schools and in the colleges consist of young people who believe that the machinery of internationalism erected through the League is necessary to the maintenance of peace. They seek to understand thoroughly the processes and methods by which the League carries out its work, and to disseminate information concerning it wherever possible. Perhaps the outstanding as well as a typical institution of international education is the Geneva School of International Studies. It is conducted by Professor Zimmern, one of the directors of the Institute of Intellectual Coöperation

of the League of Nations. "The School is completely international. It is independent in its teaching. In 1926 its total number of lecturers was 83, representing 25 nationalities, and in the same year the total enrollment for the first four courses was 453 students from 29 countries." Typical of the courses offered, are the following: "Problems of International Politics," "Economic Factors in International Relations," and "Problems of International Government."

22

These, then, are some of the forms which the new international consciousness of youth has taken in the past years. They are important and, I believe, indicative of a new attitude in European life; but they present only one side of the shield of international relations in Europe. To tell of these activities and to say no more were to attempt to fit reality. to a Procrustean bed of optimism. For there are many and powerful forces which oppose the new internationalism, forces operating even among youth itself. Indeed the very intensity with which the international ideal is cherished is proof that it must struggle for its existence against bitter opposition.

Yet there is little false optimism concerning the international mind on the part of European youth. It realizes how frail and superficial are its own efforts, and how easily they may be swept aside if once the forces of militant nationalism should again achieve control. That there are difficulties to be met, difficulties which cannot be over-exaggerated, is very clear. There is no dodging of the facts. The past centuries of mistrust, the old and new national

economic rivalries, the innate combativeness of human nature, all these are recognized. As one writer for a British "youth magazine" put it, "We should abstain from painting rosy pictures of international life and fearlessly lay before youth all the hopeless and disconcerting elements of our position. We should be very modest in the use of such slogans as, 'World Peace' and 'World Brotherhood' and rather talk about the nearly insurmountable obstacles that are in the way."

Chief of these obstacles is the new and fiery nationalism which has threatened time and again in the last years to plunge Europe into another general war. Such nationalism is not without its powerful emotional appeal to youth; and while in many quarters such agencies as the League and its work are despised, the old shibboleths of nationalism are being revived. In Italy, for example, internationalism is generally considered a huge joke, a snare to catch unsuspecting nations. And even where the international ideal is paid formal homage, it is not always understood. The memory of the young German comes to my mind, who, at a small peace conference in Geneva, startled us by saying in all seriousness, "Permanent world peace-yes --but first the French must be given a thorough beating." The naïveté of the remark makes it the more significant.

Still as of old, imperialistic nationalism is a powerful force, and nationalist parties still indulge in wild and rabid outbursts, and enlist under their banner numbers of young people; but as I met and talked to all sorts and types of youth, I grew

to feel that a strong check had been laid on their war-breeding activites; that check consisting of the counteracting power of internationallyminded youth. How strong the check may be, whether it will hold in the face of a serious crisis remains to be seen. But in the very fact of its existence there is ground for hope. For the first time in world history the anti-militaristic, anti-imperialistic forces are being marshaledand youth is marshaling them!

I have said that the work for a sane internationalism is not overexaggerated by youth. Indeed, the truth is rather that youth tends to underestimate its own power. And it is as often driven by the goad of fear and the sense of helplessness in the face of imminent calamity, as spurred on by the hope of ultimate international comity. Yet it is in the very face of the fear that its work and achievements may be at the last futile that youth goes on. Go on it must; there is no other way. For it has glimpsed a vision too beautiful and too compelling to be forgotten. And it knows that but for the vision there must be utter darkness.

Certainly the youth of Europe does not overstress the importance of its own efforts. Yet after coming to know intimately the depth of passion with which it clings to its ideal and the intelligent direction given thereto, one cannot but be heartened. May not great things come from a generation, a large part of which has for over a decade thought in international terms, a generation which has been exposed to the invigorating tonic of frank discussion and friendly intercourse with other peoples? "Youth," the

organ of the British youth movement, states the problem well:

"Gulliver, when he awoke in the land of the Lilliputians, found himself tied down so completely by the silklike ropes of these little people that he was unable to free himself, giant though he was compared with them. Each one of us can help to bind down the giant of War with such a silklike thread of international friendship and if only enough threads are tied the giant will be unable to move."

22

One aspect of youth's international attitude interested me particularly as an American. So much has been written of late of the hostility of Europe to the United States, that I wondered to what extent that hostility was shared by its youth. I found both more and less than I expected. Less bitterness arising out of the sense of economic inferiority and dependence; less angry insistence that America had proved a Shylock among nations, a sordid usurer briefly disguised as a crusading idealist; less of the belief that America's primary European interest was to secure financial and eventually political control of Europe!

But if there were less of these cruder strictures on America, I found far more of a deeper and subtler antagonism. Perhaps it can best be characterized in the word of an Italian student as "the inevitable hostility of a falling to a rising civilization." That at least is the viewpoint of many thoughtful young Europeans concerning Europe and America. They see Europe as a tired, war-worn continent incapable of sustaining or continuing the tra

dition it has evolved. They see America as inheriting that tradition in part; yet altering it to such an extent that its basic qualities are often distorted and obscured. Even more there is the feeling that America consciously or unconsciously is imposing its own crude semicivilization on a Europe too weak in every way to withstand it, a Europe which has seen the gleam of something better than the materialism which is largely held to be synonymous with America, and yet a Europe which lacks the power to follow that gleam.

Particularly strong among youth is the conviction that, while the potential civilization of America may be of value to us, it cannot but be harmful abroad. Numbers of young Germans spoke to me of the evil which jazz-not only as a musical but as a spiritual form of expression-was doing. "When your young people dance these dances and sing these songs" they told me, "we can see something at least natural and therefore charming in them. But when we attempt to imitate them, we become forced and unnatural. What was spontaneous gaiety in you degenerates into noisy clownishness in us. Our young people achieve the form, but the spirit eludes them." So also with the motion-picture and the press. In these and other fields American standards, or the lack of them, are held to be a real menace to European civilization.

That is at the heart of whatever hostility exists among Europe's youth toward America. It is the deep-rooted fear that the rough, powerful current of American values. will sweep before it the frail bark in

which is borne a less virile but a more mature and still lovely old-world culture. And the fear is not without foundation. America and things American are an obsession in Europe to-day. Our dances, our songs, our theaters, our sports, our books, our politics, our laws, our life, are studied and discussed, analyzed and imitated as never before. Europe is being Americanized. The Europe of a generation hence will, for good or evil, have been molded in large part by America. And Europe's youth, realizing that this is so, is ofttimes aroused to a very natural resentment; resentment intensified by the feeling of helplessness.

Yet to describe the attitude of European youth as merely one of distrust and fear were gravely unjust. These, it is true, exist. But there are many young Europeans who refuse to judge America by the post-war years alone, who are willing, even eager, to know and understand the best as well as the worst concerning us. They too may deplore the undue and perhaps harmful influence of American on European life, but they refuse to allow a historical process to be twisted to the uses of hostile propaganda.

Particularly when international problems are discussed, a very deep and genuine sense of relationship with us comes to the surface. For

Europe's youth knows, what we sometimes forget, that ours is an important and an inescapable part in world affairs. And among the wisest of them I found a real desire that America play its part bravely and completely as a great nation ought. Particularly vivid is the memory of a leader of the Student Self-Help work in Germany, who talked to me with moving earnestness of America's place abroad. "Europe's greatest need is America" he said. "America threw its sword into the conflict and then withdrew, leaving us to our fate, saying 'It's not our affair.' But it is your affair. You made it so. You cannot neglect it now."

Such an attitude does not smack of bitterness or antagonism so much as of expectation, of questioning, of challenge. And even in the challenge there is more of friendliness than of hostility. It is an attitude of challenge tinged with wistfulness, with an eager longing for closer contacts, better understanding of our ways and thoughts. I felt everywhere as if the young men and women whom I met were seeking to communicate to me, often without words, the Old World's need of us. Not here at least, a need of loans or investments; but rather of friendship, of comradely understanding in a time of stress, of the bread of the spirit by which, they have come firmly to believe, both men and nations live.

Y

EARS ago I stood on the balcony of one of New York's first sky-scrapers and looked north over the city. One of our group pointed out the many churchspires that even in the financial district, towered above the "temples of trade." The cathedral city, we called it. But to-day! One could stand on that same balcony and look in vain for the spires. They are still there and still pointing to the heavens but they are completely over-shadowed. They have not kept pace with the growth of their own generation.

This comes back to me because of a startling question I was asked not long ago-"Why are business women leaving the church?" The question was put by an officer in one of our great Christian organizations. It came as a shock for I had never, until then, thought of business women as distinctly out of the church. I have thought of it a great deal since. Very few of the leading business and professional women, I find, go regularly to church. Some do not go at all. This is equally true of the business men, so I began to ask, as my questioner had asked, why are very busy women-and busy men-leaving the church?

There was a wide range of answers. Some said quite frankly that they had "outgrown" the church. Others that they hear exactly the same hymns and prayers and sermons they have heard all their lives, and that, as one expressed it, "gives a sense of slipping back when everything else in life is a challenge to go forward." The more thoughtful say that the church does not solve the real problems of life or give the help that can be had from books. (This last statement is particularly interesting in view of a study made two years ago by the New York Public Library, which showed that the lowest number of non-fiction books loaned out were on religion and the highest on sociology.) But by far the greatest number, of men and women both, say in effect, "Sunday is the only free day I have. If I go to church there is so little time left."

Yet the fact remains that they go somewhere-to visit friends or play golf; to the museums, the parks and the woods. Thousands now go to the Sunday moving pictures, while other thousands, more Puritanical, or possibly more cultured, flock to lectures and concerts; so the plea that the