THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN'S ATTITUDE.

In the first place, there is the habit of persistent and continuous industry, which women's experience in life has trained them to follow out. Women are home makers, and know that you can not wash the dishes, for example, on Monday morning, and expect them to keep washed for the remainder of the week. The work has to be done again at noon and at night, and then all over again on Tuesday morning, noon, and night, and so on.

Women who have the care of little children, as most women do sometime in their lives, know that you can not make children good and well behaved all at once; it has to be done "line upon line, and precept upon precept."

And so women got the habit of doing the same thing over and over again, and realizing that it must be done over and over again if finally good results are to be obtained. Men, on the other hand, I think, are more likely to go out and do some good and glorious thing, and then they want to stop off and take a rest.

A well-known writer traced that tendency of man back to the primitive days, when the man went out and shot a bear, let us say, and dragged it back to the edge of the camp; and the woman took the creature at that point and skinned it and prepared the flesh for food and the skin for clothing or tents, as the case might be. Meanwhile, in the words of this writer, the man lay down on his mat and went to sleep.

Now there is a great deal of that sort of thing in modern life, and in the difference between the way that man and woman function. The men like to work hard, and then they want to lie down on their mats and go to sleep.

And that is one of the reasons why so many splendid outbursts of civic enthusiasm flare up and fizzle out! The reformers who had the power of the vote have been largely men, and after they have accomplished their reform, they have taken a few minutes to lie down and go to sleep. Now, the women, with the other sort of training, I believe, are going to bring into our public life that habit of persistent industry in keeping after the concerns of the public that they have developed in keeping after the concerns of the home.

In the second place, I think we should all agree that women are more likely than men to see the human side of public questions. Women have had the care of the children, of sick persons, of the dependent and the defective groups in society, very much more than men. They have learned a sympathy and understanding for human weakness that men do not so easily possess, and that will be a very valuable contribution to the welfare of society, if women are able to make the human side of public questions as important as it ought to be in the consideration of our statesmen.

In the third place, women have a tendency to put more emphasis upon moral issues than men have. They have to teach the children that right is right and that wrong is wrong. They have not been tempted to compromise by the strong competition of business life. They have been looking at the absolute right and the absolute wrong of things more steadily than have men. And, again, that is a quality that will be of great value to us in the consideration of public questions.

SCHOOLS OF CITIZENSHIP.

I emphasize these three traits because I think they tend to combine in the subject we are met here to discuss, the subject of education, which is of such enormous importance to women, both as teachers and as those who have the home training of children.

The organization which I have the honor to represent has planned, first of all, to educate ourselves and all the other new voters who want to be educated. We are planning in our program citizenship schools for the new voters, one in every voting district of every State, if it is possible to bring that about.

We planned these schools because we realize that women are serious about this question of using their suffrage for the benefit of the Nation, and therefore we did not give much thought to what the result might be for the men. I am much gratified, therefore, to be able to quote a Member of the Congress of the United States who said that the establishment of these citizenship schools all over the country is going to "bring about a renaissance of interest in our great public questions that will count enormously in the future of this country."

We hope and pray that this may be the case, and we mean to keep persistently at this business of educating ourselves, in order that we may account to the country, through our votes, as real assets, and not as liabilities.

AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM.

In politics our program is essentially a woman's program. We believe there is no object in our presenting general issues, but just those questions which are of primary and distinctive importance to

women.

The first of these subjects is the natural and most important one of child welfare; and the second is the equally natural and equally important one of education. The plank concerning education which we are requesting both the political parties to adopt carries the following requests:

First, a Federal department of education; second, Federal aid, where necessary, for the removal of illiteracy, and for increased

salaries for teachers; third, thorough instruction in the duties and ideals of citizenship for those of our own land, and for the newcomers to our shores.

Matthew Arnold once said that if the world ever sees a time when women come together purely and simply for the good and benefit of mankind, it will be as a power such as the world has never known. Now, I believe most firmly that when the women of this country have the opportunity to do so, they will come together for the benefit of education, and I believe they will come together as a united power for the promotion of education such as this country has never before had.

EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP.

Right Rev. THOMAS J. SHAHAN,

Rector Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.

When we speak of citizenship we mean of course our traditional American citizenship, that choice flower of our public life, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln. Its roots are still intact and its high spirit is still abroad, wherever the great world-shaping documents and facts of our political life are known and honored.

In 100 years American citizenship has renewed the political face of the world, and if there be yet a few convulsive struggles of oppressed mankind, it is largely owing to the very fact of American freedom that there are political convulsions, and that the just claims of oppressed peoples are not formally and definitely extinguished. In a few generations our American citizenship, this lively American sense and practice of our public rights and duties, has subdued a whole continent, has overcome all obstacles that nature and ignorance could offer; has interpreted, purified, and elevated itself amid gigantic tasks of material development; has fully assimilated several foreign human stocks; has rejected many brilliant temptations to walk the paths of opportunism and error; has kept substantially sane and true its judgment of all public life outside its own limits; has cherished on all sides a spirit of healthy progress, social unity, and moral elevation; has followed the ways of peace, though not in folly, servility, or selfishness; has contributed richly to the arts and sciences, and to every phase of intellectual life.

If this be a true description of American citizenship, it follows, first, that it needs no apology for its present condition and temper; second, that we must not tolerate any obstacles to its normal beneficent action. The new heresies that sin against traditional or usual concept of American citizenship should be followed up, challenged, and destroyed root and branch as anti-American, and thereby inimical to the general welfare of mankind.

AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP A NEW-WORLD INSPIRATION.

Between American citizenship and European citizenship there is a specific difference, ocean wide, literally and morally. We can not think in the same terms, for our American political experience, like our American Constitution and Government, differs profoundly from that of Europe. Their political development has been mainly one of endless wars over a thousand years in the same small cockpits and for the benefit of the same type of men. Deep, sullen, patient, ineradicable vindictiveness has long prevailed in vast human strata in Europe. Hatred and revenge are the gospel of millions rendered quasi insane by centuries of oppression.

Humiliation also is written across the forehead of most great nations of Europe-defeats; losses of territory, population, and resources; dynastic troubles; transfers of allegiance, of religion, of advantage and opportunity; treacheries and betrayals without number, all the known evils of an immemorial secret diplomacy. Since the days of Charlemagne, a narrow strip of land from the Alps to the sea has been dyed to saturation with human blood, and over it have raged all the political passions and vices, all the social and economic conflicts, all the religious bitterness and antipathy, all the personal ambitions and vagaries of irresponsible rulers, vindictive factions, and nameless miscellaneous selfish misgovernment.

How different the origin and growth of American citizenship! Its enmities have been those of nature, i. e., distance and physical obstacles; its conquests those of knowledge and labor, the peaceful conquests of exploration and transportation and intercommunication; the incredible development of the forces latent in the elements of nature, the discovery and uses of the raw materials and essentials of industry and commerce; the growth and movement of harvests that stagger the imagination; the constant knitting together of all human elements and forces within easy range of a broad human democracy! The evidence and the honor of our traditional American citizenship lie in this immense complexus of universally beneficent facts, for they are its proper fruit, and as they stand have so far never been met with in other political forms and conditions.

We of the United States are preeminently the New World, with all that the pregnant term implies, and mankind yet looks to us in the spirit of those multitudes who quitted the Old World and took up life anew on this side of the Atlantic while yet the radiant figure of George Washington stood before all men as the incarnation of that human love of freedom which had been for ages a will o' the wisp.

Sympathy with Europe, yes; aid and comfort, yes; encouragement and charity, yes. But let us not be drawn closer to the maelstrom of

its politics or its statesmanship, for they are decidedly not kin to American citizenship, and are without exception all tarred over with an unclean imperialism, all one long sad chapter of the strong, rich, and masterful beating down the weak, the poor, and the lowly, enslaving them, and dooming them to a toil without hope, reward, or end.

OUR OWN HISTORY THE BEST MEANS OF CIVIC EDUCATION.

Naturally, one of the best means of civic education is the true history of our own country. Its great crises and problems are so near to us; its great figures yet so visible in the background of national life; the great documents and monuments of one marvelous century are yet so intact and legible that there ought to be no fear of our misunderstanding the deeds, the principles, and the spirit of the men who founded this Republic, and with divine aid and great human wisdom conducted it rapidly to greatness.

It needs no Cicero to proclaim the influence of historical teaching. The great war has taught us to what extent the historian can penetrate the mind of a great people, and hurl it blindly and recklessly against unoffending neighbors. Our American history should be widely monumentalized, so to speak, with the conscious purpose of making eloquent by national and local effort our public building, great natural sites and objects, and every occasion of visualizing the salient facts and truths, and the real spirit of our public life.

The arts would profit greatly by this high and noble propaganda. What more patriotic subjects for the walls of our new railway stations than the great oration of Patrick Henry or the Battle of Lexington? Ages can not wither such themes nor custom stale their moral force, nor ought they ever to fade from the consciousness of our people.

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM THE GENIUS OF AMERICAN LIFE.

Individual freedom, vast and delectable as the prairies or the forests, was the dominant note of this first century of American history. The old pagan concept of the state, as many would have us take it over from Europe, or rather from that prewar Prussia we have overthrown, an absolute omnipotent juggernaut, was both foreign and offensive to this original American citizen, to whom all centralism and imperialism were odious.

In this respect we are drifting away from the type of American manhood that built our Nation, secured its frontiers, and wrote our bill of rights in a few immortal principles. Under specious pretext, and often by reprehensible means, our traditional American concept of individual and local freedom, rights, duties, and responsibilities,