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Movies in the Schools

HE producers of motion pictures have just accomplished the most sensible act of their joint and several careers. A distinguished committee of educators has been asked to cooperate with Will H. Hays, overseer of the film industry, to find out just what value motion pictures have in the classroom. When this has been done, steps will be taken to bring about their proper use on the widest possible scale.

There are plenty of intelligent people inside the industry who think that the great future of motion pictures lies in education. Impressions received through the eye, psychologists tell us, are stronger than any other sort (except odors)! A motion picture has all the vividness, the unquestioned reality, of life itself. Moreover, the motion picture makes a new type of pedagogy possible. With animated cartoons and moving maps, it is possible to explain in a few seconds a point which could only be partially and inadequately elucidated with thousands of words. Microscopic photography brings to the student of biology and chemistry a reality hitherto undreamt of. The patient camera man can reveal a month's growth of a plant in the course of five minutes on the screen.

Despite all these advantages, most of the experiments made thus far in the use of movies have been comparative failures. This is partially due to a misunderstanding of function; the film should supplement, not supplant, the text-book. It is particularly useful in summarizing the important facts, leaving precise details for book and teacher. Also, for obvious reasons, the amount of classroom film as yet available is small, the choice of subjects haphazard, the technical quality of much of it poor. So few schools are interested as yet that the

financial rewards of producers are limited. Teachers haven't learned how to use the new medium to advantage, and normal schools have not introduced the subject into their curricula.

Time will certainly smooth these difficulties. It needs no prophetic vision to predict that before many years every classroom will have its projection machine; that as many films as text-books will be produced; that in the school auditorium of every town and village, travel pictures and special educational films will be shown in the evenings once or twice a week through the winter, for grown-ups and children alike, at nominal charge

or none.

Collectively, the human race is fairly stupid; but in the long run every new short cut to power and knowledge is certain to be adopted. In education, motion pictures provide such a short cut. Their ultimate use is as inevitable as the sunrise. Current Opinion, D., '22.

The Sporting Page

Mr. Thomas Sergeant Perry, one of the real scholars in America, writes to me: "While everything else is going to smash, what tennis prevails!" Is not this the true reason why so many of the intelligentsia, on opening the morning paper, turn first of all to the sporting page? I remember once, during the war, while travelling on a train, a newsboy brought in the papers, which were eagerly bought. Sitting near me was a clergyman, who opened his paper feverishly, and turned instantly to the sporting page, without looking to see what had happened in France. Perhaps this habit, which is more common than some may think, needs no apology. The front page is covered with failures-failures of capitalists and laborers to avert disastrous strikes, failures of statesmen to bring peace to the world, fail

ures in Ireland, failures of stock-brokers, failures of husbands and wives in the art of living together. All of these groups of people should be experts, and their pathetic failures are daily and depressingly recorded. How different is the sporting page, where we read of the glorious triumphs of Ty Cobb, Sarazen, Sweetser, Tilden, and Johnston! The sporting page is the Daily Hope. It advertises success rather than failure.

My friend Perry also makes a mot which should not be lost. Seeing a Harvard undergraduate with a huge H on his sweater, he remarked, "Yes, I see now what is meant by the way universities nourish the love of letters."-William Lyon Phelps, Scribner's Magazine, N. '22.

A Natural Law

I should like to state in four words what I believe to be a natural law: Excess leads to Prohibition. It is not the fault of the Bolsheviks that Russia at present is such a hell; it is the excess of Tsarism lasting 200 years and becoming intolerable. Had even the late Tsar ruled wisely and moderately, he might have died in his bed. The French Revolution was not the work of madmen: it was caused chiefly by Louis XIV, Louis XV, and other counsellors. In turn, the excesses of the revolutionists led to their abolition, as will probably be the case in Russia. Napoleon was not beaten by Wellington; no one but himself could ever have beaten Napoleon, and he did the job thoroughly. England and France are not the cause of Germany's downfall; she fell through the excess of her own pride and ambition. What is true of big matters is also true of little things. A man who smokes all the time eventually discovers that he cannot smoke at all. "The doctor told me I had to cut it out." Life is a dangerous game to play, and moderation is a rare virtue.-William Lyons Phelps, Scribner's Magazine, N. '12.

Cause and History of Earthquakes

Of all convulsions of nature an earthquake is undoubtedly the most

terrifying, both because of the vas ness and mystery of the overwhelm ing power which produces it an because man can neither escape fro it nor protect himself against it. Th ancients, as modern barbarians de ascribed earthquakes to the maleve lence of demons or to the anger of) outraged gods. All unusual and g gantic phenomena of nature, the thought, were produced by super natural causes. Thus Herodotus, whose history is one of the great classics of all literature, in two pas sages mentions eclipses as portent of the gods, unfavorable to Greeks and foreshadowing their de struction. However, while the Greek and Egyptians knew something abou the cause of eclipses before the Chris tian Era, it is only within a fe decades that scientists have believed that earthquakes are caused in tw ways either by the explosive pres sure of volcanic gases in the molter interior of the earth or by the slipping or displacement of gigantic strata of rock under the earth's sur face. In the one case the earthquake is a monstrous explosion, in the other a monstrous landslide.

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In most recorded cases the land. slide or explosion has taken place near the sea or under its bed, so that it has been accompanied by violent and death-dealing tidal wave The earthquake that destroyed Lis bon in 1755 was followed by a tida wave which swept the shores Portugal and drowned or dashed th death thousands of human beings Altogether 40,000 lives were lost in that disaster. Messina was shake by an earthquake in 1783 and agai in 1908, and on the latter occasion great tidal wave wrought much o the destruction which resulted in the death of 60,000 persons. The recen Chilean earthquake and tidal wave are not comparable in magnitude to the Portuguese and Italian disaster. nor probably, in loss of life, to tw great earthquakes which have strick en India during the past 25 year The Outlook, N. 22, '22.

Vol. 1

No. 11

"Those who fail to have an inventory taken of their physical stock and capital are, in many cases, heading straight for physical bankruptcy and loss of their greatest asset-health."

HOUSANDS of persons are need

Tlessly sacrificed every year, be

cause nothing is done to discover the earliest signs of disease to which they may be exposed or liable until these diseases have gained such headway that it is too late to prevent a fatal ending. The writer recently made a study of 850 children, whose parents believed they had made a complete recovery from scarlet fever. It was found that 5 per cent had signs of serious heart damage, and a somewhat larger number showed signs of kidney damage as a result of the attack of scarlet fever, and, but for this special examination, these serious conditions would not have been discovered until the damage had caused a serious breakdown. A large number of these disease conditions were readily remedial once they were recognized.

Throughout life, repeated injuries of a minor nature, together with your

habits with reference to sleep, food, exercise, fresh air, bathing, and clothing, as well as the mental and physical strains which you must endure, register their effects even though the outward or recognizable signs of injury may not be observed at all or may seem to be very slight.

Even the most indifferent, wasteful and thoughtless driver of an automobile takes time at least every now and then to inspect and overhaul his car, or has it done for him by one who is competent. But the automobile is a child's toy when compared with the complexity of the human body. How many ever think of having this intricate machine, the human body, overhauled to discover the effects of wear and tear, or of injuries by accident or disease? The majority resort to medical care only when pain, injury, or serious sickness force them to seek help.

As

It is well to remember, too, that human beings, ever so much more than automobiles, are not built according to one model. There are few that are biult on the same lines. the result of a bad heredity many persons are built of poorer materials, or, some one or other vital part is defective from birth, or weakened by disease. Therefore, even those who