Excerpt from Report of a Visit to Schools of France in War Time, 1917
There are two armies for the defense of our civilization.
One is the Army of Present Defense; the other is the Army of Future Defense.
We have for months that have run into years watched the former, marveling at its valors, sympathizing with its losses. We are now mobilizing and training our own forces to join in that defense on the crucial line, which civilization must hold.
But this side of that line is the other army, pictured by M. Viviani, former Minister of Public Instruction in France, when he said: " Unless the military authorities forbid, the schools must
everywhere be kept open. Thus it may be said that our "scholastic front" follows everywhere the very line of the trenches, being never more than ten kilometers distant, often less than two."
From the military front we have daily report. Hundreds of correspondents watch its every movement. The whole world, whatever its occupation, turns every morning to see what is happening there.
But of the vast other army, in France alone twice or three times the first army in size, there are but meager reports. It is only when its teachers and pupils are mobilized into the first that we are likely to hear of them, either fighting in the trenches or helping in some specific way to give material aid or spirit to those who are exposing their lives to make the world a safe place for free human beings to live in.
It was this second army, this "scholastic front," that, representing a portion of our conscript Army of Future Defense - tens of thousands of teachers and millions of children - I went to France to see, in order that we might have some advice of those under whose tuitions the immortal valors of the first army have been nourished.
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