THE CULTURED FLOUNDER

Internationalism, since the war, has become an intellectual password, often-times of little meaning. There has been a great deal of romantic speculation about world brotherhood with lack of discrimination on the part of the individual in practical details. As a result foreign travel and education have developed rapidly, but frequently blindly.

Now that European culture has been made accessible to the general public by means of vacation tours, exchange scholarships, and other channels of international intercourse, many have rushed in to take advantage of the opportunities without sufficient preparation to derive any real benefit from the experience. This characteristic inability either to give or receive anything of value is due to the lack of adequate national education and sufficient personal maturity to make possible an evaluation of the knowledge gained abroad. Greater preparation at home should be insisted upon and the student should have a very definite understanding of what he is seeking and the best way of getting at it. For there are far too many who launch themselves aimlessly and waste most of their time floundering in culture when they get there.

The dangers of unqualified acceptance of the international movement have been recognized both here and abroad, while efforts have been made to check the extremes to which it has gone. For although international exchange can be one of the most valuable forms of modern education, indiscriminate exchange frequently works harm to the student who is thrown out of the normal course of his development.