CON

'ONSISTENCY in public men is a virtue reverently honored in the breach. The privilege of changing one's mind is rather regarded with the sanctity of a Constitutional Right. This right is often exercised spectacularly and acrobatically. Minds undergo changes that are erratic and mercurial; the weather vane is possessed of iron rigidity by comparison. One is taken, therefore, somewhat back on encountering a man whose career is keyed on one note, whose public acts are neither chameleonic in their lightning adaptability nor recondite in their professed motivation.

DR. WILLIAM ETTINGER, Associate Superintendent of Schools, typifies this class of public man, and this quality of consistent endeavor resulting in the consummation of matured plans is evident in his first important contribution to public education, his Progressive Road to Reading. One is struck pleasantly by the suggestiveness of the title. This course in Reading is progressive both in content and in spirit; it is not blatant with specious promise; and it affords a road with all the reasonable implications of dependability, durability and economy. It bespeaks a personality manifesting attributes of thoroness in

execution, temperateness in expression, before-handedness in planning. His subsequent elevation to the Associate Superintendency has not made DR. ETTINGER less thoro in his organization, less moderate in his claims or less unswerving in his resolutions. He entered upon his duties at a time when educational thought was in a state of flux; when successful school inovations in other states were impinging themselves upon the minds of New York's educators. When temptation was strong to float imperturbably with the tide of events, to buy favor with a modicum of supiness-a sacrifice only too readily sustained under the promptings of ambitions. Vocational Trainings was at the summit of its popularity. Outlying cities were visited and their schools surveyed. The enthusiasm for the Gary Schools had reached fever heat. The waters of vocational Garyism were flowing swiftly; there seemed no likelihood of damming its current. It required an official in whom a sanguine temperament is held in check by a sober conservatism; and in whom the retarding force of unhurried thinking is always triumphant over the accelerating counterforce of heedless enthusiasm. Dr. ETTINGER fulfilled this mission ad

mirably. He saw the vocational needs of New York City, he glimpsed the potentialities of the Gary school. But he was not stampeded into voicing unreserved approval of the vocational programs. When he was placed in charge of vocational investigation he wrote: "Let me say at the outset, that as far as the discovery of anything new or valuable in relation to the development of vocational work along elementary lines, I saw nothing comparable either in scope or in application with the work of our vocational schools, or of our prevocational experiment in elementary schools."

He set about immediately to build a "Progressive Road" to vocational to vocational training. Undaunted by the difficulties that loomed up on all sides, he continued to manifest the courage of his convictions. He organized a number of Elementary Schools into PreVocational Schools. He requested and received the wholehearted co-operation of the principals in charge of the experiment. He expedited the extemporization of administrative machinery, the selection of vocational teachers with a competency in practical Pedagogy and the promulgation of a course of study in which traditional subjects might re-enforce vocational training.

During the period of organization he was sustained by the spirit of tolerance for those urging wholesale additions to the trades under advisement. He proceeded to make provisions for those occupations for which there existed an undoubted demand on the part of prospective emp oyers. He limited their extent to the number of applicants available. He was surveying the industrial topography with a

view to determining the direction, usableness, and engineering problems of road making; he was making sure of its construction and traction.

But he has made satisfactory progress. In 1915 he found himself in a position to report that two thousand sixty-nine boys and girls were attending classes in Machine Shop, Sheet Metal, Plumbing Electric Wiring, Printing, Trade Drawing, Garment Design, Book-binding, Millinery, Dressmaking, Power-machine, Novelty-work, and Home-making. This number of vocational classes were distributed among five experimental schools re-organized as two-unit schools housing a vocational organizat on alternating, thru the wider uses of auditorium and play facilities, with a traditional school on the prevailing model. As a piece of creative work, the initial success of the prevocational experiment deserves unsparing praise.

Unfortunately for the cause of prevocational education, the schools have been eclipsed by the Gary experimen. There is a conspicuous absence of press agenting in DR. ETTINGER'S reports. The emphasis of understatement is sometimes lessened by a too scientific literalness. The Public has been fed on a diet of dithyrambic forecasts, and highly colorful rhetric. But it learned to take them with a sizeable grain of salt. This frame of mind spells disaster for any pronuncimento that is couched in irreducible terms. A highly sophisticated Public reads indifferent success into it; it discounts at a depreciatory rate.

DR. ETTINGER does not claim, however, that these vocational activities will prove a panacea for all economic ills: he admits their limitations not by

A

MONG the men who are serving the United States in foreign lands there are perhaps none to be found who have the opportunity to wield greater power or influence on behalf of their country than the Consular representatives. It has been the writer's privilege to know many of these men in different countries, and on the whole he has come to respect them highly, both for their ideals and the manner in which they are striving to attain them, frequently under arduous and difficult circumstances.

There are few officials of the United States whose complicated work is less accurately known by the rank and file of citizens, and even by world travelers, than these men who, while exiles from their native land, are supposed to know more about that land than the people at home, in order that they may translate the spirit and the work of their country into terms intelligible to the foreign nations in which they serve. That our Consular service has been sadly handicapped at times by politicians ignorant of conditions outside of the United States, cannot be denied. That here and there there have been unwise appointments and poor Consuls also cannot be denied. If, however, our people and our politicians. would take the time and effort to study both the object and the activities of these important representatives from whom foreigners, especially in matters of trade, learn the character

istics of the United States, and the way of doing business in this Republic we venture to think that the natural trade expansion of America would be facilitated, and the work of the American Counsuls made less a hardship than it is at times today. Increased appreciation and less ignorant criticism of these government officers would undoubtedly help the service. But appreciation is born of knowledge and the average person seems to have little definite conception of what the Consular work consists.

Suppose, for example, the Americans traveling abroad who received favors from these officers upon whom they are often largely dependent for information and guidance as well as for protection, should form the habit of writing to the State Department as well as to the Consul himself, speaking of their appreciation of many kindnesses proferred; suppose that every American business man doing business abroad should take the position of a certain prominent man of affairs in a South American city who stated recently that he considered it both undignified and disloyal to his country to criticise harshly the representative that his nation had seen fit to place in a foreign nation-would not such a course be a ready means of making a better Consular service? We have heard of many people who have been quite ready to send in complaints, both to the State Department, and to the

Consuls themselves, as well as to air their supposed grievances concerning our service abroad. Is it not time and perhaps a peculiarly strategic time just now, for those who understand something of the Consular difficulties and have benefited by Consular favors to make themselves heard?

In the first place there is consider able misunderstanding as to the fundamental object with which our American Consuls are sent to foreign nations. Some people will tell you that they are there to serve solely the "American Colony" or the people who are established in business and trade abroad that it is their business to act as legal advisors for these American business men in other nations, and in a general way to take their part against the legal exactions of laws and customs in the country where they

serve.

It is not generally understood that such is not the main business of the American Consul, but that he is but that he is primarily the agent of his government to the people of the nation itself to which he is sent, he is to foster commercial and trade relations between Americans at home and the business people of alien countries, and when these relations have resulted in a settlement of American business in these countries, much of this responsibility to these particular people at least, ceases. In other words, the American Consul is not primarily a policeman or an unpaid attache to any business firm

acting abroad. The service which he renders repeatedly to such firms is often a voluntary and friendly one, rather than one primarily laid down in his instructions.

One can readily realize why this is

true when the multifold duties of the Consul to the various government departments at home, are considered.

There is first of all the Consul's duty to the State Department which involves numerous and frequent reports. There are accounts of shipping of all kinds to be kept, port statistics, political and statistical reports, registration of American citizens, and pass ports to be visited. There i- the Consul's jurisdictionary work, his work of settling the estates of persons dying abroad, together with his peculiar intercessory offices for the American colony in countries where there are capitulations or in countries where there are extra-territor al rights.

There are also duties which the Consul must perform to the Treasury Department. These include such services as transfers of all United States Bonds abroad; the income tax business; demigraphic statistics to secure and send every week to the Department; bills of health for ships. The Department of Commerce makes large demands upon the Consul. This Department requires him, 1. To legalize all transfer of shipping.

2. To survey all protested cargo and protested shipments of merchandise and damaged ships.

3. To attend to the discharge and enrollment of every American seaman in his port.

4. To act as intermediary between ship's captains and port authorities.

5. To send American sailors to hospitals when it is required and to see to their burial and to the settlement of their estates.

6. To write regular commerical reports.