FROM A STUDENT AT MADRAS WOMEN’S COLLEGE

“Your letter was handed to me as I returned from my evening hour of prayer, prayer for our school, special prayer for the problem God has called us to tackle together.  I believe that the solution for many of our problems at school is to put things on a Christian foundation.  We want workers who are real Christians and who love the Master as sincerely as they do themselves and serve Him for their love of Him.  This may not be easy work for us to do, but if God is transforming the whole globe and moulding it from the ‘new spiritual center,’ namely,—­Jesus Christ, it is certainly not hard for Him to accomplish it in this place.  How He is going to do it I am blind to see.  Let us put our feet on the one step that we see with the faith expressed in ’One step enough for me,’ and the next step will flash before our eyes.  One question that used to trouble me is, how we are to do the work.  The poem by Edward Sill in ‘The Manhood of the Master’ cheers me up now as then with the thought that a broken sword flung away by a craven as useless was used by a king’s son to win victory in the same battle.  God will use it and perform His work.  We have dedicated ourselves for His duty which is gripping our souls.  He will use them according to His purpose.”

CHAPTER FOUR

AN INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE

Education and World Peace.

While statesmen discuss disarmament and politicians and newspaper editors foment race consciousness and mutual distrust, certain forces that never figure in newspaper headlines, that come “not with observation,” are working with silent constructive power to bind nations together in ties of peace and good will.  Among these silent forces are certain educational institutions.  Columbia University has its Cosmopolitan Club, at whose Sunday night suppers you may meet representatives of forty to fifty nations, Occidental and Oriental.  In the Near East, amid the race hatred and strife that set every man’s hand against his fellow, the American Colleges at Constantinople and Beirut have stood foremost among the forces that produce unification and brotherhood.

During the war-scarred days of 1915, while nation was rising up against nation, there was founded in the city of Madras one of these international ventures in co-operation.  Known to the world of India as the Women’s Christian College of Madras, it might just as truthfully be called a Triangular Alliance in Education, for in it Great Britain including Canada, the United States, and India are joined together in educational endeavor.  America may well admire what Britain has been doing during long years for India’s educational advancement.  Among England’s more recent contributions to education in India none has been greater that the coming of Miss Eleanor McDougall from London University to take the principalship of this international college for women.  Under her wise leadership British and American women have worked in one harmonious unit, and international co-operation has been transformed from theory to fact.