Again, this exclusion is doubtless aided by the efforts of some pacifists, who believe that, ostrich-like, we should hide our heads in the sand, to avoid acknowledging the existence of something we do not like.  “Why war?” asks a recent pamphlet.  Why, indeed?  But we may ask in turn “Why fire?” “Why flood?” I cannot answer these questions, but it would be foolish to act as if the scourges did not exist.  Nay, I hasten to insure myself against them, though the possibility that they will injure me is remote.  This ultra-pacifist attitude has gone further than school education and is trying to put the lid on community education also.  Objection, for instance, has been made to an exhibit of books, prints and posters about the war, which was displayed in the St. Louis Public Library for nearly two months.  We intended to let it stand for about a week, but the public would not allow this.  The community insists on self-education even against the will of its natural allies.  The contention that we are cultivating the innate blood-thirstiness of our public, I regard as absurd.

What can we do toward generating or taking advantage of other great driving impulses toward community education?  Must we wait for the horrors of a great war to teach us geography, industrial chemistry and international law?  Is it necessary to burn down a house every time we want to roast a pig?  Certainly not.  But just as one would not think of bringing on any kind of a catastrophe in order to utilize its shock for educational purposes, so also I doubt very much whether we need concern ourselves about the initiation of any impulse toward popular education.  These impulses exist everywhere in great number and variety and we need only to select the right one and reinforce it.  Attempts to generate others are rarely effective.  When we hear the rich mellow tone of a great organ pipe, it is difficult to realize that all the pipe does is to reinforce a selected tone among thousands of indistinguishable noises made by the air rushing through a slit and striking against an edge.  Yet this is the fact.  These incipient impulses permeate the community all about us; all we have to do is to select one, feed it and give it play and we shall have an “educational movement.”  This fact is strongly impressed upon anyone working with clubs.  If it is desired to foster some movement by means of an organization, it is rarely necessary to form one for the purpose.  Every community teems with clubs, associations and circles.  All that is needed is to capture the right one and back it up.  Politicians well understand this art of capture and use it often for evil purposes.  In the librarian’s hands it becomes an instrument for good.  Better than to offer a course of twenty lectures under the auspices of the library is it to capture a club, give it house-room, and help it with its program.  I am proud of the fact that in fifteen public rooms in our library, about four thousand meetings are held in the course of the year; but I am inclined to be still prouder of the fact that not one of these is held formally under the auspices of the library or is visibly patronized by it.  To go back to our thesis, all education is self-education; we can only select, guide and strengthen, but when we have done these things adequately, we have done a very great work indeed.