"Not the Kind"

Trippers just home from Europe, bubbling over with news of how fast the taxicabs go in Paris and how hard it is to buy good cigarets in England, received a sorry setback, and their envious friends a flush of joy, upon opening the September number of McCall's magazine and there reading an article by the daughter of Chief Justice Taft, Mrs. Helen Taft Manning, dean of Bryn Mawr College. "It is estimated," estimated Mrs. Manning, "that nearly 500,000 Americans have crossed the Atlantic this summer. ... I should be the last to question the benefits or the delights of European travel, and yet one may without cynicism question whether the hasty progress which is being made by the greater part of the 500,000 Americans through England, France, Italy, and no doubt several other countries, will really produce much imprint on minds either young or old. Tours carefully planned to include the greatest possible number of cathedrals, picture galleries and museums; hotels crowded with other Americans; shops bearing the sign: 'Here English is spoken'--all these things are very pleasant and entertaining, but it may surely be doubted whether they lead to that understanding of the mind of another nation which must lie at the basis of international understanding. "This is not the kind of education needed by Americans today." . . .