(See front cover)
Number Six on the Boulevard Sreten-sky in Moscow is the People's Commissariat for Education. There excited Russians are awaiting this week the coming of a great U. S. citizen who is chiefly famed on other Continents—John Dewey.
Of him a sportive and popular Teuton savant, Count Hermann Keyserling,* has said: "The two contributions of America to world culture are Professor Dewey and Negro jazz."
In contrast to that flippant view, which nonetheless expresses the esteem of Europeans for Professor Dewey, is another statement. It was made by one who is per-haps the greatest of living Chinese savants, Dr. Fai Yuan-pei. The occasion was the birth anniversary of Confucius in 1920. Dr. Fai, acting as Rector of the National University at Peking, was presenting an honorary Ph.D. degree to John Dewey.
"We honor you," said Dr. Fai, "as the Second Confucius."
In China higher praise is not.
Up the gangplank of the S. S. George Washington there shambled, last fortnight, an unkempt, lanky man whose profile somewhat resembles that of the late famed Robert Louis Stevenson. Fellow passengers took small note of the droopy, bedraggled mustache, the old fashioned spectacles, the somewhat scrawny neck girt by a casual tie. Why should they? Not one American in ten thousand has ever heard of John Dewey.
As propellers churned and the George Washington nosed down the bay, Dr. Dewey slumped into a characteristic, sloppy, sprawly arrangement in a deck chair.
Now he could leave behind his duties as a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. Ahead lay Europe, then broad, fertile Russian plains, and Moscow, and Number Six Boulevard Sretensky.