"No greater power for education," said President Shurman
the other day, "has come among us during the last forty
years than the moving picture."

   I am not certain that it was President Shurman. And he
may not have said it the other day. Nor do I feel absolutely
sure that he referred to the LAST forty years. Indeed
now that I come to think of it, I don't believe it WAS
Shurman. In fact it may have been ex-President Eliot. Or
was it, perhaps, President Hadley of Yale? Or did I say
it myself? Judging by the accuracy and force of the
language, I think I must have. I doubt if Shurman or
Hadley could have put it quite so neatly. There's a touch
about it that I recognise.

   But let that pass. At any rate it is something that
everybody is saying and thinking. All our educators have
turned their brains towards the possibility of utilising
moving pictures for the purpose of education. It is being
freely said that history and geography, and even arithmetic,
instead of being taught by the slow and painful process
of books and memory, can be imparted through the eye.

   I had no sooner heard of this idea than I became impassioned
to put it into practice. I have therefore prepared, or
am preparing, a film, especially designed for the elementary
classes of our schools to narrate the story of the
discovery of America.

   This I should like the reader to sit and see with me, in
the eye of his imagination. But let me first give the
plain, unvarnished account of the discovery of America
as I took it from one of our school histories.

   "Christopher Columbus, otherwise Christoforo Colombo,
   the celebrated discoverer of America, was born of poor
   but honest parents in the Italian city of Genoa. His
   mother, Teresa Colombo, seems to have been a woman of
   great piety and intelligence. Of his father, Bartolomeo

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