The St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_ noted the educational results of the
cruise of the American fleet around the world in 1908:
“The most gigantic correspondence school in the history of
education, with free courses in foreign travel, geography and
natural history, is,” says the St. Louis _Post-Despatch_,
“now in operation throughout the entire United States, and
particularly in the West and Southwest. The instructors are the
15,000 sailors on Uncle Sam’s peace cruise around the world
and the students are their relatives and friends, totaling
200,000 to a quarter of a million souls. The text-books are
the shoals of entertaining and instructive letters from the
fleet which are flooding the whole country with every mail,
with throngs of picture post-cards as graphic illustrations.
From Honolulu, Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia,
tons of letters are now on their way to the loved ones at home,
bearing vivid lessons in the civilization of the Pacific islands
and the antipodes. All over the country forgotten text-books
on geography are being resurrected from dusty chests, so that
mothers, sisters and sweethearts may chart each day the course
pursued by the fleet. Book-stores report a largely increased
sale of maps, globes and charts, due to an awakened interest in
the remote sections of the earth. To the hundred or so families
in St. Louis which have relatives with the fleet have come
voluminous and thrilling letters, making them more familiar with
Trinidad than they are with Porto Rico, and better acquainted
with Magdalena Bay than they are with Charleston harbor. Such
letters as these, spreading information broadcast in the land,
are proving a vast engine against provincialism, ignorance
and narrowness, and affording a cosmopolitan education to
multitudes.”
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