nothing during the progress of the war. To them the battle of the Marne was an unfortunate incident, and no more. In their wild dreams they still imagine that Paris and Calais are theirs, and that London is a mere heap of ruins. None can envy Herr BethmannHollweg his job of keeping all his pack at his heels. And he preserved a semblance of union by saying nothing at all. He refused obstinately to name the terms which would satisfy the Boches, because he knew full well that, whatever they were, they would not satisfy both parties. It is our own fault if we do not understand precisely where and how we stand. All the advantages of time and strength are on our side. The ultimate issue is not and cannot be doubtful. But viotory is not yet, and we shall do ourselves and our cause nothing but harm if we interrupt the vigorous conduct of the war by chattering idly about a peace, which will not come until Germany asks for it in humility and distress. The war has shattered other dreams than the Kaiser's dream of universal sovereignty. It has shattered also our foolish dream that all would be well if only we followed, in education, the lead of the Germans. It is a very poor tribute to the intelligence of those politicians who presumed to govern the country before the war, that they insisted with a tiresome iteration that our salvation lay only in a sedulous imitation of the Boches. Our one hope of sue were in danger of following false guides to false ends, but now we know the Germans for what they are. Such learning as they have acquired has taught them nothing else than a contempt for law, human and divine, and their boasted efficiency, tenderly nursed for half a century, is proved to be second-rate after all. But though we have discovered these things, it is well to have our knowledge reinforced. And therefore we welcome Professor Burnet's Higher Education and the War' (London: Macmillan & Co.), which puts in a small compass the truth about the schools and universities of Germany. We do not think that anybody will read this treatise without coming to the conclusion that our own system is better both for peace and war, and that we should do ourselves an irreparable injury if we forced our English boys through the German mill. Indeed, if Kultur be one of the underlying causes of the war, then it is true that we Allies are fighting for the ancient civilisation of Greece and Rome. Professor Burnet points out that such great Frenchmen as Mm. Bontroux, Lavoise, and Bergson have thus defined the cause for which their countrymen have 1917.] Professor Burnet's 'Higher Education and the War.' 953 drawn the sword. "They a fine flower of Kultur, wrote know," says Professor Burnet, "that, while the restoration of economic prosperity after the war is a matter of great importance, the restoration of humanitas to Europe is of still more vital moment, and they have come to the conclusion that one of the chief lessons taught by the war is the necessity of strengthening l'education classique." And one of Professor Burnet's own pupils, who has since been killed in action, said before he went to the front "that the war clearly meant the breakdown of German education." The truth is that education in Germany aims not at humanism but at nationalism. It does not want to make men, but Germans. The champions of Pan-Germanism, for instance, are the enemies of the classics, which they say have for their object the Græco-Latin Kultur, which is a common possession of Western Europe. In the same spirit they condemn the study of Goethe and Schiller, whom they discuss as cosmopolitans, unworthy the attention of good Germans. But Pan-Germanism is not yet the oreed of the German Empire, and the curriculum of Gothio, Old High German, and Middle High German, which no doubt would have been enforced after a German victory, are likely now to pass into oblivion with Kultur itself. What Kultur means we know well enough, but Professor Burnet gives two examples of its influence, which are worth remembering. He quotes what Professor Ostwald, in a letter to an American friend: "We pacificists"-he has the effrontery to call himself and his compatriots "pacificists "must understand only that unhappily the time is not yet sufficiently developed to establish peace in the peaceful way. The English policy of World Dominion contracts the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of the people, and especially of the German Emperor." That is what it is to be a great German chemist, and wholly destitute of humour! And Professor von WilamowitzMöllendorff, who is familiar to all English scholars, is not more wisely inspired than Herr Ostwald himself. Deploring the absence of any effective sanction for international law, this eminent gentleman solemnly declares that "the only hope is for Germany to dictate peace to the rest of Europe." When we remember the unprovoked assault which Germany made upon the security of the world, when we remember the torn-up scraps of paper, the sinking of the Lusitania, the deportation of men and women from the occupied territories, we shall certainly approve Professor Burnet's comment. one,' says he, "would not choose to know as much Greek as Wilamowitz or as much chemistry as Ostwald at the price of having my mind work like that." "I for Pan-Germanism has not yet come into its own, and Germany, in spite of the Kaiser and Professor Ostwald, still does its best to profit by the Kultur of Western Europe. Her curriculum differs not essentially from our own, and it is well to remind the scientific enthusiasts, who are always holding her up to us as a model upon which we should frame ourselves, that no specialisation is allowed in any German school, and that in very few classes are more than two hours a week devoted to science. But what it is important for us to remember as a solemn warning is, that the schools in Germany are institutions of the State, that a boy's whole career is governed by what he does at school, that in the general crushing of individualism the olever ones are neglected for the laggards, and that the dominant aim is the pushing on of hopeless mediocrity. Worse than this, it may be said that for the German the main object is not to learn, but to escape military service "with the peasants." Those who complete certain courses may claim the privilege of one year's service as as volunteers. From this privilege proceeds a social distinction which parents desire intensely to obtain for their sons. The volunteer (or Freiwilliger) is a soldier for a single year, and does not live in barracks, and when his year's service is accomplished he becomes an officer in the Reserve, which assures his position in German society unto the end of his life. The original purpose of the Prussian Higher Schools was, as Professor Burnet tells us, "to train an élite for the service of the State," and they have been turned "into a machine for the gratification of the most paltry ambitions of a parvenu middleclass." To this distortion are due many of the evils of German education. "It is the duty of the school," says Professor Cauer, "so far as in it lies, to take measures to prevent the ungifted sons of wellto-do families getting to the Universities, and so on the way towards leading positions.' But the school does not do its duty, and a constant pressure is put upon the masters to let the "ungifted" ones easily through the sieve. And since the purpose of the education is merely to prepare the boy for "his future career," to use a phrase dear to our own reformers, it follows that parents and boys are equally interested in good reports and the passage of examinations. Indeed, so poignant are the emotions aroused by success or failure at school, that "the Government of Würtemberg, for instance, has prohibited the sending of school reports at the end of the Michaelmas term, and the reason assigned is that the Christmas rejoicings of the family might be disturbed by the receipt of possibly unfavourable judgments on the sons!" From this same cause-the dependence of the boy's future upon the work he does at school-spring many evils. The number of suicides between the ages of ten and twenty is always increasing in Prussia. The common explanation is that the boys are world-weary from over-work. Professor Burnet dismisses this explanation, and he is in the right of it. The young Prussians do not work as hard as young Englishmen. But they are anxious always about the result of their work. They fear the constant pressure of their parents; they dread the scrutiny which their reports and examinations receive at home; and, missing the joyousness of youth, they put an end to the tiresome strife. And thus it is on the double ground of morals and learning we are free to condemn the system of Prussian education. As it has nothing sound to teach us, so we trust that no fanatics will ever again attempt to persuade us to an insincere imitation. Though we are wont to disparage our own achievements, it is certain that we have arrived, by the slow processes of experience, at the best method yet known to the world. Humanism has much to commend it. It is unspoiled by the sordid hope of future advancement. It allows the boy to grow into a man without the petty restraints of a greedy ambition. It permits him for once in his life to desert the path of practical utility and to devote himself to a study, which, useless from the point of view of money-getting, will yet make him a full and balanced man. Above all, humanism teaches those who practice it how to take the initiative when the need comes, and to speak to their fellows with the voice of command. So that even if the war had done nothing else, it would have helped to dissipate the foolish old legend of German education, and would have proved to us that our own system, so heartily abused by the half-baked, has not elsewhere its match in the making of men and soldiers. INDEX TO VOL. CCI. ABDULLA THE BEGGAR, THE LEFT Bethmann-Hollweg's peace proposals, HAND OF, 167. ADVENTURES OF AN ENSIGN, THE: IN- PRODUCTION, ALBANIAN WINTER, MY, 107. (An BAGPIPE BALLADS, 653: I. "Macleod's 138- -a trick to fool the neutrals, BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW: THE STORY "CARRY ON!" (The Continued Chron- CASUALTY CLEARING STATION, THE CONVALESCENT, 223. (A War Worker's "CROWNED PHILOSOPHER, THE," 236. Dardanelles Commission, report of, a "DONE IN," 270. (The attempt to relieve EDINBURGH, 566. "Education Week," an orgy of "intel- EGYPT, IN THE WESTERN DESERT OF, Empire Resources Development Com- 429. END OF A LONG PAUSE, THE, 491. (War |