ESSAYS 467 



throughout Germany, science was recognised and appreciated as that knowledge of 

 actualities which must be at the disposal of men of affairs if they are to control 

 and deal with the material conditions of their environment. Highly efficient 

 industries based on science were instantly transferable to the provision of 

 munitions of war, while the widespread university education provided an in- 

 tellectual proletariat fit to staff these as well as all the new Government depart- 

 ments which spring up during a great war to deal with its new-found scientific 

 activities. The fundamental lesson of science had indeed sunk deep into the heart 

 of the German nation, the lesson that success in life depends on the employment 

 of exact knowledge to foresee, months or years ahead, the likely trend of events, 

 and on making the necessary preparations to meet them and to weld them to their 

 national purpose. 



Thus it came about that the slow-moving, sluggish-brained German showed 

 himself at first more prompt in attack, quicker in reaction, and more adaptable to 

 the ever-changing conditions of warfare than the quick-witted Frenchman himself, 

 and surpassed us just in those qualities of initiative and resourcefulness which 

 we have always considered as peculiarly English endowments. Against the 

 resource and discipline of this nation, actuated by one purpose and one idea, 

 we opposed a kindly, gentlemanly stupidity, which, though preserved from 

 actual catastrophe by the self-sacrifice and bravery of our youngsters, was 

 indirectly responsible for more human suffering and misery than the studied 

 and ruthless brutalities of the German. Our leading was inefficient, not through 

 self-seeking on the part of the leaders themselves, but through ignorance. The 

 great rally of the nation occurred in spite of an education which taught the ruling 

 classes that their first duty was to their clan, their party, or their service, while it 

 left to the Trades Unions the task of teaching the artisan how to "play the game." 

 Our countrymen, sound at heart, were able, under the stress of the great national 

 danger, to merge the lesser in the greater, the party, class, or union in the nation. 

 But a still greater handicap was the intellectual poverty of the education — an 

 education which launched men on life without any knowledge of the nature of 

 the world around them or of the chain of natural causation responsible for the 

 happenings which made up their existence. Indeed, the nation's training tended 

 to inculcate a contempt for any knowledge which did not promise some immediate 

 practical advantages to its votary. 



Necessity for Educational Reform 



In view of the ignorance of elementary truths shown so often by their leaders — 

 some of them the finest products of our present system of education — it is hardly 

 to be wondered at that the nation as a whole has begun to ask whether some- 

 thing is not wrong with the system, and to demand reform, especially in the 

 direction of the introduction of a greater proportion of natural science and 

 of modern learning into our schools and universities. But every movement 

 for reform evokes a counter-movement on the part of those, conservative by 

 nature or by age, who are firmly impressed with the advantages of the system 

 in which they have been brought up and of the danger to the state of revo- 

 lutionary change. They would keep the impious hands of the reformer off the 

 ark of the Covenant, the traditional classical education, which in their opinion 

 is responsible for inculcating the fine spirit of duty and devotion in our younger 

 officers. It might be asked what percentage of our younger officers have had a 

 classical education, or what connection there is to be found between military 

 honours gained for gallant deeds and the type of education of the officers and men 



