still alive and the whole nation was in a state of patriotic exaltation, 

 which followed on the astonishing success of the campaigns against 

 Austria and France and the unification of the empire. When the time 

 came to fill the places of the great men, political, miUtary and aca- 

 demic, of that generation, the lamentable change for the worse came 

 to light. 



The superiority of the German university was largely a matter of 

 organisation and equipment. Sir George Darwin once told me that 

 he considered the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to be a great 

 drawback to efficiency of instruction, because they prevented the 

 organisation of the teaching staff into faculties. The undoubted advan- 

 tages, to the American student, of Germany over England, at that 

 period, were due more to organisation than to the individual professors. 

 Gegenbaur was a great man, but I never thought him equal in force 

 or brilliancy to Balfour or Huxley. This, of course, appUes only to the 

 sciences with which I was concerned. In philology, I was assured, the 

 superiority was all the other way, and I do know that the Germans 

 looked upon English scholarship as amateurish. 



When the university is considered as a place for the training of men 

 and citizens, the German system did not shine. The authorities were 

 entirely indifferent to vice, dissipation, or idleness on the part of the 

 students. So long as he paid his fees, a man might remain a student all 

 his life and no one would trouble him. The government cold-bloodedly 

 favoured dissipation, as tending to act as a means of natural selection, 

 eliminating the weak and reducing the numbers of the "learned prole- 

 tariat," the crowd of highly trained men for whom there were no 

 places. The Prussian Minister of Education told Sloane that the more 

 students that went to the dogs, the better, as clearing the way for bet- 

 ter men. I had no time to bother with Corps, or Burschenschaften; I 

 never saw a duel, or went to the Hirschgasse : what I know of that side 

 of German student life is from hearsay. I think, however, that inordi- 

 nate beer-drinking and face-slashing are a poor substitute for athletic 

 sports. Since the War, the Germans seem to have reached that con- 

 clusion themselves. 



For the German theatre I had unqualified admiration and I have 

 always wished that it might be possible to introduce the German sys- 

 tem into this country. Comparison of the stage in the English-speaking 

 lands, on the one hand, and of continental Europe, on the other, is not 

 feasible, for, with us, the theatre is a private, commercial undertaking, 

 while, on the Continent, it is a public institution, supported by the 



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