568 



NATURE 



[Oct. 13, 1887 



everywhere attendance is compulsory until fourteen for boys, 

 though in some places girls are allowed to leave at thirteen. 



This last point is the one I wish to emphasize. The great 

 defect — I might almost call it the fatal defect — of our system is 

 that it stops just at a time when real education should begin. 

 It allows a child to leave school at an age when its learning 

 is soon forgotten and its discipline effaced. It is hardly too 

 much to say that the two years' additional training the German 

 child receives in the elementary school, doubles its chance in 

 life as compared with the English child. 



liut this is not all. The Germans are rapidly developing a 

 system of evening continuation classes which carry on education 

 for two or three years longer. In Saxony the boys who leave 

 the primary school, if they do not go to the higher schools must 

 attend for three years longer — say, until they are seventeen — 

 continuation classes for at least five hours per week. But teach- 

 ing is provided for them, and they are encouraged to attend, 

 twelve hours per week. So complete is this system that even the 

 waiters at the hotels up to the age of seventeen attend afternoon 

 classes, and are taught one or two foreign languages. I take 

 Saxony as one of the most advanced States ; but the law is much 

 the same in VVurtemburg and Baden, and the system is found to 

 work so well that it is in contemplation to extend it to all the 

 States in the German Empire, and Austria will probably follow 

 suit. This is confidently expected to happen in the course of 

 1888. I may state as an undoubted fact that in Germany and 

 Switzerland, and I believe in some other Continental countries, 

 the opinion is ripening into a conviction that the education, 

 •even of the poorest class, should be continued in some form or 

 another to the age of sixteen or seventeen. They find by 

 experience that wherever this is adopted it gives an enormous 

 advantage to the people in the competition of life, and, above 

 all, trains them to habits of industry and mental application. 

 I believe it is owing to this system of thorough education that 

 Germany has almost extinguished the pauper and semi-pauper 

 class, which is the bane and disgrace of our country. 



Wherever I have gone I have inquired how they deal with 

 the ragged and squalid class of children, and I have been told in 

 every city I visited — in Zurich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Chem- 

 nitz, Dresden, and Berlin — that such a class practically does 

 not exist. I do not mean that there is not poverty and plenty 

 of it in Germany. Wages are much lower than in England, 

 and many have a hard struggle to live. But there does not 

 seem to exist to any extent that mass of sunken, degraded beings 

 who with us cast their children upon the streets, or throw them 

 on the rates, or leave them to charity. Some half-a-million of 

 children in the United Kingdom are dependent, more or less, 

 on the alms or the rates of the community, and probably another 

 half-million are miserably under-fed and under-clad. Nothing 

 to correspond with this exists in Germany. The poorest people 

 here would be ashamed to treat their children as multitudes do 

 with us. Indeed, I have not seen since I left home a single 

 case of a ragged or begging child. I repeat that the great cause 

 of this both in Germany and Switzerland is the far greater care 

 they have taken of the education of the children for at least two 

 or three generations, whereas we have only taken the matter up 

 seriously since 1870, v\hen Mr. Forster's great Act was passed. 



Let us contrast the general condition of our London children, 

 for instance, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, with that of the 

 same class in Berlin or Dresden or Chemnitz. With us nine- 

 teaths of the chi dren have long since left school, and a too 

 large proportion of them are receiving no training but the coarse 

 and brutalizing education of the streets. Most of them retain 

 little of what they have learnt at school, except the power to 

 read the " penny dreadful," which stuff's their minds with every- 

 thing a child should not know. They are to a very large extent 

 adepts in profane and obscene language, and are frequenters of 

 the public-house, the " penny gaff," and such like amusements ; 

 a great many of them are learning no useful trade or calling, but 

 are drifting helplessly into the class of wretched, ill-paid, casual 

 labourers. Very many of them marry before they are twenty, 

 and are soon the parents of a numerous progeny, half-starved and 

 stunted both in body and mind. Compare, or rather contrast, 

 this with Germany. At fifteeen or sixteen a great part of the 

 children are still under excellent instruction. Exceedingly few 

 are to be found roaming about the streets. They are prohibited, 

 at least in some parts of Germany, from entering the public - 

 houses (except with their parents) until the age of seventeen, and 

 I am told are everywhere prohibited from smoking until sixteen. 

 In fact, there are, both by law and public sentiment, barriers 



placed against the corruption of the young which do not exist in 

 England. 



No country has ever suffered more from the abuse of the idea 

 of individual liberty than England has done. Owing to this 

 overstrained idea we did not get compulsory education until long 

 after the advanced nations of the Continent, and still we are far 

 behind them in the care we take of our children. It is intoler- 

 able that this state of things should continue longer. Democratic 

 government everywhere insists upon good education, and expects 

 each citizen to fulfil his duties to the State. 



Public opinion in our country will certainly insist, and that 

 before long, that we shall not be for ever disgraced with a 

 residuum of the most drunken, demoralized, and utterly incap- 

 able population to be found in any modern State. It will insist 

 that some time be spared for the solution of this vital question 

 from the wrangles of party politics and the party recriminations 

 of party leaders. When one sees what a poor country like 

 Germany has done to raise its people in spite of the conscription 

 and three years' compulsory military service, in spite of frequent 

 and exhausting wars from which our island home has been free, 

 one has grave doubts whether our system of party government 

 is not a failure. 



Certainly we waste on barren conflicts and wordy strife far 

 more lime than other nations do in the conduct of their affairs. 

 They direct their energies with business-like precision to supply 

 the exact needs of the people, we fritter away our enormous 

 political energy in fruitless party contests which every year 

 degrade Parliament lower and lower, and make it less and less 

 fit for the practical work of governing the nation. 



One thing seems certain. Unless we can give more attention 

 to the vital questions which concern the welfare of the masses 

 our country must go down in the scale of nations. No honest 

 observer can doubt that in many respects the Germans are 

 already ahead of us, and they are making far more rapid pro- 

 gress than we are. They are applying technical science to every 

 department of industry in away that Englishmen have little idea 

 of. Their polytechnics and their practical technical schools are 

 far ahead of anything we possess in England, the leaders of 

 industry are far better trained, the workmen are better educated 

 and far more temperate and thrifty than ours are. Wherever 

 the Germans and English are coming into competition upon 

 equal terms the Germans are beating us. This is not because 

 the Germans have greater natural power. I believe ihe British 

 race is the more vigorous naturally. But they are organized, 

 disciplined, and trained far better than we are. They bring 

 science to bear upon every department of the national life, 

 whereas we, up till lately, resented all State interference, and so 

 exaggerated the doctrines of freedom as almost to glory in our 

 abuses. 



There is much more that I might say if space permitted ; but 

 it will not do to trespass further on your indulgence. I will 

 only add in conclusion that England must wake up, and that 

 immediately, to the necessity of a far more thorough and prac- 

 tical system of education, else she will lose the great place she 

 has hitherto held in the world's history. 



I am. Sir, yours faithfully, 

 Berlin, October 4. Samuel Smith. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 Section B — Chemical Science. 



The Atomic Weight of Gold, by J. W. Mallet, F.R.S.— 

 Attention is called to the importance of correct determinations 

 of atomic weights by different experimenters, and especially the 

 elimination of " constant errors." Considering the desirability 

 that all such values should be connected as directly as possible 

 with hydrogen, a method is described by which this may be 

 done in the case of gold. A known weight of zinc is dissolved 

 in dilute sulphuric acid, and the hydrogen evolved is measured. 

 A solution of bromide or chloride of gold is then treated w»ih 

 zinc more than sufficient to precipitate the whole of the gold, 

 the residual zinc being determined by the hydrogen evolved on 

 treatment with sulphuric acid. The difference in volume of 

 hydrogen obtained gives a direct means of calculating the atomic 

 weight of gold. The author described various experimenta l ,, 

 precautions that had been taken in measuring the gas. ^H 



The Atomic Weight of Zirconium, by Dr. G. H. Bailey.— Tha|P 

 previous determinations of the atomic weight of this element i 



A 



