Review of Reviews, 1/3/13. 



LEADING ARTICLES. 



49 



Italy 508, or one for every 64,000 ; and 

 Austria 516, or one for every 51,000. 

 While the Germans, concludes Mr. Col- 

 lier, are in many ways the most culti- 

 vated nation in the world, they have not 

 yet real representative government. 

 Their political writing is without de- 

 finite aims, and in the held of foreign 

 politics It is less informed than their 

 educational and literary expositions, 

 which, generally speaking, are very good 

 indeed. 



" THE LAND OF D- 



-D 



PROFESSORS." 



Lord Palmerston's epithet supplies 

 Mr. Price Collier with a title for his 

 second paper. 



THIRTY-FOUR SEATS OF LEARNING. 



He gives a very comprehensive survey 

 of the system of education, from the 

 elementary school to the University. He 

 says : — • 



There are twenty-one universities in Germany, 

 with another already provided for this year in 

 Frankfort, and practically the equivalent of a 

 university in Hamburg. The total number of 

 students is 66,358, an increase since 1895 of 37,791. 



Besides these, there are eleven techni- 

 cal high schools, which rank now with 

 the University, and their 17,000 students 

 may fairly be added. Add also 4000 

 unmatriculated students, and you have 

 87,000 stuc'ents : — 



While the population of Germany has increased 

 lA per cent, in the last year, the number of 

 students has increased 4.6 per cent., and of the 

 total number 4.4 per cent, are women. Since 

 the founding of the empire the population has 

 increased from 40,000.000 to 65,000,000, but the 

 number of students has increasecl from 18,000 to 

 60,000. 



The amount spent in the German 

 Empire m the year 1910 on instruction 

 was twenty million sterling. Mr. Col- 

 lier declares that the teaching through- 

 out Germany is unreservedly good, 

 often superlatively good. The result of 

 the regimentation of education is that 

 there are no sham teachers, no sham pro- 

 fessors, no sham degrees. No one can 

 teach, even as a private governess, with- 

 out a certificate from the State. 



MISGIVINGS AS TO RESULTS, 



But with all its excellencies, it is not 

 enough : — 



There is not only nothing like it, there is 

 nothing compairable to it in the world. If train- 

 in,T the minds of a population were the solution 

 of the problems of civilisation, they are on the 

 way to such solution in Germany. Unfortunately 

 there is no such easy way out of our troubles 

 for Germany or for any other nation. Some of 

 us will live to see this fetich of regimental in- 

 struction of everybody disappear as astrology 

 has disappeared. According to. the army standard 

 both uie German peasant and the urban dweller 

 are steadily deteriorating. In ten years the per- 

 centage of physically effloient men in the rural 

 districts decreased from 60.5 to 58.2 per cent. 



Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said only 

 last year : — 



The fear that we may not be working along the 

 right lines in the education of our youth is a 

 cause of great anxiety to many people in Ger- 

 many. 



In German education practically the 

 whole enthusiasm is laid upon drilling 

 the mind. Moral and physical matters 

 are left to the home. Mr. Collier objects 

 to the pounding in of patriotism on 

 every side. He finds it distinctly 

 nauseating. There goes on in the 

 schools also Socialist propaganda. 



THE MOST IMMORAL CAPITAL IN EUROPE. 



The boys who come up to the I'ni- 

 versity, special])- in the large cities and 

 towns, are somewhat lax in their moral 

 standards : — 



In Berlin particularly, where there are some 

 thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty 

 thousand unregistered women devoting tlieniselves 

 to the seemingly incompatible ends of rapidly 

 accumulating gold while frantically pursuing plea- 

 sure, there is an amount of immorality une<iualled 

 in any capital in Europe. In the whole German 

 Empire the average of illegitimacy is ten jier 

 cent., but in Berlin the average for the last 

 few years is twenty per cent. Out of ever.v five 

 chihlren born in Berlin e;ich year one is illegi- 

 timate! It is ciuestionable whether the increas- 

 ing demands of the Army and N:ny require such 

 laxity of moral methods in providing therefor. 



In tlie eiuleavour to compete with the gaieties 

 elsewhere a laxity has been encouraged and per- 

 mitted that has won for Berlin in the last ten 

 years an unrivalled position as a purveyor of 

 after-dark pleasures. 



LACK OF INITIATIVE. 

 Nevertheless : — 



German life as a whole is so disciplined, so 

 fitted t igetlier, s ) ini))ossible to break into except 



