SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 15 



rare application achieved signal success. The reason is 

 that, having written Education topmost upon their banner, 

 and enjoying an enviable freedom from — to put it in Sir 

 James Caird's words — our disease of having " a very pre- 

 valent dislike to learn," they have painstakingly analysed 

 processes and results, in order to arrive at the discovery 

 of the operating causes and push those which answer to 

 the utmost, while discarding those that do not. It was 

 the same " schoolmaster " who, as Was said at the time, 

 vanquished at Sadowa, who has also triumphed on the 

 cultivated ager. To these causes must be added another, 

 which we in our insular isolation often enough lose sight 

 of. Germany was poor — very poor ; and it was a neces- 

 sity for it to strain every nerve to improve its condition. 

 Besoin fait la vieille trotter. For some centuries German 

 soil had been the chosen battle-ground of hostile armies, 

 the prize disputed for among foreign potentates. And 

 the invading armies had known how to destroy and rob. 

 Turenne and Crequi had wrecked castles, as Demetrius had 

 wrecked " cities." Then came the first Napoleon with all 

 his host and their " indemnities " and pilferings from palaces 

 and museums, which have served the Germans as a pretext 

 for organised brigandage — a thousand times aggravated, 

 of course — such as Germans may be said to have been the 

 first to set an example for — "oil Us retires ont passe on 

 ne doit point de dimes."'^ Anyhow the result was that Ger- 

 many was impoverished and its people were backward 

 and cowed, a ready prey to autocratic usurpation, as well 

 as a people condemned to cheeseparing. Our humorists 

 have frequently ridiculed German parsimony and penury. 

 That was a ready subject for cheap wit, which not un- 

 naturally has left its sting behind. But with the Germans 

 parsimony was not a matter of choice. The country was 

 impoverished, and the " groschen " was to Germans valu- 

 able as the " penny " of the Bible. Parsimony and cheese- 



1 In the days of the retires and lansquenets there was a saying cur- 

 rent in France that these German mercenaries having, for their 

 misdeeds, been refused an entrance into Paradise by Saint Peter, 

 the devil equally refused to receive them in hell, because he con- 

 sidered them too bad to mix with his host. 



