SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 47 



the Pauline sense of " proving all things and holding 

 fast only that which is good." Germany's recipe is our 

 original recipe, strengthened and invigorated. Therewith 

 she has scored signal success. It would be anticipating 

 to go now into details. But it will be well at once to point 

 out that there are substantial differences of circumstances, 

 of temperament and of habits in the two cases, which argue 

 that one nation's meat is not necessarily fit meat for another 

 nation. We want a powerful educational apparatus, such 

 as Germany possesses. But it may well be argued that we 

 want it on different lines from hers. We are in a sense 

 less painstaking. But we are better at seizing main points. 

 If it was the German " schoolmaster " who triumphed at 

 Sadowa, we know that it was the football and cricket fields 

 of Eton and Harrow which " won Waterloo." Even in 

 military proficiency, in which Germans profess to exercise 

 supremacy above all nations, we have managed to hold 

 our own pretty well, because our soldiers, although less 

 drilled into machine-like action, have more ready resourceful- 

 ness to rely upon. It is the same in Education. Our 

 Education is far more shaped to bring out character than the 

 German and to instil that " mother-wit " of which, according 

 to the proverb, an ounce is worth more than a ton of " learn- 

 ing." In this matter it will be safer to go with Professor 

 Mahaffy than with Lord Haldane. Both, I believe, have 

 drawn their impressions about German Education from 

 the same alma mater. And we shall have to bear in 

 mind that, if German Agriculture makes a good school- 

 master for us at some points, there are other schoolmasters in 

 the field — from some of whom she has herself first learnt — as 

 in the matter of Education from Switzerland, in the matter 

 of organisation from Denmark. The youngest of all " co- 

 operatively organised " countries, Russia, has in Siberia 

 set us an admirable example in the co-ordination of huge 

 masses of egg and milk production. And the United States 

 have already more than one highly useful lesson to teach 

 us, inaugurated either by the active and ever wideawake 

 " Department," or else by such strenuously pushful institu- 

 tions as the University of Madison. And do not let us 



