ADDRESS. 21 



Were we to put aside 24,000,000Z. for gradually organising, building, 

 and endowing new Universities, and making the existing ones more 

 efficient, we should still be worth 15,976,000,000^. — a property well worth 

 defending by all the means, and chief among these brain-power, we can 

 command. 



If it be held that this, or anything like it, is too great a price to pay 

 for correcting past carelessness or stupidity, the reply is that the 

 1 20,000,000/. recently spent on the Navy, a sum five times greater, has 

 been spent to correct a sleepy blunder, not one whit more inimical to the 

 future welfare of our country than that which has brought about our 

 present educational position. We had not sufficiently recognised what 

 other nations had done in the way of ship-building, just as until now we 

 have not recognised what they have been doing in University building. 



Further, I am told that the sum of 24,000,000/. is less than half the 

 amount by which Germany is yearly enriched by having improved upon our 

 chemical industries, owing to our lack of scientific training. Many other 

 industries have been attacked in the same way since : but taking this one 

 instance alone, if we had spent this money fifty years ago, when the 

 Prince Consorb first called attention to our backwardness, the nation 

 would now be much richer than it is, and would have much less to fear 

 from competition. 



Suppose we were to set about putting our educational house in order, 

 go as to secure a higher quality and greater quantity of brain-power, it 

 would not be the first time in history that this has been done. Both 

 Prussia after Jena and France after Sedan acted on the view ;^ 



' When land is gone and money spent, 

 Then learning is most excellent.' 



After Jena, which left Prussia a ' bleeding and lacerated mass,' the King 

 and his wise counsellors, among them men who had gained knowledge 

 from Kant, determined, as they put it, ' to supply the loss of territory by 

 intellectual effort.' 



AVhat did they do 1 In spite of universal poverty, three Universities, 

 to say nothing of observatories and other institutions, were at once 

 founded, secondary education was developed, and in a few years the 

 mental resources were so well looked after that Lord Palmerstoii defined 

 the kingdom in question as ' a country of damned professors.' 



After Sedan — a battle, as Moltke told us, ' won by the schoolmaster ' — 

 France made even more strenuous efforts. The old University of France, 

 with its ' academies ' in various places, was replaced by fifteen independent 

 Universities, in all of which are faculties of letters, sciences, law and 

 medicine. 



Tlie development of the University of Paris has been truly marvellous. 

 In 1897-8 there were 12,000 students, and the cost was 200,000/. a year. 



But even more wonderful than these examples is the ' intellectual 

 effort ' made by Japan, not after a war, biit to prepare for one, 



