Sec.4. German and British Ideals of Education.—­Let us look at the German ideal more closely, for it is worthy of careful study.  It is perhaps best expressed in words written in 1830 by Coleridge, who, like other well-known Englishmen of his day (and our own) was much under the influence of German ideas.  Coleridge, in words quoted by Dr. Sadler, defines the purpose of national education as “to form and train up the people of the country to obedient, free, useful, and organisable subjects, citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the State and prepared to die in its defence.”  In accordance with this conception Prussia was the first of the larger States in Europe to adopt a universal compulsory system of State education, and the first also to establish a universal system of military service for its young men.  The rest of Europe perforce followed suit.  Nearly every State in Europe has or professes to have a universal system of education, and every State except England has a system of universal military service.  The Europe of schools and camps which we have known during the last half century is the most striking of all the victories of German “culture.”

Discipline, efficiency, duty, obedience, public service; these are qualities that excite admiration everywhere—­in the classroom, in the camp, and in the wider field of life.  There is something almost monumentally impressive to the outsider in the German alliance of School and Army in the service of the State.  Since the days of Sparta and Rome, there has been no such wonderful governmental disciplinary machine.  It is not surprising that “German organisation” and “German methods” should have stimulated interest and emulation throughout the civilised world.  Discipline seems to many to be just the one quality of which our drifting world is in need.  “If this war had been postponed a hundred or even fifty years,” writes a philosophic English observer in a private letter, “Prussia would have become our Rome, worshipping Shakespeare and Byron as Pompey or Tiberius worshipped Greek literature, and disciplining us.  Hasn’t it ever struck you what a close parallel there is between Germany and Rome?” (Here follows a list of bad qualities which is better omitted.) ...  “The good side of it is the discipline; and the modern world, not having any power external to itself which it acknowledges, and no men (in masses) having yet succeeded in being a law to themselves, needs discipline above everything.  I don’t see where you will get it under these conditions unless you find some one with an abstract love of discipline for itself.  And where will you find him except in Prussia?  After all, it is a testimony to her that, unlovely as she is, she gives the law to Germany, and that the South German, though he dislikes her, accepts the law as good for him.”  And to show that he appreciates the full consequences of his words he adds:  “If I had to live under Ramsay MacDonald (provided that he acted as he talks), or under Lieutenant von Foerstner” (the hero of Zabern), “odious as the latter is, for my soul’s good I would choose him:  for I think that in the end, I should be less likely to be irretrievably ruined.”