Berlin, modernized. Indeed, it is not too much to hope that modernity may so far triumph in the building on the Linden, that means of ventilating the class-rooms may actually be devised!

But the intangible results, those subtler subjective alterations of points-of-view, which come silently and work powerfully, are absolutely assured; and of these the first and the most valuable,-recognition of the Combination of Learning with Life, as exemplified in the universities of the United States,-is already a factor in Young Germany's aspirations.

"Why is it," asked the Freiherr von Gleichen-Russwurm, in a German weekly a short time ago,—“Why is it that our young men when they cross the seas so often appear philistros, in comparison with young Englishmen and young Americans?" And he proceeds to show the necessity of a reformation, or, indeed, a revolution, in the German University System.*

"The German national system of instruction," declares another writer, in a representative Berlin daily newspaper, "is the greatest and the most dangerous menace to our culture. . . . It attempts to cut off all connection with the spontaneous play of intelligence . . . and to uniform our ideas . . . and that is the death of culture,"-"if," adds the reviewer of the book from which the quotation is made, "if we in Germany may be said, at the present time, to possess a Culture!"†

While a professor at the University of Jena, in the autumn of last year, in an article entitled "Concerning Reform in Our Upper Grade Schools," said: "Important as it is that our system should be well planned, it is far more important that the inner life of the school should be on a high plane. . . . And in this regard there is much that is not in order in our

*Die Alte und die Neue Universitat. By Freiherr von Gleichen-Russwurm. In Die Woche, Berlin, Novemeber 4, 1905.

Vom Kulturwert der deutschen Schule. By Professor Ernst Kornemann, of the Tübingen University. In Der Tag, Berlin, January 23, 1906.

schools. The more smoothly the outward affairs of our system appear to move, the more sharply should we look to see whether behind this mechanical smoothness there is not aridity, lack of enthusiasm, the ever-recurring attempt to deceive in the school-work, and to lie to the teacher. If that is the case, how can we possibly talk of education in our schools! . . . The time has come when our boys must indeed be educated, not only taught, in our Gymnasiums; when we must demand that our instructors should be developers of character. How that can be done, we can find out from the public schools of England, from Eton, Rugby, Harrow. . . . Let us send our young school-masters to England for a time, instead of cramping them all in one pattern in our Seminaries, and we shall reap the fruits of so doing in our youthful generation. . . . Our whole organization is faulty. . . for it has been planned, not from a broad knowledge of human nature, but from the green-covered bureaucratic table, from behind the closed doors of a Board of Instruction! We Germans have a great task before us. . . the greatest . . . the reform of our higher-grade schools.”‡

...

And, finally, on the first of February of this year, a well-known writer on public questions, reminds the Prussian Ministry of Public Instruction and his fellowPrussians, that if a people are not "decadent, they live; and if they live, they must change, go forward, progress"; that "its school-system must change with it"; that "it must be elastic, never a fixed quantity."§

Here, then, are four Germans, men of observation, experience, judgment and reputation, who declare, and impress upon their fellow-countrymen, what foreigners, also of observation, experience, judgment and reputation, have for the past twelve years asserted. Again and

Zur Reform Unserer Höheren Schulen. By Professor L. D. Dr. W. Rein, of the University of Jena. In Der Tag, Berlin, October 7, 1905.

Vergleichende Pädagogik. By E. Horn. In Der Tag, Berlin, February 1, 1906.

again have they reminded Germans, and especially Prussians, that their selfpraise was blindness, that all their commercial Centrale, and their increasing outward prosperity, left their inner forces, their mentality, their humanity, untouched; that the coming generation was not being moulded to meet the complexities which that very increased material prosperity was bringing about; that the mento-be were not being loosed from the gyves of uniformity; that pursuance of the antiquated, iron-bound Gymnasium methods must be relaxed; that the force of initiative must be given full play; that unless in the Real-Schule and the Volkschule, as well as in the Gymnasium, the archaic, drearily dry mill-drill were dropped and spontaneity introduced; unless the University itself were modernized, made consistent with the cosmopolitan future of the Empire; that, without those alterations, preparations and reorganizations, the next generation would be, as Freiherr von Gleichen has described it "Philistros," wooden, resourceless in emergency, at a disadvantage in comparison with the men of other nations. But German prejudice and Prussian vanity are thick webs. Moreover, "German thoroughness," "German learning," "German School-System," and the other catch-words have been sounded in their ears so long that it is not easy for the bureaucracy to believe that it could be anything but perfection; well-nigh impossible for it to perceive that in the course of one hundred and thirty-five years the claims of science alone. have caused the basis of their idolized "system" to crumble; that, since Dr. Falk and his laws of 1879, the demands of "culture" have been turned inside out, and that a scholar must be a man of some degree of action, at least, or go to the wall; in short, that Germany, as well as the rest of the world, has need of all its intelligence in untrammeled freshness, and that the pettiness of pedantry and the small egotisms of circumscribed, watertight compartments of knowledge, boxed

up and labeled after the Prussian fashion, are like the dead leaves of the Autumn trees after the first frost,-only good manure for the new growth of spring. Hence the insistence of these energetic, far-seeing men who, with the minority throughout the Empire, are setting their faces as a feint against their “national system" and are endeavoring to revolutionize it, as Professor Rein of Jena has said, into a means of developing men.

For foreigners have always been right in their estimation of the inadequacy of German methods to that great end. They saw, long ago, what the four Germans whom I have quoted, and their followers, now see, that those methods were indeed devised to prevent that consummation! For Prussia wished, and the German Empire, as typified by the German Emperor and the German Government, still wishes, not Men, not Individuals, but a collection of Human Tools: petty officials, or Civic Tools; soldiers and officers, or Military Tools; a few professors, or Scholar-Tools; and a large body of women, as Child-bearing Tools in the form of wives and servants to all the Other Tools! Manhood, Womanhood, were not, are not, their ideal.

a

But the beginning of the year 1906 casts shadows of radical changes to come in Germany. The establishment in Hamburg of a university in keeping with modern conceptions is demanded; university into which American and English features will enter. The abolishment is advocated of the Arbiturienten Examination, that State-presented “Certificate of Ripeness," to which Freiherr refers, with ironical emphasis. The introduction is insisted upon, by parents, instructors and pupils, of the natural sciences on a large scale, and the lessening of the quantity of Greek and Latin, in the Gymnasium course. The participation of girls in the Gymnasium course is proposed. The sweeping away of that farcical bodily manipulation called Turnen, and the adoption of open-air sports

of the Tariff-Provisorium. In other words, the death-knell of the German National System of Instruction, in its antiquated form, has been rung, and the struggle between the old and the new ideals has begun, a struggle that, if bravely carried forward, must result in the disappearance forever of the patterned-off German Human-Tool.

Exactly what the new product will be, or what it will do, who shall say? Will it inaugurate a really constitutional kingdom, in which the Parliament, guided by forceful, large-minded men, will really represent the People?

Berlin, Prussia.

MAYNARD BUTLER.

I.

N°

THE ARTIST AND HIS DREAM.

O CARTOONIST of the great Middle West stands so distinctively at once for the aggressive honesty so needed at the present time and for the principles of progressive democracy, as G. R. Spencer, of the World-Herald of Omaha and Mr. Bryan's Commoner. His cartoons have been widely copied, not so much for their artistic worth as for the thought behind the pictures, the truth emphasized, or the lesson sent home in such a manner as to leave a vivid impression on the minds of all who see them. Mr. Spencer was born in Missouri in 1878 and was reared in a small Nebraska town. It is a fact worthy of passing notice that most of our cartoonists who are striking telling blows for the fundamental principles of free govermnent and against the reign of graft that is a part of the present "system" that in recent years has dominated politics, have been born and reared in the country or in small

towns. They have also usually been poor boys who had to depend on their own exertions for an education and a successful entrance into business life. In this respect also our artist was no exception to the rule.

His earliest interest in drawing dated from the receipt of a series of lessons on newspaper drawing. With enthusiasm and a resolute determination to accomplish something worthy, he set to work to master the instructions given. All the spare time at his command was given to the work. When Mr. Bryan was nominated for the presidency, he enlisted as a worker for the success of the great Nebraskan, seeing then what the majority of the more clear-visioned and thoughtful Americans, who are not beholden to or beneficiaries of trusts, monopolies and privileged interests, are now coming to see that the real issue was not so much a question of the kind of money most demanded, but whether the principles of

the Declaration of Independence, the ideals of Jefferson and Lincoln, and the fundamental demands of a true democracy should be maintained, or whether the government should pass under the control of privileged interests operating through corrupt bosses and the moneycontrolled machines; a condition in which the mantle of republican government should mask a despotism of the criminal rich, a commercial feudalism based on class-legislation and special privileges of various kinds. Believing in the old ideals of freedom, fraternity, justice and honesty that marked in so

conspicuous a degree the lives and statesmanship of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, Mr. Spencer threw all the influence at his command on the side of free institutions and the rights and interests of all the people, bringing with him the fine enthusiasm of youth-that high-minded, conscience-guided youth which is the chief hope of the nation today.

In 1899 he went to Omaha, determined to secure a position on the World-Herald, the great progressive democratic organ of Nebraska and the one daily of the state that represented his own political ideals.