at he was so
poor when he was young that he had to accept these free dinners given
in every German university town to penniless students. The fact would
be remembered, but it would never count against a man in Germany. The
dollar is not almighty there.

To say, therefore, that education is compulsory throughout the empire
is not to say that it is unpopular. A teacher in an elementary school
was once telling me how particular the authorities were that every
child, even the poorest, should come to school properly clothed and
shod. "For instance," she said, "if a child comes to school in
house-shoes he is sent straight home again." "But do the parents mind
that?" I asked from my English point of view, for the teacher was
speaking of people who in England would live in slums and care little
whether their children were educated or not. But in Germany even the
poorest of the poor do care, and to refuse a child admission to school
is an effective punishment. At any rate, you may say this of the
majority. No doubt if school was not compulsory the dregs of the
nation would slip out of the net, especially in those parts of the
empire where the prevalent character is shiftless and easy going.
"When you English think that we hold the reins too tight, it is
because you do not understand what a mixed team we have to drive," a
north German said to me. "We should not get on, we should not hold
together long, if our rule was slack and our attention careless."

At the last census only one in 10,000 could not read or write, and
these dunces were all Slavs. But how even a Slav born under the eye of
the Eagle can remain illiterate is a mystery. In 1905 there were
59,348 elementary schools in the empire, and their organisation is as
elaborate and well planned as the organisation of the army. In Berlin
alone there are 280. All the teachers at these schools have been
trained to teach at special seminaries, and have passed State
examinations that qualify them for their work. In Germany many men and
women, entitled both by class and training to teach in the higher
grade schools, have taken up work in the elementary ones from choice.
I know one lady whose certificates qualify her to teach in a _Hoehere
Toechterschule_ and who elects to teach a large class of backward
children in a _Volkschule_. Her ambition is to teach those children
described in Germany as _nicht voellig normal_: children we should
describe as "wanting." She says that her back