ion has doubled, and attendance at
American colleges has increased 400 per cent. while the population
increased by 100 per cent. But education is by no means so strenuous
as in Germany. The hours are shorter, holidays longer, standards
lower, and the emphasis far less insistent. A boy who has not the
mental energy to pass the entrance examinations at Harvard, for
instance, and proceed to a degree there, ought to be drowned, or to
drown himself. I would not say as much of the requirements in Germany,
for they are far more severe. Prince von Hohenlohe in his memoirs
gives an account of a conversation between the Emperor, the Emperor's
tutor, and himself. The Emperor was regretting the severity of the
examinations in the secondary schools, and it was replied to him that
this was the only way to prevent a flood of candidates for the civil
service!

There is another all-important factor in Germany bearing upon
this point. A boy must have passed into the upper section of the class
before the last, "Secunda," as it is called, or have passed an
equivalent examination, in order to serve one year instead of three in
the army. To be an Einjaehriger is, therefore, in a way the mark of an
educated gentleman. The tales of suicide and despair of school-boys in
Germany are, alas, too many of them true; and it is to be remembered
that not to reach a certain standard here means that a man's way is
barred from the army and navy, civil service, diplomatic or consular
service, from social life, in short. The uneducated man of position in
Germany does not exist, cannot exist. This is, therefore, no phantom,
but a real terror. The man of twenty-five who has not won an education
and a degree faces a blank wall barring his entrance anywhere; and
even when, weaponed with the necessary academic passport, he is
permitted to enter, he meets with an appalling competition, which has
peopled Germany with educated inefficients who must work for next to
nothing, and who keep down the level of the earnings of the rest
because there is an army of candidates for every vacant position. On
the other hand, the industries of Germany have bounded ahead, because
the army of chemists and physicists of patience, training, and
ability, who work for small salaries provide them with new and better
weapons than their rivals.

There are two sides to this question of
fine-tooth-comb education. Its advantages both America and England are
seeing every day in these stou