to
see not merely to the adequate and efficient provision of the means of
education, but also that the whole cost of the provision should be borne
by the State, is the contention that because the State imposes a legal
obligation upon the individual parent to provide a certain measure of
education for his children, it is also a logical conclusion from this
step that education should be free. "The object of public education is
the protection of society, and society must pay for its protection,
whether it takes the form of a policeman or a pedagogue."[13]

But the provision of the means of elementary education, and the imposing
of a legal obligation upon each individual parent to utilise the means
provided, is not merely or solely for the protection of society.
Education confers not only a social benefit upon the community, but a
particular benefit upon the individual. Its provision falls not within
the merely negative benefits conferred by the State by its protection of
the majority against the ignorance and wickedness of the minority, but
it belongs to the positive benefits conferred by Government upon its
individual members. The State in part undertakes the provision of the
means of education, as Mill pointed out, in order to protect the
majority against the evil consequences likely to result from the
ignorance and want of education of the minority. As this provision
confers a common benefit on all, so far, but only in so far, as
education is protective, can its cost be laid upon the shoulders of the
general taxpayer.

But the provision by the State of the means of education is not merely
undertaken for the protection of any given society against the ignorance
and the lawlessness of its own individual members, it is also undertaken
in order to secure the increased efficiency of the nation as an economic
and military unit in antagonism, more or less, with similar units. At
the present day this is one main motive at work in the demand made for
the better and more intensive training of the industrial classes. To
secure the industrial and military efficiency of the nation is
explicitly set forth as the main aim of the German organisation of the
means of education. We may deplore this tendency of our times. We may
condemn the rise of the intensely national spirit of the modern world,
and regret that the ideal of universal peace and universal harmony
between the nations of the earth seems to fade for ever and for ever as
w