of our inability to maintain it was investigated, our deficiency
was declared to be the lack of a systematised higher education. Public
Spirit founded our Technical Schools to supply the remedy and they have
been found effective.

Owing to the neglect of modern languages by our Universities and a system
of higher education which took no cognizance of industrial needs we were
amongst the most backward in this branch of study, but when interest was
aroused our grammars were largely borrowed from our more successful
competitors from those who excelled as much in modern languages as we
ourselves in industry. They were often the work of foreign specialists
and experts they are the very instruments of success used by our most
successful rivals, how then can they be inadequate? Translation has put
us into possession of the best works used by our foreign rivals, and if
we are less successful than they it is due as a Swiss correspondent of
the "Manchester Guardian" recently stated not to the superior aptitude
but the superior application of the foreigner. He is less sensible to
the attractions of football and out-door sports or at least they are not
of such an all-absorbing irresistible temptation. With a mother tongue
compounded of the Teutonic and Romance languages, no other people than
the British enjoys such a natural facility for acquiring both the German
and French and their sister tongues.

In 1893 the Scotch Education Department issued a report to the Lords of
the Committee of Council on Education for Scotland, by Professor Herbert
A. Strong, L.L.D. on

METHODS OF TEACHING MODERN LANGUAGES IN BELGIUM.

Belgium was selected as a field for investigation, says Professor Strong,
because, from force of circumstances it has paid particular attention to
this branch of instruction, the necessity of learning modern languages
being there felt, much more strongly than in Britain. It is a small
country, thickly populated, with an extensive commerce, for which as well
as for its literature, it is compelled to look to countries larger than
itself. It embraces three languages within its borders--Flemish, spoken
by more than three millions; Walloon by over two millions, and French the
language of literature and commerce.

In the Primary Schools, French, the language of their Literature and
Commerce is studied six years. Every child must study one language
besides its mother tongue. This is compulsory.