, but they also
generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request,
that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign
language departments should be kept small, that is, that they
should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been
obliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teach
German to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she had
met in the administration of Wellesley College with as little
appreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficulty
of foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance,
often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crowned
with success.

"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fine
constructive work with her Department was the general Wellesley
policy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing all
power and responsibility regarding department affairs in the person
of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well
in politics, but a foreign language department working with the
reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under
any other form of government. With a living organism, such as
a foreign language department should be, there ought to be one,
and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulse
of things--otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of the
work as a whole is sure to follow."

Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in their
work, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we want
and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the
days of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say--and
not in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drill
work as well.

"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and also
the advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught by
Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained
Americans gifted with vivid personalities get better results along
those lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding."

Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used which
illustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advanced
electives are carefully guarded, so that no student may elect
courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not
already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The
drastic thoroughness with which unpromising students