, are, alas! not a statement of fact but
an aspiration. We have hardly yet begun in England to realise the
possibilities of educational development along the lines of the British
ideal, both as regards young people and adults. If we learn the lesson
of the present crisis aright, the war, so far from being a set-back
to educational progress, should provide a new stimulus for effort and
development.]

But man cannot live for himself alone. He is a corporate being; and,
personality or no personality, he has to fit into a world of fellow-men
with similar human claims. The second charge against the German system is
that it ignores the value of human fellowship. It regards the citizens of a
country as "useful and organisable subjects" rather than as fellow-members
of a democracy, bound together by all the various social ties of
comradeship and intercourse.

The Prussian system, with its elaborate control and direction from above,
dislikes the free play of human groupings, and discourages all spontaneous
or unauthorised associations. Schoolboy "societies," for instance, are in
Germany an evil to be deplored and extirpated, not, as with us, a symptom
of health and vigour, to be sympathetically watched and encouraged.
Instead, there is a direct inculcation of patriotism, a strenuous and
methodical training of each unit for his place in the great State machine.
We do not so read human nature. Our British tendency is to develop habits
of service and responsibility through a devotion to smaller and more
intimate associations, to build on a foundation of lesser loyalties and
duties. We do not conceive it to be the function of the school to _teach_
patriotism or to _teach_ fellowship. Rather we hold that good education
_is_ fellowship, _is_ citizenship, in the deepest meaning of those words;
that to discover and to exercise the responsibilities of membership in a
smaller body is the best training for a larger citizenship. A school, a
ship, a club, a Trade Union, any free association of Englishmen, is all
England in miniature. "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the
little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke long ago, "is the first
principle, the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first
link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country
and mankind.... We begin our public affections in our families. No cold
relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, to our
habitu