rs common action, then,
also hinders effective reform in dealing with disease or crime. I need
not elaborate the conclusion.

* * * * *

There are also instances of governmental action being _directly
influenced_ by the practice of other states, even when there has been no
common action. The two most striking reforms of recent years have been
in education and religious toleration. Of education enough has already
been said. The interest from our point of view here is chiefly in the
effect of education on social structure. It is increasingly evident that
of all forces for transforming a nation, education is the most powerful;
but no one nation can transform its education effectively without
respect to the mistakes and successes of its neighbours. This has been
perceived and acted upon. The influence, for example, of Germany on
England is sufficiently well known. German precedents were quoted in the
House of Commons in the early days of state education for England: and
the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876 were largely due to the impression
made in England by the success of state education in Prussia. Coleridge,
Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold definitely acknowledged a debt to Germany.
But Germany owed something to England in the perception of the value of
surroundings and corporate life in schools. France also was affected by
English education; and, in fact, French educators had to come to England
to find the thing for which the French gave us the name--_Esprit de
Corps_.

The United States have been very definitely influenced in their
University education both by Germany and England; and their Government
has in primary education certainly established for all states the
transforming possibilities of a school system. It must be remembered
that the crudity of civilization and its apparent corruption in the
United States are European not American. It is because Europe has
neglected its duty, enslaved and brutalized its peoples, that social and
political evil enters with the immigrants; and all this mass of European
incompetence, the result of neglect or evil-doing in Ireland, Poland,
the Slavonic Countries and Italy, the Government of the United States
exorcises with education: and the effect is spreading beyond the
frontiers of the States. A further effect of influence passing from
nation to nation has been the change with regard to the relations of
State and Church. In England it is some years s