come a necessary
qualification for recognition as a scholar, and the best passport for an
appointment to many of the higher teaching posts in England. But the
emphatic warning comes from the experience of Germany that even the very
perfection of educational systems and methods may be used so as to be a
curse to the country which has adopted them. Published statistics show
that juvenile crime, often of the most revolting kind, is rampant, and
has been increasing in Germany, that suicides have become common even
amongst the very young. The highly efficient mental drill provided by
German education, even the devotion to knowledge shown by the German
people, whatever benefits it may once have conferred, applied as it now
is, must be recognised as one of the causes why Germany, so long as it
retains its present spirit and its present aims, has come to be rightly
regarded as an enemy to mankind. It is essential that there should be
something more than a keen desire to acquire knowledge of every sort,
and to apply it for practical purposes--the Germans have that
pre-eminently; or a love of order and organisation and a persistent and
plodding industry in carrying out plans that have been carefully thought
out beforehand--the Germans have that also; or an intense devotion to
the Fatherland--the German people have a fervent and perfectly genuine
love for their country. The moral downfall of Germany, and the material
losses which she will suffer whatever the other results of the War may
be, are not simply due either to autocracy or to the domination of an
aristocratic class, or to deficiencies in art--the power to make things
well--or in thought--the power to plan a course of action clearly--but
to the absence of a "just will." The regeneration of Germany means the
substitution of a just for an unjust will, not simply the spread of
democratic ideals, desirable though these may be, nor the substitution
of democratic for autocratic or aristocratic government. For our own
nation, too, a "just will" amongst all classes of the community is the
necessary condition for future welfare.

Another warning is necessary. In elaborate plans for reconstruction and
reorganisation by more deliberate and far-reaching action of the State
and of organised associations there is often a risk of impairing or even
destroying individual liberty. The more complete organisation and
reduction to definite system of education, for example, may result in
hamper