the elementary schools are most highly organized and compulsory attendance is most rigidly enforced, only forty-five per cent. of these children reach the eighth grade, and many never get beyond the fourth grade. Moreover, classes are greatly overcrowded, there being an average of 55 pupils to a teacher in 1911; in Prussia, in 1912, out of a total of 6,500,000 pupils in primary schools it was estimated that 7396 overcrowded classes averaged 165 pupils to a class, one extreme case being cited of a single master obliged to instruct 230 pupils. In most of the Volksschulen pupils of all ages and degree of advancement are in a class under one teacher only. In Prussia, in 1911, of 38,684 of these elementary schools, 20,198 were of this one-class type.

These figures, taken from the official sources quoted, may easily be verified by the skeptical. Leipsic is proud of the fact that the number of her pupils has been reduced to 40 in each class on the average; but even so a quarter of all children fail to enter the highest elementary class.

IN 1911, Germany spent 669,836,578. marks on the Volksschulen, an average of 65 marks per pupil; on the middle schools, 30,566,591 marks, or 112 marks per pupil; on the higher schools, 177,158,679 marks, or 248 marks per pupil. Thus nearly one quarter of the total school expenditure was devoted to training less than ten per cent. of all German children. These children were the favored ones who had succeeded in getting into the middle and upper schools.

The expenditure per child in Germany in the Volksschulen was 65 marks, or slightly over $15, as compared with the American expenditure of $38.31 per capita of average attendance and $20.38 per capita of school population (from 5 to 18 years) in the United States commonschool systems.

Such overcrowding and low per-capita expenditure in the German elementary schools necessarily entails neglect of the individual pupil, however masterly may be the technic of mass instruction. Ten

years ago the average size of classes in Germany was 60.9, so that there has been an improvement in the decade; but the diminution to 54.9 in 1911 does not compare favorably with the average size of classes in the elementary schools of the United States, or 33 pupils per teacher in 1913.

The educational doctrine that every child, regardless of birth and money, possesses an inherent right to the full development of his or her capacity and talent is far from being accepted and put into practice in German educational method. Many of the most illustrious teachers of Germany have maintained, observant of imperial expressions and policies, that the state is best subserved by keeping the bulk of the people in a stunted state of mental starvation for unthinking toil and that the work of the world cannot be done without a large degree of existing near-illiteracy; and for this reason they have opposed strenuously the policy of generous public expenditure for popular education.

But the people's advocate has come to the rescue in the Social Democratic Party, which has subjected the German Volksschulen to severe criticism. This rapidly growing party resents the division of the school system according to wealth and station of the pupil; it criticizes the exclusion of the elementary-school teacher from cultural schools, the clerical control of the Volksschulen, and is specially impatient with the overcrowding of classes in the Volksschulen. It sees in mass-teaching a formalism which is deadening to initiative, and a routine instruction which stifles the spirit of investigation and the power of independent thought. The fact that teachers of the Volksschulen are debarred from attendance at the universities and from attaining desired diplomas except under the most severe restrictions in itself defeats the effort to improve materially the teaching in the Volksschulen.

In the meeting of the Federated Associations of German Teachers held in Kiel in the spring of 1914, Dr. Seyfert felt it necessary to ask, "Is there such a thing as a science of pedagogy?" for the reason that

the Bavarian university had recently declared that no such thing existed. He regarded this to be the sentiment of German universities as a whole-a sentiment which has influenced German scholarship to such an extent that German scholars hear and know little about teaching as a science and that for this reason universities have been kept from establishing chairs of pedagogy.

To an American the doctrine that scientific methods cannot be applied to the teaching of children seems hopelessly out of date. A drill- and task-master such as the German pedagogue, with the huge classes his perforce must be, is debarred from applying scientific method to his work, for the science of teaching is essentially the understanding of the individual and the impartial nurturing of the budding aspirations and ambitions of each and every child.

Academic teaching of the conventional type, however common in German or Germanized elementary schools, has been abandoned in higher-grade scientific and professional instruction even in Germany itself. No medical teacher of standing has retained such methods. For example, medical teaching to-day is almost wholly clinical. The medical student learns by doing, observation, and research. Even the lecture is being abandoned except for the purpose of demonstrating newly discovered facts and as a means of showing representations, diagrams, and the like on the screen to large numbers. The recitation is replaced by the quiz. This is increasingly true also of instruction in the chemical and the physical sciences; no longer are they taught from text-books only, but by performing processes upon materials studied in laboratory experiments. Yet these studies are for older pupils, who already have become hampered in habits of thought and power of observation by the conventional routine methods of their early school-training.

If the drill system has been abandoned in the instruction of older pupils, how much more essential is it to get rid of such anachronisms among younger pupils!

During the last eighteen months the world has seen the effectiveness of German schooling in its militaristic aspect. The thousands of alert official minds, wonderfully trained in the minutiæ of administration, have directed with something approaching perfection the labors of a conscripted army trained in implicit and unthinking obedience.

We have seen German schooling extend German commerce throughout the world by expert training of industrial and trade technicians, backed by German military and naval prestige. We have also seen Germany grow in might and material wealth by maintaining a high degree of class distinction, offering great rewards to the privileged, and fostering docility and a low level of schooling and wage among the masses. The state as a superimposed conception to strengthen which all are stimulated has appealed forcefully and successfully through German tradition to the German conventionalized mind.

The supreme test of German schooling lies not in material wealth and commercial supremacy, but in ways greater than these. Ancient Rome dominated the world through unity and frightfulness, but in those days it was a slave world and a world of illiterates. Teuton unity and frightfulness is dealing to-day with a world of freemen and of readers.

In a democratic age German schooling of the few at the expense of the many has resulted in foreign suspicion and aloofness. toward everything Teutonic. In Germany it is rousing class against mass, capital against labor, ruled against rulers, illiterate against literate, exploited against promoters.

German schooling has proved antagonistic to cooperation, although demanding unity of action through mass obedience. It has failed to foster real cooperation, for coöperation is a method by which persons of their own volition and by no compulsion may work together harmoniously. Only when training and schooling are the common privilege of all is that state of civic development possible which permits society to become coöperative in its action.

In other words, a socialized society becomes more and more possible only as all individual members acquire each the widest vision, and thus the power to coöperate harmoniously.

The so-called socialism of Germany is a mold into which all the people fit because directed what to think and be. If German socialism is an autocratic or paternal organization of society made possible only through German schooling for preparedness, and makes obligatory all the welfare features of society which foster paternalism and dependency, then American democracy is impelled to reject utterly this type of preparedness and the kind of schooling which results in such preparedness.

THE world is watching the outcome of the present European struggle with the more interest because it is the test of the validity of the German system of national schooling.

Is it possible for a civilization which is based upon the most precise training of the few, dominating or guiding the mass, who intentionally have been taught only the elements of learning, to prove itself superior to a civilization which includes all in its school opportunities? Shall expert instruction of a small minority successfully replace the social basis of education? Shall any nation which limits op

portunity to class prevail in the end over democracy of opportunity?

These and similar questions are of vital importance to the solution of all our social problems in the United States. We are struggling to educate millions of immigrants into the ways of democracy, yet for years we have been engaged in the attempt to formalize along German autocratic lines the methods of our public schools, and our schools are the only general safeguard to American democracy. We have seen the effect of the German school method in promoting preparedness. It is the preparedness of the few to direct the many. Is this the sort of preparedness needed by our people? Do we not require and shall we not demand the opportunity for the individual boy and for the individual girl everywhere and without exception to have equal opportunity to enjoy a public-school training that will enable them all to become resourceful and abounding in self-reliance, self-control, dexterity, judgment, and intelligence?

Above all, is it not necessary for the schools to train our children in consideration for others, courtesy, informed knowledge concerning civic problems, and in the value of community coöperation for public ends, not through the agency of the few, but through the plenitude of power of the many?

IT

T snowed on Tuesday, and again Thursday night. The snow was so deep Friday that at noon the big boys could hardly make a ring in 'Lije's father's lot for fox and geese. The little boy and his familiars rolled and plunged, covered one another up, laughed and shouted, and looked like little white bears.

At afternoon recess they did n't leave the steps. They just stood about, and talked, and wondered, and waited for the bell to ring.

Teacher came and stood in the doorway a minute, with the bell in his hand. He smiled around on them all and said:

“Well, in an hour and a quarter you'll begin your Christmas vacation."

There was a little movement of heads, and two or three boys and girls said. faintly, "Yes, sir."

"Well," he said, "you must play hard and have a good time, so you'll feel like studying hard when you come back to school again," and rang the bell and went in.

When they were in their seats, the little boy looked at the old bell, standing there on the desk with the handle lopping over, and thought, as he had thought every day for a week, how nice it would be for teacher to have the new one, and how pleased he would be. Teacher stood up straight behind the desk and tapped with his pencil.

"Now we 're going to have a song and two or three pieces, and then a dialogue, and then you may be dismissed and begin on your vacation. I hope you will all be very quiet in your seats while we carry out our little program. It will not be very long, of course, because this is only the last day before Christmas. Next spring, if you are

all good boys and girls, we 'll have a grand exhibition the last day, with a stage and curtain and everything." Then he made a sign to Steve, and they carried the desk. over to one side.

The pieces and the song were attentively listened to and duly applauded, but attention was hardly rapt; the dialogue and the bell were in everybody's mind. When, at the end of the song, Syd and the little boy's brother, instead of sitting down, went out into the entry and closed the door, the excitement rose. All heads were turned; everybody whispered and wondered, and wondered and whispered, and kept looking at the door-latch. Only the big boys and girls were calm.

After what seemed a very long time, the latch moved, and they heard it click. The door began slowly to open, and excitement became intense. The little boys got up on their knees, with backs turned to teacher and hands grasping the tops of their seats and eyes fixed unmovingly on the door.

The door continued its gradual and noiseless opening until something came slowly into sight and began to move as slowly up the aisle, without a sound. They all knew it must be Syd, despite the big white sheet that covered him, head and arms and all. He went along up the aisle backward, with one long, white, wrapped-up arm stretched out toward the door, out of which presently emerged the little boy's brother, with a strange-looking hat and a kind of cape, his arms held out in front, and his eyes fixed all the while on the figure leading him on. At his side was the army sword the little boy had often seen at Uncle Anthony's, the one Lenny had in the war a long, long time

ago, eight or ten years before he was born, the little boy had heard them say. They always talked about the war at the places where he went visiting with his father and mother.

The Ghost and the little boy's brother moved noiselessly on till they were on the platform by the blackboard, everybody turning in the seats as they went. The little girls looked afraid, and Minnie put her hands over her ears. The little Polacks and Germans got red, and did n't know what to make of it. Some of the big boys smiled and looked superior, and Dan tried to imitate them; but his interest overcame the desire. He was as fascinated as the rest.

When at last the Ghost in his almost motionless progress had reached the end of the platform, and the little boy's brother had just stepped up near teacher's desk opposite, they stopped, with their arms. outstretched the same way. There were several seconds of tense silence, with everybody expecting and wishing they would say something. Then the little boy's brother spoke:

"Where wilt thou lead me? Speak; I'll go no farther." The Ghost was silent for a time. At last, in a deep, muffled, solemn tone, it spoke the words, "Mark me." The little boys sat motionless and rigid, their eyes and mouths wide open, and their hands tightly clenched in front of them. When, after a while, the Ghost got to the place where it said,

"I am thy father's spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,"

they clenched them tighter still, and even the big boys forgot all about posing.

The little boy did n't quite understand what it was all about, but he was sure it was a great dialogue, and proud to have his brother help give it. He thought the sword was nicer than the sheet, even if the sheet did seem to make Syd first.

At last the Ghost moved slowly down the aisle and out the way he came, and pretty soon the little boy's brother fol

lowed. In a minute or two they came back, Syd with hair all mussed and face red, and they all clapped hands with all their might, while teacher got up, smiling, and started for the desk to dismiss.

sat.

In a moment all was silence again. Now was the time for Steve to give the bell. Everybody looked over to where he The little boy wished he would hurry. He was filled with anxiety, and hitched in his seat. He was afraid teacher would dismiss before Steve got up. Steve was leaning over in his seat, with the present between him and Syd, trying to get the paper off. His ears were red.

He got up just in time, and started up the aisle. Teacher looked surprised, and as if he did n't know what to do. Steve went right up to him and held out the box.

"If you please, sir," he said, "we 'd like to have you accept this little present for Christmas."

The little boy knew just how he was going to say it, because his father had told him to do it that way.

"Thank you; thank you, I 'm sure," said teacher, and got all red. He opened the box, lifted the bell out, and held it up, all gleaming and beautiful. The little boy, half smiling and eager, watched his face. The whole school, half smiling and eager, watched it, till teacher removed his gaze from the bell and bent it on their faces.

"Oh, thank you," he said again, his countenance all aglow with smiling good will; "thank you ever so much. You have caused me exceeding pleasure by this beautiful and useful gift." He set it down on the desk at his side. It was like a toadstool, with a little knob at the top to strike to make it ring. You could see it reflecting things. "I'll make use of it for the first time right away," he said, "to dismiss you. I hope you will have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." He rang the bell twice and said, "Rise." He rang it twice more and said, "Dismissed."

The little boy and his friends went down the snowy road discussing the dia