ROAD GERMANY IS GOING

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 18 (Supplement)

ROAD GERMANY IS GOING

her great ambition. EDUCATION AS THE KEY TO PROSPERITY AND POWER. STATESMAN’S MESSAGE TO BRITISH SCHOOLS. The other night a special correspondent sat talking with a British statesman who, out of chaos, fashioned ('the immortal army which made it possible for the Allies to win the war. and to which General von Kluck pays a wonderful tribute. I found myself (our correspondent writes) hoping that the present rulers of the nation would listen as willingly and as gladly to his counsel as the generals of the British Army listened to him in 1908. For this man, Lord Haldane, is one who looks ahead, and does not speak until he has thought. He has lately been to Germany, and I called upon him to learn the position of that country, particularly as it is likely to affect Great Britain.

New Spirit in Germany. “Germany,” he said, “ is a greater menace to us now than in 1914. She is no longer thinking in armies. She does not think of making herself feared, but of making herself admired. She wants to be a better country than any other. She means to make herself the greatest country in Europe. And she is choosing the right road to achieve this ambition.” “What road is that?” “The road of education.” “But surely she has always been on that road?” "Yes, but in another spirit. I found that Germans are returning with the greatest admiration, perhaps with some repentance, to Goethe. They perceive that the spiritual alone is the real. Intsead of wishing to make themselves physically and boastfully a Great Power they are aiming to make themselves spiritually and intellectually the greatest of all nations. All that was excellent in their military system—the discipline, the devotion, the untiring hard work —is passing over into this new ambition. All that was bad is ceasing to count.” When Boys Leave School.

“Do you think the German boy goes to school with clearer notions of the value of education than the English boy?”

“No.” “Or with greater ambition to get on?” “No.” “Then what makes the difference?

“The German hoy is under a stricter discipline than the English boy. It is not so easy for him to play the fool. But he is much the same as boys in this country. The grind is no more congenial to him than to our boys. The difference comes when he leaves pchool. He leaves better equipped than our boys to appreciate the value of education, and finds himself in an atmosphere of education —everyone about him interested in the improvement of the mind and convinced that only intelligence can rule the world.” University Brought to Town. Happily for us, something of the same spirit is manifesting itself here. Lord Haldane is convinced that the British democracy is awaking to the value of education. He addresses meetings all over the country on the subject of adult education, and everywhere the meetings are crowded with eager working people. “The object of the British Institute of Adult Education,” he says, “is to bring the- university to the town, and to permeate all our cities with the university spirit. For one thing, it (provides a new profession for our scholars. Men who graduate at the universities will soon find themselves units in a greater teaching profession than this country has yet known —a profession which teaches men and women who have left school, the whole army of British democracy. “These teachers from the university will be missionaries of the higher life. They will bring the spirit of Oxford to the industrial cities, and that spirit will make an end of the slums and the human degradation which disgrace them. Not only this, but it gives a new hope to the world. “Until we get an intelligent democracy our position is dangerous. Our commerce is threatened; our political institutions are at the mercy of passion. We must be far more alert intellectually if we are to keep our place. We must organise. We must be in earnest.”

I asked him if he 'had a message for the school children of this country. “Tell them," he replied, "that education opens to them all the highest joys, ail the noblest consolations. Tell them to think of their school life as the opening of a door to all the pleasures and delights of education, and education ends only with the grave.” I ventured to say, thinking of the stars, “Perhaps not even there.”