The German Quick-Step.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 February 1906, Page 76

The German Quick-Step.

The alertness and receptivity of the Germans, writes Mr. J. H. Yoxall, M.P., in the Magazine of Commerce, do not arise from a better equipment of brains than the English, but from a better

equipment of education. Upon that topic I will only here say that, class for class, every class of the German population is better educated and better trained for its work than the corresponding class m this country. I have mentioned the lavish expense and yet the buoyant confidence manifest m the new Germany ; combine these with mental alertness and businessand professional training, and you get the incentive and the activity needful to produce " push." Let me show, by one contrast with ourselves alone, how they push. In the year 1904 no less than 3,848 commercial travellers representing German firms visited Switzerland on business, many of them three or four times in the course of the year. In the same year no more than 34 British commercial travellers visited Switzerland at all. I think it all comes round to that ; the German quick-step in trading, amassing money, distributing it evenly, and using it in splendid civic and pleasant private ways results, I think, from the German quick-step in education.