this case that of Prussia. The city, however, is fully represented on the board of management and will exercise an important influence in the administration of affairs. The new university is organized into five faculties, instead of the traditional four: law, medicine, philosophy, natural science, and economic and social science. There is no theological faculty, its absence being justified by the argument, advanced also in the case of the proposed university in Hamburg, that on account of the general decrease in the number of students of theology in the German universities, there is no present need further to increase the facilities for theological instruction. According to the announcement in the Frankfurter Zeitung, the corps of instruction at the outset numbers forty-nine professors, thirteen assistant professors and eighteen docenten, many of whom have been drawn from other universities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The university begins its career as the twenty-second German university under exceptional conditions of equipment, much of which has already been in active and efficient use as separate undertakings under municipal and public control, but which now have been either absorbed into the university or are in intimate affiliation with it and under its general administration. It has in this way libraries, hospitals, and museums of zoölogy, mineralogy, geology, and botany. It is particularly well equipped in medicine. The great city hospital puts it into possession of clinical facilities unsurpast in several special directions. The Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy and the George Speyer House presided over by Paul Ehrlich, who received the Nobel Prize as the discoverer of "salvarsan" in 1908, and who now becomes a professor in the new university, it has taken over bodily, as it also has the Neurological Institute under the directorship of Professor Ludwig Edinger. The new university at the beginning, accordingly, is in part an accomplished fact. Whether another university is needed in Germany has been a matter of controversy ever since the project of the new foundation was actively taken up in 1892. In the face of present conditions, when the uni versities have already lost so many of their students, the matter will be more than ever problematical from this viewpoint alone. The experiment of a municipal university is a new problem in German educational organization and its progress and outcome will be watched with interest. The Germanistic The report of the Germanistic Society of America, as presented at the annual meeting held on November 30, 1914, contains, with the record of the work of the year, a review of the first decade of its activity which has just been completed. The purpose of the Society, which has its headquarters in the Deutsches Haus of Columbia University, is to constitute a medium in the exchange of thought between America and Germany with the view of bringing about a closer intellectual intelligibility of the one nation to the other. Along these lines it has made a vigorous propaganda. During the ten years of its existence the Society has maintained a lectureship in Columbia University on the history of German civilization. Under its auspices in New York and its immediate vicinity a total of 236 lectures have been delivered in English and German, the greater part of them by well-known scholars and literary men of Germany who have come to this country on the invitation of the Society. In addition to these, 189 lectures have been delivered by such guests of the Society in various cities of the country all the way across the continent. The Society has also printed and distributed gratis a number of pamphlets containing reports and various addresses, and has lately begun the publication of a quarterly journal in order to give a wider currency to the most important of its lectures. The report expresses the desire of the Society to take up more eagerly than ever before, in the light of the conditions that prevail in the world today, the work that it has endeavored to perform and can still perform with even greater effect, when the time comes for what the report calls "the great Restoration." The report at the end accentuates "the supreme importance of impartiality" in the present European crisis and counsels “a dignified patience.” EDUCATIONAL REVIEW FEBRUARY, 1915 I THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PUBLIC1 Colleges and miversities have lately been objects of public suspicion. The fact is more significant than the criticism which it has inspired. It indicates public interest and concern. It voices a belief that the success of selfgovernment depends ultimately upon education, that the school is the conservator of the state. The fact that the criticism comes so largely from the public as distinct from professional educators is especially significant. It indicates that the public is unwilling that education should be imposed upon it from above, or be determined by what a particular class conceives to be the public good. The public has its own ideas about what is good for it. ideas, it demands recognition not only in the laws of a selfgoverning people, but also in their education. The demand is a legitimate demand of democracy. Indeed, it is a proof that democracy exists in fact, and is not simply a vision or a hope. For these The criticism has not, however, been very effective. During the past quarter of a century, there have been many important educational reforms, but these have been more often the results of the clear vision of enthusiastic and determined educators than the results of public criticism. Philanthropic enterprise rather than an intelligent public demand has motived them. This fact gives an added sig 1 Address delivered at the Annual Convocation of the University of the State of New York, Albany, N. Y., October 23, 1914. nificance to the criticism to which I have referred. For education in this country, as its history shows, was begotten by philanthropy, and has been, until quite recently, supported by philanthropy. Even today our greatest universities are almost entirely dependent upon the munificence of individuals. Public support of public instruction has been slow in coming, it has been grudgingly and reluctantly given, it has been won by the untiring efforts of a few, and it is still regarded largely as a gift to the humane aspirations of a class, rather than as the most important item in the budget of the state. Indeed the conception of education as a species of philanthropy rather than as the attempt of a self-governing people to give controlling and formative expression to their aims, their hopes, and their needs, still largely dominates the popular mind. Yet the public criticism which we have recently had is a clear indication of a changing attitude. Much of it has been thoroly captious and unintelligent. Many of its proposals would be useless or destructive if put into practise. But those who have to bear it, may bear it not only with fortitude, but with satisfaction, if it is a guarantee, however small, of a public demand that education cease to be thought of as a thing primarily dependent upon the benevolence of the rich or the charity of the state. One important reason why much of the criticism has been ineffective and unintelligent is to be found in the fact that the criticism is based on ignorance of what the universities have been trying to do and of what they have been called upon to do. Consequently complaints that universities are not doing certain things are more frequent than intelligent criticism of what they are doing. Fortunately, however, it is among human possibilities that what our universities are doing is decidedly important and decidedly worth while. That so much money should be given freely for their support, that so many men should devote their lives unselfishly and often heroically to their university obligations, and that so many students, in steadily growing numbers, should seek the university with high hopes and ambitions, is ample proof that our universities are not performing their tasks blindly, stupidly, and ineffectively. It is just because they are performing their tasks so well that they are one of our greatest glories. I yield to none in this estimate of them. When I contemplate education in this country generally, I find the attempt to be a disinterested and judicious philosopher rivalled by the desire to be a trumpeting and enthusiastic patriot. The history of our universities is measured by decades. That of those other lands where we have been wont to suppose that the home of civilization and culture is to be found, is measured by centuries. Yet when we institute a comparison, that discrepancy in time can be entirely disregarded. We can venture the comparison on a level, with no anxiety about the result. We may be lacking in the enchantments of age, we may be lacking in the mellowness of academic traditions, we may be lacking in those habiliments of learning which are the imputations of intelligence, but we are not lacking in zeal for intelligence itself, or in the means, the equipment, or the men to make it effective. Other lands have richer archives, but none has better universities. What is it that our universities have been doing during their brief history? They have been raising the standard of professional instruction and providing an opportunity for advanced academic or post-graduate instruction. They have undertaken this task on their own initiative. Or rather, I should say, it has been undertaken by them because of the initiative and energy of a few great leaders. The histories of American colleges over fifty years old read very much alike. They began, for the most part, in small bequests, or in the cooperation of a small group of likeminded men, and had as their aim the provision for what was called a liberal education. By that was meant familiarity with the ideas and languages which hold the literary heritage of cultivated people, some acquaintance with mathematics and physics, and the ability to express oneself with clearness and elegance. It was not, as has been commonly stated, an education especially designed to |