Liberal hopes.-Deputy Cassel (Liberal) said:

The bill will become a law despite our opposition. It will, however, be no "monumentum aere perennius." That is our conviction! (Quite right! from the Liberal benches.) The Liberal breath now wafting over all of Europe will-of that we are convinced-revive our own State with its freshness. We shall not always occupy the isolated position in its chamber which we occupy at present; of that we are also convinced, and this hope alone encourages us in our efforts.

A National-Liberal member is quoted to have said:

The National-Liberals have no reason to see in this law a great promotion of their party ideals, but their concessions are at least not in contradiction to these ideals, and can be tolerated since the promotion of the people's school itself represents an essential part of the cultural development so ardently fostered by the National-Liberal party.

Deputy Reverend Heckenroth (Conservative) said, during the debate on February 24:

It is to be regretted that as teachers of religion in school clergymen are employed for whom the church has no more use, owing to their radical views. The church rejects such men, and they drift into the schools. Of what use can pastoral instruction for confirmation be, which lasts at most only a year, if religious school instruction does not go hand in hand with it; if that instruction, owing to the icy cold atmosphere pervading it, or, owing to the doubts it raises in young minds, counteracts pastoral influence and tears down what that influence is building up? That is the reason why the church points to the importance of religious school instruction, especially in secondary schools, and to the importance of the teachers of religion. I admit the church has the right of supervision, and can convince itself at all times of the spirit that rules religious lessons in school. This right of supervision is exercised by the clerical superintendents, but these men are generally so overtaxed with duties that despite their zeal and faithfulness they can spend rarely more than an hour a year in each school to listen to lessons in religion.

The deputy pleaded for intimate relations between the inspector and the religious teachers. In normal schools he missed sufficient guaranty for the promotion of the religious spirit. He had met elementary school teachers who had been estranged from their faith in the church. Books like Haeckel's Riddles of the World he would not prohibit in normal schools, nor punish reading them, but they should be controverted by the teachers from a positive Christian standpoint. The deputy desired "the conviction to spread among school administrators that materialistic minds, void of religious faith, are recruited to-day from the education offered in the schools." [Bravo! from the benches of the Conservatives.

OPINIONS OF THE NEW SCHOOL LAW EXPRESSED BY PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS IN GERMAN EDUCATIONAL JOURNALS AND TEACHERS' CONVENTIONS.

A protest against the bill was presented to Parliament signed by over 900 prominent professors of German universities, polytechnica, and academies of sciences, also by distinguished artists, scholars, and teachers. From this document, which was barely noticed by Parliament, the following excerpt is offered in English:

The undersigned deem it their duty to protest energetically and publicly against the bill of school support now before the Lower House of the Prussian Parliament. Disregarding other obviously serious faults of the bill, we protest particularly against the provisions giving the people's school a denominational character. The principle from which the bill starts, to wit, that the pupils of the public elementary schools shall be taught in all the branches prescribed by teachers of their own religious confession, can not possibly be carried out in localities with a confessionally mixed population, a fact which is proven in the bill itself by sharp contradictions to the principle it intends to uphold. But the bill should also be rejected on principle. During lessons in any branch of study the pedagogic interest of the school alone should be the guidance. Every influence of sectarian religious tendency should be rigidly kept out. Sectarian coloring of the entire instruction is, however, manifestly aided when

it is legally decreed that the whole instruction shall be divided according to religious confession. Not only the Catholic, but principally also the Protestant orthodoxy, actually claim decisive denominational influence upon the entire instruction in the people's school, and they know how to carry this claim into effect, especially through ecclesiastical school supervision which the school bill preserves. They do so even now, when the school is without legal basis, yet bears a denominational character, which the bill seems intent upon perpetuating by force. In this tendency toward confessionalizing the people's school, without reference to the wishes and the financial capacity of the population, without reference, either, to the quality of the schools, the bill is quite on a par with that of 1892. The existing common, or simultaneous, schools remain merely tolerated exceptions. In fact, it is not religion which is to rule in school, but religious sectarianism. That is the point in the bill against which everyone must utter protest to whom the unity and liberty of the nation stand higher than the perpetuation and the intentional sharpening of the confessional contrast, which for centuries has fed on the marrow of our people, and is likely to undermine the unity and power of the nation. We therefore consider the question as not merely a Prussian but a German question. It can not be an indifferent matter to any liberty-loving German to see this growth of sectarianism and to observe that it is Prussia which throws away the better traditions of the era of Frederick and that of Baron von Stein, and for the first time offers a legal handle to the dangerous influence of ecclesiastical spirit upon the largest and fundamental part of its educational system. Hence we deem it a matter of honor to raise our voice at this critical moment, to demand of the representatives of the Prussian people unconditional rejection of the confessional provisions of the school bill now before the house.

At its first publication this protest was accompanied by the names of the following twenty-seven original signers:

Ludwig von Baer, Göttingen.
Julius Baumann, Göttingen.
Karl Binding, Leipzig.

W. Borchers, Aix-la-Chapelle.
Lujo Brentana, Munich.
Felix Dahn, Breslau.
Rudolf Eucken, Jena.
Wilhelm Förster, Berlin.
Albert Hanel, Kiel.
Otto Harnack, Stuttgart.
Karl Hensel, Erlangen.

Ignaz Jastrow, Berlin.

Georg Jellineck, Heidelberg.

Eduard Kohlrausch, Königsberg.

Karl Lamprecht, Leipzig.
Theodor Lipps, Munich.
Franz von Liszt, Berlin.
Paul Natorp, Marburg.
Theodor Nöldeke, Strassburg.
Karl Pelmann, Bonn.
Walther Schücking, Marburg.
Werner Sombart, Breslau.
Franz Tuezek, Marburg.
Max Weber, Heidelberg.
Heinrich Wölfflin, Berlin.
Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig.
Theobald Ziegler, Strassburg.

The Pädagogische Zeitung, of Berlin, said in substance (July 12):

It is plain that the new regulation of school support was planned to submit public school education to extensive changes, for the question of financial support alone might have been solved in a law of a few paragraphs. But through the medium of this law the Government, safely supported by a majority of conservatives and orthodox elements, intended to make the church again, as in former centuries, the teacher of the people and the clergyman of the parish the general school superintendent. The aspirations of the laboring classes, their material demands, their claims upon equal political rights, and other currents of thought and action in modern times had awakened the conviction among the privileged classes of the nation that a dam should be erected against these ever-increasing claims from below. This, it was thought, could be done by having the road that leads to education regulated by the church. In the highest layers of the social fabric of the Prussian State the belief in the social-political importance of the church was reawakened. Police and criminal court, as experience showed, could not avail against increasing criminality; hence religion should aid to strengthen the moral stamina of the nation. Upon this background of social politics the essential features of the new school law became plainly visible. For that reason also the local or communal factors in the government of the schools, in cities especially, which could not be easily influenced, should be eliminated.

This underlying motive, which later on in the discussion of the deputies and lords was openly admitted, was at first cautiously concealed. It was the intention of the

Government, the author of the bill, to throw all its weight upon the financial question in order to silence the Liberal elements in cities and gain their consent until it was openly stated in the House of Lords "that the long desired denominational school had at last been secured by law," and another lord said in the same house it was to be hoped that this new law would counteract the destructive tendencies in the nation.

In reading the discussions in the Diet and the press, which for more than a year kept the bill in the focus of public attention, one is induced to ask how it was possible that the valiant victors over the Zedlitz bill in 1892, the two parties called National Liberals and Free Conservatives, could aid in passing the present law. This is satisfactorily explained if we recall to mind the social-political campaigns of late years in Germany, and particularly in Prussia. The various parties which furnished the majority for this new law did not join hands on a question of civilizing statesmanship, but they did it to down social democracy. The wealthy employer of labor has of late replaced the statesman of high civilizing ideals. The opposition to socialism brought political parties together which as long as there has been a national representation in the Diet have never joined hands on educational questions. That the National Liberals joined their forces with the conservative legions of the State government to produce this new law is the most significant feature of the struggle.

Socialism is to be combated by means of this law. The root of popular education is to be fertilized with church influence. It may be admitted that the social democracy has in late years become very disagreeable to the most important supporters [employers are meant] of industrial labor, and hence to the equally important factors of the State. Numerous actions of the Socialists had awakened apprehension, and had made timorous men turn to conservative thoughts; at least fear for the future of the State became prevalent. It may be said the radical parties have their full share in the bringing about the passage of the law. The social democracy neglected its responsible duty in not working toward an education for the broadest layers of the people. Fear of the socialistic specter has driven tens of thousands of voters into the reactionary camp.

The center (or orthodox religious) party remained passive during the deliberations in the Diet, but it profits most by the new law.

The new law is to solve a great educational problem. According to the intentions of its originators it is to make the nation again religious and regular in church attendance. That it can not do this is a matter of self-evidence to him who soberly reckons with facts and is not deluded by political dreams. In whatever way religious and ecclesiastical conditions may develop in future the church can flourish and extend its influence only by means of its own work and through forces active within its own body. By transferring its functions to an institution which in the nature of things is alien to its narrow purposes-that is, by deputing the schools to do the work of the church-it will only weaken itself. Many clergymen knew this well enough, but their voices were not heard.

It stands to reason that the radical elements in the State will indirectly profit by the passage of the law, which creates denominational schools supervised by the clergy, for it will arouse educational struggles such as Prussia has never yet experienced. The intellectual and political elements which it is intended to exclude from participation in the development of the public school system, will now fight for their share in it. But such struggles will be advantageous to neither state nor church, and while the school law is the political bone of contention, school education is apt to be neglected. History is full of examples illustrating this.

The great majority of the teaching profession fought the passage of the law in the press, in meetings, and by means of petitions. Few teachers stood aside neutral or indifferent. Those who did may have done so because they failed to see dangers the law will cause to vigorous development of popular education, or because they hoped that the law would secure better emoluments for the profession. But it is clear now that this hope will not be realized. From the benches of the Crown ministers it was said that the new law would require about $5,000,000 increase in the State's quota of financial support, but little if anything of that sum is intended for salaries. The support of the schools will remain as inadequately distributed as heretofore. Few new sources of income are opened. With about $5,000,000 the now insufficient income of teachers might have been increased so as to fix the minimum at $320 and the annual increase at about $40. Instead of that the minimum salary has been left as before, at $260, and the annual increase at $30.

These conditions will cause an ever-increasing want of teachers. The Government will have to resort to artificial means to fill vacancies. Men teachers are banished to rural districts, and the teaching profession loses more and more the strong support it still has in the representatives of civil liberty and independence in cities, for failing to raise the income of men teachers to adequately enable them to meet the increased demands of life, and denying them professional supervision, will inevitably result in

driving them out of the profession, especially during a time in which numerous other occupations allure young men with brilliant prospects of social and material success.a It would seem that the teachers of Prussia have fought in vain. They were at once excluded from the deliberations. The principal and unvarying rule of sound parliamentary usage in making a new administrative law is to consult those who will be most affected by it. This evidently is not a Prussian legislative usage, for during the lengthy discussion of the bill in the diet the teachers' counsel was not called for. The bill was not submitted to the National Teachers' Association, and when the teachers petitioned against the passage of the bill their petitions were pigeonholed.

One thing may comfort the profession. A reactionary school law, such as has just been passed, can not live long. The conservative party in England tried it, and thereby dug their own political grave. History shows also in Prussia that a period of reaction will be followed by a period of liberal action. The time will come, as it did in England, when the pendulum will swing toward the liberal side, and it is reasonable to expect a law which will press ecclesiasticism into the background and place the teachers in a position in which they can exert an influence beneficial to the State and themselves.

The great political thoughts which at the beginning of the nineteenth century rejuvenated Prussia seem to have been forgotten at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is to be hoped that heavy strokes of fate, similar to those of a century ago, will not be needed to make Prussia realize the necessity of progressive school legislation.

The Deutsche Schule, one of the ablest educational journals of a country so rich in pedagogic thought, says in its July number:

The minister of public instruction [i. e., the Government] upon certain demands, if granted by the new law, will extend his prerogatives at the expense of local self-government, and even eliminate that local influence wherever possible. The people's school is to be made a state-church institution, a denominational school; everything else is of little consequence. In this regard the Government's yielding a point is not to be expected. Whether this policy be wholesome or not is a question of the future; it will depend upon who is at the head of the State school administration. At the present time the administration is not a progressive motor; rather, it is a brake on the development of the schools. However, there will be other times. Minister Mühler (the Conservative) was followed by Falk (the Liberal). Hence there is a hidden advantage offered by this new conservative law. The greater the legal powers of the minister, the more chances for a liberal successor to turn the car around. Often a law was made with evil intentions which in its application had the contrary effect.

Dr. Theobald Ziegler, professor in the Strassburg University, addressing the German National Teachers' Association, a body of more than 110,000 paying members, nearly 6,000 delegates of whom met at Munich at Whitsuntide, said:

We have been beaten in a great battle. The fight against the school support bill in Prussia is lost. But, though I say the battle is lost, it is not to be taken as a discouragement. As courageous men we do not give up the fight, but discuss here in Munich the simultaneous [i. e., common] school which you condemned to slow starvation eight years ago. To-day the church has taken a part of the State's sovereign rights, but we shall not rest until the words "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's,” are applied to ecclesiastics with reference to the schools. But aside from this willingness to continue the fight there has appeared another most delightful feature. Again, as in the combat about the Zedlitz bill in 1892, we have seen that the school is in the center of the people's interest, and that Pestalozzi's idea of the solidarity of all educational agencies has impressed itself upon the general consciousness of the people. We are vanquished, but we firmly believe that, like the Romans after Canna and the Prussians after Jena, we shall yet be victorious, and secure for teachers and the school complete independence and liberty of movement, which in the interest of its own and general human culture the nation indispensably needs, for without liberty no culture, and without culture no liberty.

Prof. Friedrich Paulsen, of the University of Berlin, in a letter to the Deutsche Schule urges the teachers to console themselves, and view the law from the standpoint of modern liberalism, saying:

The liberalizing of religious instruction should go in the direction of spontaneous movement of actuality. The old confessional catechism lessons of the sixteenth century, which the reactionary movement during the fifties in the nineteenth century

a See article "Men and Women Teachers," at the close of this chapter.

attempted to revive, is impossible on every side. It was possible, so long as the State represented church confessional unities; so long as the teachers were imbued with the faith, and stood in the service of the church, and, finally, so long as the real belief of the majority found its expression in the confessional formulæ. None of the three presuppositions, which were fulfilled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when our people's school originated, hold good to day. And, therefore, religious instruction can not perform the old task to create a conviction through the truth of confessional formula based upon the Scriptures, since neither teachers nor parents entertain confessional belief any longer, now that the church has lost its hold on the souls, and the State, as the patron of the schools, is without a religious confession; it is an utterly groundless expectation to think that a confessional instruction forced upon the school, despite all that, will succeed in permeating the masses with confessional belief. But there is another, a possible, and, according to my view, an unavoidable task to be performed: It is to introduce our youth into the knowledge and comprehension of Christianity and its literary documents, above all, the Bible. From these our nation has gained for more than a thousand years almost exclusively its intellectual and ethical culture. An instruction tending to make the coming generation familiar on the historical ground, on which they have to live and labor (and this is in the end the sum and substance of the objects of school instruction), can not pass by these things; it can not coordinate them as of equal value with other matters from the world's literature, as the Bremen teachers in a not very felicitous moment thought themselves called upon to recommend." And hence teachers who have the education of young souls close at heart can not abandon instruction in such things. How can you speak of the profoundest human affairs to children, if you will let go those books that have nourished the soul of our nation? If the school policy of Liberalism and a liberal-minded teaching profession assume this standpoint it will be fruitful and successful, and we shall have no more occasion to lament over lost battles. That such a policy will at first only be carried out within the Protestant school is true enough, but it is no disadvantage. The Catholic school in the past always followed the development of the Protestant school, though after intervals, and it will do so again. On the other hand, to make the schools common to all denominations is going to fetter the Protestant to the Catholic school and retard its inner progress. False parity has ever proved an obstacle to development. A word of ancient wisdom may close this meditation: The best shoemaker is he who can make the best shoes of the leather he has at hand. That is true of the politician also.

The Catholic clergy of Bavaria published in many religious journals of Germany a protest against the Simultan-Schule (or common school), in which they say:

The opposition to the Christian school is getting fiercer and more general. In late years it is advocated to separate the church entirely from the school by establishing schools common to all denominations, in which temporarily religious instruction is to be given in separate classes, but from which religion will disappear in future. The abolishment of the denominational school will, as in France, result in the establishment of schools completely without religion, and even hostile to religion. School is not only to instruct, but also to educate the young to become not merely men and citizens, but also Christians and members of the church; not only for the present fleeting life, but also for the future eternal life. In education, therefore, religion must occupy the first place as the most important and most effective means. That is not possible in the common school. The arguments advanced in favor of the common school are spurious.

The protest enumerates the errors of the friends of that school, and mentions as its faults, that it is purely a state institution; that the parents are excluded from it; that it is wrongfully demanded in the name of liberty; that instruction in it is in many branches most difficult; that the teachers working in such schools often complain about the great difficulties of their positions; moreover, that the school administration of the greatest German State fully agrees with the spirit of this protest. It then proceeds to say:

The adherents of the common school are, partly at least, people who have broken off connection with Christianity, and who reject all revealed religion; people who are declared enemies of Christianity, outspoken freethinkers and infidels. Hence all faithful Christians, Catholics and Protestants, clergymen and laymen, should firmly adhere to the denominational school, and the thousands who demand the common

@ At the National German Teachers' Meeting at Munich, in June, 1906. ED 1906-VOL 1- -5