school should be met by hundred thousands and millions with the demand for denominational schools.

The following passage is particularly significant, as it points to the motives of the clergy in attempting to secure their hold on the schools:

In closest connection with the question of common schools is that of professional supervision. He who combats the Christian school must necessarily oppose ecclesiastical school supervision. The friends of the common school have heretofore raised the demand that the church should be excluded entirely from supervision of the schools, and that only members of the teaching profession, i. e., laymen, be intrusted with that supervision. In some countries this has already been carried into effect, at great cost, without gain to instruction and with great loss to education. However much believing Christians, and especially priests, desire the promotion of the school system, since good instruction will aid the material and moral welfare of the people, the demand for professional supervision must be rejected at all times. All the arguments in favor of denominational schools are applicable to the participation of the church and its representatives in the direction and supervision of the schools.

OPINIONS OF THE AMERICAN PRESS.

The Review of Reviews says in its September (1906) number editorially: While England and France are attempting to eliminate the sectarian (not to say religious) idea from their scholastic programme, Prussia is accentuating the religious note in her schools. This fact is interesting, not only because it is in opposition to the current of thought predominating or tending to predominate in the rest of occidental Europe, but because it is generally conceded that the methods used in Prussian primary schools are superior to those in use elsewhere. However strong the organization of the Prussian primary schools may be, they are always a representation of the principle that education is salutary only as long as it is associated with the ruling idea of active religious morality. More than that, the Prussian school docs not confine itself to a certain amount of religious instruction given at certain hours-instruction embracing the most essential features of the Old and the New Testament, the history of the Refor mation and of the development of the evangelical state, Luther's catechism, and a word-for-word recitation of Bible texts. All that would be considered too much in the majority of countries, but in Prussia the whole system of education is impregnated with the religious spirit in its fullest expansion and in all its degrees.

In the evangelical schools the teachers impress it upon the minds of their pupils, that to teach religion is an integral part of the duty of the school teacher. Before a teacher is qualified for school teaching he must profess some form of religion. Children belonging to families preferring the religion of the State, attend the evangelical schools. Catholics and Jews are separated; the Jew has his own school, and the Catholic has his. The teachers are either Catholics, Jews, or Protestants, as the case may require. In some parts of the country-notably in western Prussia and the province of Nassau-there are mixed schools (Catholic and Evangelical) in charge of equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants. There are no special favors for the children of the Protestants dissenting from the accepted form of Protestantism. If a man rejects the established church, he is not given special teachers for his children. All Protestants attend the evangelical schools. A new law just passed, by the efforts of Conservatives and National Liberals, emphasizes the religious character of the schools, but it takes great care to protect all the little religious minorities. In schools where twelve of the children belong to any particular religious confessions-Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish-differing from the religious confession of the majority, the minority has a right to a separate religious instruction-instruction in its own religion. The new law continues the prior custom and ignores the dissenting Protestants, classing them all with the believers of the evangelical confession; and as the essential belief of all the differing Protestant bodics is very approximately similar, there is little or no friction, no war to the death, nothing like the bitterness between radically differing confessions.

The communities pay the expenses of the primary schools. The direction or superintendence of the schools is intrusted to a special bureau, called the school committee, answerable to the minister of public instruction. It is composed of members of the parish council, of a council appointed by the mayor, and of elected members of the common council, who select a certain number of colleagues among people of competent educational equipment. Each council contains a Protestant pastor, a Catholic priest, and (if there are more than twenty Jewish children in the school) a rabbi. `Each

school is under the surveillance of three very active district inspectors who have a right to be present at all the meetings of the school board. In some districts several of the members are women.

Such are the outlines of the law just passed to cover the primary schools of Prussia— passed, we may say, in a spirit essentially differing from that animating the English, French, and Belgians. Considerable opposition to the law has been made by the Radicals of the Landtag, but it will be a long time before there can be any real change of method in running the schools, or in the expression of the Prussian clerical conception of the basis of all instruction, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." A good many protestations have been made by the Socialists, but the nation has paid little attention to them, and in no event could they have any immediate result.

Taken all in all, however clear it is to the people that the Government is inflexibly determined to impress primary instruction with a religious character, the general feefing is strongly in favor of things just as they are, because, no matter what a man's religious prejudices are they have the sanction and the affirmation of the Kaiser and his Government.

It is a sort of family matter. It is not a question of furnishing a weapon to a young man imbued with the sense of his own power; it is a question of the state of mind of the whole nation. It has been said that Germany follows where the Kaiser leadswell, so she does, but as she is in sympathy with him it does not cost her anything. William C. Dreher remarks in the November (1906) number of the Atlantic Monthly: The school law * ** sets up the general principle that the schools must be denominational; and it contains provisions under which children already in mixed or so-called "simultaneous" schools can be withdrawn, and separate denominational schools organized for them. In addition to the regular boards special denominational commissions will supervise these newly created schools. The clergy, Catholic and Protestant, must be represented on the boards. The Government also demanded farreaching power to abolish home-rule in the selection of principals and teachers, but had to content itself with less sweeping changes.

The school bill called forth an exceedingly sharp controversy. About a thousand university professors, artists, and literary people signed a strong protest against the denominational features of the law; but others favored a denominational division of the schools as making for harmony. The teachers of the country at their national convention rejected the denominational school with practical unanimity. Influential educators apprehend that the law will have just the opposite effect religiously from what was intended. They point out that very many of the teachers are already inwardly estranged from the church, and their disapproval of the system they are compelled to apply will now become still more intense. The estrangement of the industrial working classes, too, is expected to take on a still more aggressive form, for religion as an adjunct of the police authority of the State can no more bear good fruit in Prussia than in Massachusetts. Under a recent decision of the courts, dissenting parents can be compelled by fines and imprisonment to make their children at school attend Protestant or Catholic denominational instruction. What would Americans think of compulsory Sunday schools with the sheriff to compel attendance?

The school law will carry religious politics into municipal affairs. Already the Catholic clergy and press are calling upon their people to organize for carrying city elections in order to seize all the denominational advantages held out to them by the law. It is evident, therefore, that the measure will foster the religious divisions of the people, and in particular perpetuate the spirit of apartness prevailing in the Catholic Church. Instead of unifying the people by giving them homogeneous ideals, it will tend to prevent the establishment of a common intellectual type.

The Outlook (New York) of August 18, 1906, contains the following editorial remarks: German Protestantism faces a sobering fact in recent statistical returns of the German universities. These show an ominous decline in the number of theological students, singularly contrasting with the large increase in other departments. In the past twenty years the total number of university students has risen from 27,000 to 42,000-an increase greater than the growth of the population. On the other hand, the students of Protestant theology now number but 993, against over 2,600 two decades ago. This contrast between a gain of 64 per cent in all other lines and a loss of 62 per cent in theology is rendered more striking by the fact that the number of students of Roman Catholic theology is not only not declining, but increasing proportionately with the population. Some see in such a condition clear proof of the blighting effect of modern criticism, but the condition may more reasonably be attributed to the stiff confessionalism of the State church; in part, at least, it is probably an inevitable consequence of the irrepressible conflict between confessional orthodoxy and scientific

criticism, in which the vital difference between faith and knowledge is often forgotten. A cultivated British writer, well acquainted with Germany, suggests what is probably another factor to the present decline: “I am afraid that there is no hope for German Protestantism till after the social revolution has accomplished itself that is, until Social Democracy has gained its political end and disestablished the church. They [the Socialists] see in the church only an established system, which has for its aim the maintenance of the social and political status quo-a useful police measure for keeping the poor contented with their lot." This retrogression of the established church in Prussia is one of the strongest motives of the passage of the new school law.

EXPENDITURES FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA.

In order to comprehend why the government of the State or Kingdom of Prussia has so great an influence upon all educational institutions and agencies within its borders, it is only necessary to show in a brief summary what large sums the State treasury pays for the maintenance of schools-lower, secondary, and higher-what portion is borne by communities through local taxation, what is derived from tuition fees, and from permanent funds or endowments. In order to give a complete exhibit, it is necessary to go back to a date from which complete financial statements can be had, to wit, to the year 1901-2. If later statements could be used, the showing of the State's part of the expenditures would be still better.

I. Expenditures for elementary schools (so-called Volksschulen): In 1882, $24,141,956; in 1901, $62,308,400, to which sum should be added $2,975,000 for advanced city schools, which are still ranked below the secondary schools; hence a total of $65,283,400 for elementary schools only. Only fifteen hundredths of 1 per cent of this sum was raised from tuition fees, charged in some advanced city schools. The instruction in the lower schools has been gratuitous throughout the Kingdom since 1888. In 1882 the tuition fees still amounted to 12.8 per cent of the expenditures. From permanent or irreducible funds (chiefly old endowments) the elementary schools derived $2,500,000 in 1882, which had 'increased to $3,332,000 in 1901; from State subsidies, $15,398,600 in 1901; from local taxation, $42,316,400; from other sources $2,093,400. These amounts do not include funds for pensions to sick teachers, retirement funds of superannuated teachers, nor for administration of the State department of education with all its ramifications through State, provincial, county, and township governments. They are simply the amounts used for buildings, repairs, salaries of inspectors, teachers, and janitors, and for supplies.

The per capita of expenditures in elementary schools was $11 in 1901; in advanced city schools the per capita was $22.15. These are low figures compared with the per capita found in the United States, but the purchasing power of money is greater in Germany than here.

II. The expenditures for secondary schools in Prussia in 1883 was $6,073,041; in 1902 it had reached the sum of $11,947,600, and hence had nearly doubled in nineteen years. Of this sum, nearly two-fifths, or exactly expressing it, 37.6 per cent, was raised from tuition fees, while nearly $250,000 was derived from irreducible funds, and about $7,500,000 from State subsidies and local taxation. The per capita of expenditures in secondary schools in 1902 was $57.60.

III. The expenditures for higher education in Prussia, have risen from nearly $2,000,000 in 1882 to nearly three and a third millions in 1902, of which sum the State paid $2,406,180; the rest was derived chiefly from students' fees. The per capita of expenditures in universities in 1902 was about $238.

ATTENDANCE IN PRUSSIAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

Since the year 1717 Prussia has had compulsory school attendance. While at first the compulsion was of a mild form, it nevertheless established the habit of sending children to school. During the nineteenth century the laws of compulsory attendance became stricter, so that toward the end of that century virtually no child of school age (6-14) was withheld from school, and the ratio of illiteracy dwindled down to two thousandths of 1 per cent. During the school census year of 1901, the last one of which complete reports are available, there were found in a school population of a little over 5,700,000 an enrollment of only 300 less than there should have been, and these 300 belonged to that floating population which lives on canal boats, or were withheld from school by parents not easily approachable. The percentage of excused absence in city schools is less than 10 per cent; in rural schools it may be somewhat more during inclement weather; but the average attendance for the entire Kingdom is about 90 per cent.

The accompanying diagram shows the distribution of these 5,700,000 pupils in round numbers in elementary or people's schools. A glance at the diagram reveals the fact that the high schools are not continuing the work of the elementary schools, but that they begin their work at the pupil's ninth or tenth year of age; in other words, the high school work begins where the primary, not where the grammar school, ends, as with us. The Prussian people's school is therefore a blind alley, which has no outlet into secondary education, for the optional or, in part, compulsory apprentice and continuation schools are in the nature of the case only elementary in character, teaching neither higher mathematics nor foreign languages. But the fact that the great bulk of the school population is offered only an elementary education, with no prospect of rising into the high school, and from there into higher altitudes of learning, makes the new school law, which deals exclusively with elementary schools, very important. It establishes, by making these schools. denominational, a cleavage on religious lines in a country which has been, since the sixteenth century, the battle ground of religious contention. In all kinds of high school, which begin at the pupil's ninth or tenth year of age, the American principle of common education is followedthat is to say, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish children are sitting side by side in the high schools. Americans, not having the incubus of historical tradition, such as the Church-Reformation and the Thirty Years' war, to consider in establishing their schools, can scarcely conceive the intense feeling aroused in Germany by the radical proposition of secularizing the schools. Hence the importance of the present new law.

SCHOOL SUPERVISION IN PRUSSIA.

The elementary school system in Prussia is supervised by 84 governmental or ministerial councilors. These are partly in the central seat of the State's supervisory authority, i. e., in the royal ministry of education, and partly attached to the government offices of the 12 provinces of the Kingdom. Of these 84 State officials, 44 were formerly normal school principals, 34 county superintendents, 4 clergymen, 1 a high school principal, and 1 an elementary school principal. The number of county school superintendents is 1,270, of whom 373, or 29 per cent, are exclusively engaged in school supervision, while 897 are school principals, clergymen, etc., besides being school inspectors. Most of these inspectors or superintendents are teachers in secondary schools, but we find among them also 63 former elementary school principals, 25 clergymen, 2 head teachers, and 4 class teachers. All cities have professional men as superintendents, and they are regarded as part of the executive branch of the city government, to which belong also the mayor, the deputy mayor, the secretary, the treasurer, the tax assessor and tax collector, the health officer, and other officials.