It was wholly characteristic of the young man that, having tabled a series of inquiries upon the subject, he should start off with a comprehensive and sustained attack upon the whole _gymnasium_, or higher public school, system of the country. The Conference, having been summoned to examine the possibility of any further improvement upon this system, heard with astonishment its imperial chairman open the proceedings by roundly assailing everything connected with, and typical of, the entire institution.
The importance of the speech can best be grasped by keeping in mind the unique reputation which the Prussian school system has for years enjoyed in the eyes of the world. Its praises have been the burden of whole libraries of books. The amazing succession of victories on the fields of 1870-71 which rendered the Franco-Prussian War so pitifully one-sided a conflict, have been over and over again ascribed to the superior education of the German _gymnasia_ even more than to the needle-gun--and this too by French writers among the rest. The Germans are justifiably proud of their wonderful army, but it is probable that a year ago they had an even loftier pride in their schools. The teachers are in themselves an army, and have traditionally exerted an influence, and commanded a measure of public deference, which the pedagogues of other lands know nothing about. It required, therefore, an abnormal degree of moral courage for even an Emperor to stand up in cold blood and make an attack upon the sacred institution of the _gymnasium_. It is even more remarkable that what the young man had to say was so fresh and strong and nervously to the point, that it carried conviction to the minds of a great majority of the scholastic greybeards who heard it.
He began by saying that the _gymnasia_ (answering roughly to the Latin schools of England and the grammar-schools or academies of America) had in their time done good service, but no longer answered the requirements of the nation or the necessities of the time. They produced crammed minds, not virile men; wasting on musty Latin and general classical lore the time which should be devoted to inculcating a knowledge of German language and history--knowledge which was of infinitely more value to a German than all the chronicles of an alien antiquity combined. Had these schools done anything to combat the follies and chimeras of Social Democracy? Alas! the answer must be something worse than a negative--and tell not alone of an urgent duty left undone, but of evil wrought on the other side. He himself had sat on the various forms of a _gymnasium_ at Cassel--a very fair sample of that whole class of schools--and he therefore knew all about their ways and methods, and the sooner these were mended the better it would be for every one.