There are many urgent reforms needed in our national education; those who are best qualified to speak could make many a startling revelation if they only dared to speak out. And there is ample evidence that almost every part of our educational machinery requires the most thorough overhauling. In the words of Bacon, “Instauratio facienda ab imis fundamentis.” But I doubt whether there does exist any more glaring proof of the present inefficiency of our Secondary Schools and Universities than their scandalous attitude towards the study of the German language and literature.

The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginning of this, the twentieth century, when Germany is the supreme political and commercial Power on the Continent of Europe, the study of German is steadily going back in the United Kingdom. In some parts it is actually dying out. In many important Secondary Schools it is being discontinued. Even in the Scottish Universities, which pride themselves on being more modern and more progressive than the English Universities, there does not exist one single Chair of German. In Oxford a Chair of German was only established through the munificence of a patriotic German merchant.

And even when there are teachers there are very few students. In one of the greatest British Universities, with a constituency of 3,500 students, there has been, for the last ten years, an average of five to six men students. And the reluctance of young men to study German is perfectly intelligible. The study of German does not pay. It brings neither material rewards nor official recognition. All the prizes, all the scholarships and fellowships, go to other subjects, and mainly to the classics. Let any reader of Everyman stand up and say that I am exaggerating; I would only be too delighted to discover that I am wrong.

Such being the attitude of those who are primarily responsible for our national education, can we wonder at the attitude of the general public? Can we expect it to take any more interest in German culture than the educational authorities? Let those who have any doubt or illusion on the subject make inquiries at booksellers’, at circulating libraries and public libraries, at London clubs. I have tried to make such an investigation, and all those institutions have the same sorry tale to tell. It is impossible to get an outstanding book which appears in Germany, for it does not pay the publisher to stock such a book. At Mudie’s, for every hundred French books there may be two German books. At the Royal Societies Club, with a membership of several thousands, every one of whom belongs to some learned society, you may get the Revue de Deux Mondes, or the Temps, or the Figaro, but you cannot get a German paper. For the last twenty years I have not once seen a copy of the Zukunft, or the Frankfurter Zeitung, or the KÖlnische Zeitung, at an English private house, at an English club, at an English bookseller’s, at an English library.

A few months ago the most popular and most enterprising daily paper of the kingdom published some articles on the German elections, which were justly rousing a great deal of attention in this country. I was very much impressed by the cleverness of those articles, but my admiration knew no bounds when the author confessed that he was writing without knowing a word of German, and that when attending political meetings he had to make out the meaning of the language by the gestures and facial expression of the orators. Have we not here, my classical friends, an exhilarating instance of the results of your monopoly? Ab uno disce omnes.

We are constantly being told that “knowledge is power,” and that the knowledge of a foreign language means not only intellectual power, but commercial and political power. Yet those in authority do not budge an inch to get possession of such power. We are constantly warned by political pessimists that Germany is making gigantic strides, and that we ought to keep a vigilant outlook. Yet we do nothing to obtain first-hand information of the resources of a nation of sixty-five millions, who is certainly a formidable commercial rival, and who to-morrow may meet us in deadly encounter.[20] On the other hand, we are told with equal persistence by political optimists that we ought to be on the most friendly terms with a great kindred people from whom nothing separates us except regrettable ignorance and superficial misunderstandings. Yet, in order to dispel that ignorance and to remove those misunderstandings, we do not make the first necessary step—namely, to learn the language of the people whom we are said to misunderstand.

It is true that Members of Parliament and journalists are ready enough to proceed to Germany on a mission of goodwill, and to be entertained at banquets and international festivities. But how futile must be those friendly demonstrations when we consider that the enormous majority of those Parliamentarians and journalists are unable to read a German newspaper! And how must it strike a citizen of Hamburg or Frankfurt when their English guests have to reply in English to the toasts of their German hosts! And how must a patriotic German feel when he discovers that not five out of a hundred have taken the trouble to master the noble language of the country whose friendship they are seeking!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, at the house of a prominent political leader, a representative gathering of politicians, diplomats, and journalists, who were met to consider the best means of promoting Anglo-German friendship. In answer to a speech of mine, an eminent German publicist and editor of an influential monthly review delivered an eloquent address in broken French. To hear a German address in French an audience of Germanophile Englishmen was certainly a ludicrous situation! But the speaker realized that it would be hopeless to use the German language, even to an assembly specially interested in supporting Anglo-German friendship.

How long, my classical friends, are we going to submit to these disastrous results of your monopoly? Quousque tandem! How long are we going to stand this scandal of international illiteracy and ignorance, fraught with such ominous peril for the future? How long is this nation going to be hoodwinked by an infinitesimal minority of reactionary dons and obscurantist parsons, determined to force a smattering of Greek down the throats of a reluctant youth? How long is modern culture to be kept back under the vain pretence of maintaining the culture of antiquity, but in reality in response to an ignoble dread of enlightenment and progress, and in order to protect vested interests and to maintain political, intellectual, and religious reaction?

[20] Written in 1912.