THOSE ardent military Prussian educationalists into whose hands is given the instruction of the tender princeling usually desire to develop in their pupil characteristics approximating as nearly as possible to those of the most famous Hohenzollern of his race, Frederick the Great; and since, in their estimation, it was the harsh training of his childhood and youth which stimulated into growth the splendid qualities of his manhood, they strive to reproduce as closely as they can—of course in harmony with the more enlightened ideas of the present day—something of the same strenuous atmosphere and stern conditions which surrounded that celebrated monarch as he grew up.

The ordinary German child goes to school at a certain age, and if he is of average intelligence passes from one class to another according to the rules laid down for him, securing every year his “remove,” working steadily upward to his examination, after which he goes to the University, or if of the working classes to the earning of his daily bread until the age for military service; all is preordained, and one step leads naturally to the next. In theory this is what happens to a princeling of either sex, but the difficulties in the way are manifold and subtle; chief among them being the multiplicity of persons interested in his education, most of whom have, or think they have, paramount authority over their pupil. Usually the parents of a child arrange how it shall be educated, and kings and queens are no exception to this rule, but it is the admittance of the State functionary into the business that immediately complicates matters. Perhaps nothing is worse for any young child than to perceive that there are differences of opinion about his treatment among those whom he must obey.

A young prince, having reached the age of seven, is promoted from the nursery to a room of his own, and instead of the ministrations of the faithful, crabbed, tyrannical, loving old nurse, probably of English nationality, who has washed and dressed and scolded him from birth, is given over to the care of a well-meaning but inexperienced footman and the supervision of a well-bred, well-educated, but equally inexperienced young officer, who, imbued with stern Prussian notions of discipline and a complete ignorance of childish needs, is prepared to do his duty at whatever cost and to lay the first foundations of a training which shall ultimately develop in his pupil the qualities of another Frederick the Great. It is a position requiring much tact on both sides, but who expects tact from a young officer? There is the royal mamma to be reckoned with, for she considers that she has still some rights in her infant, even if he be one day destined to wear a crown; and among various other people let us not forget the tutor, full of theories on education which he is yearning to put into practice.

The prince, then, is installed in his own apartments of the palace, where he has his bedroom, sitting-room, and schoolroom, with suitable accommodation for his governor, as the young officer who has his education in hand is officially called, his tutor and his servants. He is supposed henceforth, in the rosy dreams of the governor, to be, except at occasional meal-times and perhaps a scanty hour in the evening, entirely sequestered from his family, devoted to qualifying himself for future renown in some one of the restricted careers, military for choice, open to royalty. If the prince has brothers of a suitable age they share his rooms, his governor, and his tutor, and are encouraged to share his aspirations.

The tutor draws up a portentous Stundenplan, which, copied by the footman in his intervals of leisure, is posted up in various conspicuous places, so that there is no excuse for not knowing the particular study, pause from study, walk, ride, or drill that shall be taking place at a particular hour or minute. The hitherto more or less casual education of the prince now gives way to a strictly regulated rÉgime. He begins to follow the ordinary curriculum of the German secondary schools, and knows exactly what stage he has reached on the ladder of learning; for every child in Germany, be he prince or peasant, educated at home or at school, works to a certain universal standard which, whatever may be its drawback, establishes a curious educational bond throughout the Empire and is eminently characteristic of the nation.

The tutor, who usually resides in the royal palace, is of a type unknown in England. He is a young man, often a Kandidat for the ministry, but by no means curate-like in mind or appearance; he has passed his examination at a university (which does not necessarily imply a university education), and gained his experience of teaching in one of the Government boys’ or girls’ schools—for all State schools for girls in Germany are managed and mainly taught by men. If he has had a university education probably the only trace of it will be a disfiguring scar on his face, relic of a student’s duel, of which he will be inordinately proud; but if he is going to be a Pastor the scar will be absent, as well as the year’s military training which he would otherwise have undergone—a distinct loss for any one who has in hand a prince to educate.

A volume might be written on German tutors, more especially on those employed in royal households. They are usually solemn, fleshy, conscientious young men in black frock-coats and Cylinder (top-hats), who in a few years develop an alarming embonpoint, and after finishing their work of implanting in princely minds a sufficiency of classics, history, and mathematics, retire to other spheres of labour, provided by courtly influence—spheres which they rarely consider to be worthy of the services they have rendered. They usually know nothing at all of sport, though professing to know a good deal, as in their vocabulary sport is only another name for exercise: they fondly imagine that the man who trots on horseback every morning round the Tier-Garten, especially if he wears English gaiters and carries a hunting-crop, is a sportsman, and consider any game “sporting” where there is plenty of running—even if no demand be made on the courage, decision, quickness or other mental qualifications of the players. They are unable to grasp the sporting idea, which, after attempted explanation, they believe to be a figment of the English imagination.

On the occasion of the thirteenth birthday of the Princess Victoria Louise, she invited the pupils of one of the aristocratic girls’ schools of which the Empress her mother is patroness, to have tea and games with her in the lovely Wildpark, close to the New Palace. I was asked to draw up a programme of sports for the occasion, as the games usually played on former birthdays were stigmatized by Her Royal Highness as childish and silly (“kindisch und albern”).

So a list of various obstacle and flat races was arranged, as well as potato, egg-and-spoon, and sack-races (which I own I had hesitated to introduce, fearing they were hardly fitting for the amusement of tender female German aristocracy, but, under pressure from the giver of the feast, had finally included in the programme).

A delightfully smooth grassy spot surrounded by magnificent fir-trees was the place chosen for the revels. The day was ideal for a September picnic—one of those warm, mellow autumn afternoons with magic melting blue distances, when departing Summer seems to put on her loveliest attire and most attractive mood before saying her final farewell. All the mosquitoes—that plague of Potsdam in summer—had departed, the fir-trees distilled their resinous balm in the sunshine, which played in flickering light and shade on their red sienna stems and dark-green masses of foliage; the beeches were beginning to turn a tawny yellow, while there was a fresh sparkle in the air, exhilarating to the spirits and peculiarly appropriate, it was felt, to the performance of feats of skill.

Four Kremserwagen—enormous wagonettes, much in request on fÊte-days in Germany—brought the smiling loads of happy maidenhood, all dressed in their neat white-linen uniform dresses and sailor hats, to the appointed place. There were seventy or eighty of them altogether, besides six teachers. The proceedings began with tea, and immediately it was finished the joyous crowd of girls, reinforced by some other young princes and princesses who came accompanied by their tutors, two young men wearing orthodox top-hats and frock-coats and a general air of funereal respectability, began to play “tag,” “drop-handkerchief,” and other games which they had confidently expected as a form of diversion usual to the occasion. But they were soon stopped and told that a totally new and superior form of entertainment had been provided for them, founded on English principles, of which I was to be the organizer and exponent.

Nervous apprehension took possession of my soul as, followed by the radiantly expectant “Backfische,” I wended my way anxiously to our Sportplatz. Here the hurdles, corn-sacks, and other material had been brought from the palace stables by two respectfully-interested grooms, who fondly hoped to witness the English sports from a suitable distance, but were remorselessly sent away.

The ropes, red flags, buckets, eggs, spoons and other things were regarded with excited anticipation and wonderment—especially the basket containing the prizes, which, I may as well mention here, cost individually not more than twopence each, collectively just eighteen shillings—a sum afterwards refunded to us by Her Majesty the Empress, who thought it “extremely cheap for so much joy,” providing, as it did, more than ninety prizes.

By a subtly-arranged system of handicapping and consolation races each girl, whatever her abilities in the domain of athletics, was eventually enabled to obtain one of the coveted prizes, presented, it is needless to say, at the conclusion of the proceedings by the little Princess herself, who, an ardent devotee of sport, had competed with success in many of the races, waiving, however, her right to a prize in favour of her guests.

This untried excursion into the unknown turned out a brilliant success from every point of view; the teachers, who had been formed into a Sports Committee, with quick feminine intuition had immediately grasped their duties, which they carried out with the greatest intelligence and impartiality; the girls themselves were the keenest and most enthusiastic I ever met; their achievements in the sack-race—won by the young Baroness Irma von Kramm—must have been seen to be believed (“Is this a usual English sport for ladies?” asked the head-mistress, as they hopped screaming past the winning-post); but the only rift within the lute was the attitude of the tutors, which, to say the least of it, was decidedly chilly. Perhaps they felt uncomfortable in the midst of that vortex of femeninity, or they may have been offended at not being on the Committee, or that they were not invited in their manly capacity to take the direction of affairs; be that as it may, they remained austerely aloof, only occasionally interfering when some one fell down or seemed likely to get overheated. One of more genial mood than his fellows had stood near the hurdle in the obstacle race, and on its being knocked

over had proposed to substitute in its place a rope, which, as he pointed out, “could be easily lowered as each girl jumped it”; but his suggestion meeting with no approval, rather with general derision as likely to make a mock of competitors, he retired from all further active participation in our gambollings.

The sons of the Emperor were unusually fortunate in their Governor, who together with his military training possessed the broad-minded, more tolerant liberal spirit of the age, and knew when to sink the martinet in the man. He was able to realize that the formation of character is first of all a development from within, chiefly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it—a growth of mind modified, not produced, by outward circumstances.

The Crown Prince and his brother Prince Fritz remained only for a very short time under his charge before going on to the university; but the younger Princes were in his care for some years at Ploen, where I was once invited to stay for a few weeks to give Prince Joachim lessons in English.

The “Schloss” where the Princes lived was a large, bright, pleasant country-house standing in pretty but not large grounds, bordered by forest, on the edge of the beautiful Ploener See. From the neighbouring Kadetten-Schule, where the boys undergo a semi-military training, four to six cadets were chosen to share the lessons and amusements of the Princes, always returning to the Schule to sleep.

Ploen is a very small, primitive town, so small that I made the mistake of calling it a “village” and was severely reprimanded by Prince Joachim for my blunder. It had just one long straggling street, with a few shops, and at the end close to the lake stood the Kadetten-Schule, which had formerly been the residence of the old Danish Kings, some of whose bodies lay in the crypt of the little chapel adjoining—a dismal place, full of sarcophagi huddled together in mouldering oblivion.

As the boys were occupied all morning with their other studies, I, who was lodged in the Prinzen-Villa under the fostering care of the wife of the private detective, had nothing to do till one o’clock; and the Governor kindly allowed me to ride one of his two horses every morning—fine big cavalry chargers, which fled away with me in a light-hearted manner over the tree-shaded roads and fields, evidently pleased at my light weight and determined that I should have a good time. I had been allowed to bring my side-saddle from the New Palace: “the very first time,” the Master of the Horse assured me, “that such a privilege had ever been granted to any lady at court.” He jokingly said he hoped it would not establish a precedent, and I said I hoped it would. The stable authorities were always very amiable and courteous, and anxious to gratify my taste for riding.

These morning excursions allowed me to explore a great deal of the neighbourhood, which I should otherwise have been unable to see. All this district of Holstein is rather flat, but beautifully wooded, with many lakes which add a wistful calm beauty to the sleepy landscape. There is something reminiscent of England in the farm-houses and the hedgerows, which are never seen in Brandenburg, where the fields are unfenced.

At one o’clock I was at the Schloss for luncheon, where I had to talk English with the Prince and his cadets—charming boys, some of whom I had met in Potsdam, where they lived. None of the tutors knew any English, though one of them had evidently learned some from a book which professed—without fulfilling its profession—to teach “without a teacher.”

After luncheon the boys, including the Prince, who was then about fifteen, all went with me down to the “island” which lay in the lake, and where farming operations on a small scale were carried on.

A long narrow road led to the island, which was really a peninsula, and there everybody, including the Prince and myself, engaged in the occupation—it being the season of potato harvest—of digging potatoes out of the ground and gathering them into heaps. The coachman and footman and a young officer, a sort of deputy-governor, all assisted in this work. Some geese came along and gobbled up the stray small potatoes we threw in their direction, and the sun, reflected from the lake in front, shone brightly on us as we toiled, girt round with potato-sacks to keep our clothes clean. This participation in agricultural pursuits is a part of the training devised by the Governor, but, as he himself was not an agriculturist, I doubt whether it was really as beneficial as it might have been. The propagation and development of seeds, the rearing of young animals, and the study of their wants, would, I think, have been less monotonous than this incessant potato gathering, which we pursued nearly every afternoon while I was there.

At five, when the afternoon train to Kiel was seen in the distance, we took off our sack-aprons and went home to tea, and I was free for an hour or so, when I gave an English lesson to the whole class of boys, which nearly always also included their Governor and the officer from the Schule who was teaching them English, a very pleasant, kind young man, who sat humbly (metaphorically speaking) at my feet and was anxious to learn all he could. They had been reading Dickens’ “Christmas Carol"—everybody in Germany reads Dickens, and gets quite a wrong idea of present-day English life from his books—but I produced Conan Doyle’s “Adventures of Brigadier Gerard,” as being in my opinion more suitable for boys, as well as more colloquial and military in tone. I never had a class which hung so much on my words before. As they all spoke with a very bad accent, I read to them myself, so that they could hear English, and then we discussed the story and the meaning of obscure words and phrases. They were very alert and intelligent, and soon became deeply absorbed in the “Brigadier.”

Sometimes in the mornings after my ride I would walk with the officer who taught English and converse with him, so that he might have the benefit of my accent; and once he took me to the Schule and installed me in his class, to hear how he instructed his thirty boys there. He was a most intelligent teacher, and spoke very correct English. It amused me to hear some of the pupils reciting “Rule Britannia” out of their English Reading-Books. It sounded like a derisive challenge as they declaimed the poem with that clear, distinct utterance specially cultivated in all German schools. I could with difficulty keep from smiling to hear a young German piping its bombastic lines:

while Kiel, with its rapidly increasing war-fleet, lay only an hour’s journey away.

But they were very pleasant and kindly, all those German officers; they showed me their class-rooms, their gymnasium, everything that they thought could interest me. If they knew only two words of English they said those two; but as I was by that time a fairly fluent speaker of German, we were able to exchange views without any difficulty. That rather hard, harsh, overbearing Prussian spirit that one meets in Berlin here seemed softened and humanized, and the atmosphere of the place was not so rigid and mechanical as military institutions are apt to be. It is true that the boys, whenever addressed, instantly fell into those stiff, wooden military attitudes which are a little disconcerting to unaccustomed people, squaring their shoulders, putting their heels together and lifting up their chins; but when one got used to it it was not so noticeable.

The general impression gained from the military ideal as applied to education in Germany is that, while excellently thorough and practical, it yet ignores too much those other world-forces due to science, invention and discovery, which day by day are changing the conditions of life among the nations—that it cherishes a spirit more suitable to past ages than to present progress. It seems to breed up a class of men who are earnest, loyal, and self-sacrificing, but express extremely narrow views, who see and judge everything from a purely military, autocratic standpoint, and are quite unable to sympathize with or understand the aspirations of the normal human being towards personal initiative and liberty of action.

Crushed as a nation a hundred years since, under the great Napoleon, the members of this military caste are still ruled by the fear of despotism from without, and ignore the despotism within of their own creation, still fight ideas with physical force, hold the uniform as sacrosanct, are overbearing, touchy, often (with, of course, many exceptions) insufferably vain and spiteful. They realize most emphatically that they are the masters, not the servants, of the German people; they are a class aloof, apart, a class wielding tremendous social and political power. Sometimes it seems almost a pity that Carlyle rediscovered the virtues of that “iracund Hohenzollern” Frederick William I. So many latter-day Prussians, without possessing his sturdy virtues, seem to model their conduct on his, and try to impress the world by the more disagreeable, rather than the more praiseworthy traits of his vivid forceful personality.