The next step in the matter of gymnasial education for girls was what might have been expected. The people of the wide-awake city of Breslau voted, by an overwhelming majority, to establish a girls’ gymnasium under the same laws and furnishing the same advantages as the boys’ gymnasia. The completed plan was sent to the Minister of Public Instruction in Berlin in January, 1898, for approval, with the intention of opening the gymnasium at Easter, for which twenty-six girls were already enrolled. Herr Dr. Bosse, however, foreseeing the results such an undertaking would involve, consulted the other departments of the ministry, and two months later a decided refusal came like a thunderbolt upon the people of Breslau. On the 30th of April, 1898, Herr Dr. Bosse was called to account in the Reichstag for his action in the matter, which he justified on the ground that Government approval of girls’ gymnasia would mean the acceptance of the diploma for matriculation in the universities and the opening to women of all Government professional examinations, and that to have granted it would have been to take a step in the direction of the modern movement for women which could never have been recalled, and would open the lecture rooms of Germany in general to women. He contended, further, that the founding of official gymnasia for girls would delegate the existing girls’ high school to a secondary place, an institution which had been planned thoughtfully by the Government for the purpose of educating women in the best manner, not to become rivals of men, but help-meets and able housekeepers. The demand of the people of Breslau, Dr. Bosse said, was an unnatural one, and his refusal was founded on the fear that such a movement would increase and threaten the social foundations of all Germany, as the idea that women can compete with men in all careers is a false one. The petition of the magistrate of Breslau was supported in the discussion by some of the national-liberal, free-conservative, and Polish representatives. These took the broad ground that girls have a right to equal education with boys, and that the educational institutions of Germany which have so long stood at the head of those of the world should not, in the matter of education of women, leave the question to be decided according to the whims of private individuals. Some of the arguments of those who spoke in favor of the enterprise were amusing. One said that the girls of Germany would be grateful if the Minister of Public Instruction would furnish them with husbands, but, as there were not enough to go around, the others should have some career provided for them. Another, that about forty per cent of the girls of the higher classes no longer marry, and they should not be allowed to suffer the consequences of the fact that young men of the present day do not care to marry, but they have a right that the way be shown them to such careers as are suited to their feminine nature.