Where Nature herself does not compel hard toil, or where with growing wealth wide sections of the people are inclined to follow a life of pleasure rather than of work, society and the State must vie in taking care that work does not become play, or play work. It is work, regarded as a duty, that forges men, not fanciful play. Sport, which is spreading more and more amongst us too, must always remain a means of recreation, not an end in itself, if it is to be justified at all. We must never forget this. Hard, laborious work has made Germany great; in England, on the contrary, sport has succeeded in maintaining the physical health of the nation; but by becoming exaggerated and by usurping the place of serious work it has greatly injured the English nation. The English nation, under the influence of growing wealth, a lower standard of labour efficiency--which, indeed, is the avowed object of the English trades unions--and of the security of its military position, has more and more become a nation of gentlemen at ease and of sportsmen, and it may well be asked whether, under these conditions, England will show herself competent for the great duties which she has taken on herself in the future. If, further, the political rivalry with the great and ambitious republic in America be removed by an Arbitration Treaty, this circumstance might easily become the boundary-stone where the roads to progress and to decadence divide, in spite of all sports which develop physique. The physical healthiness of a nation has no permanent value, unless it comes from work and goes hand-in-hand with spiritual development; while, if the latter is subordinated to material and physical considerations, the result must be injurious in the long-run. We must not therefore be content to educate up for the army a physically healthy set of young men by elevating the social conditions and the whole method of life of our people, but we must also endeavour to promote their spiritual development in every way. The means for doing so is the school. Military education under the present-day conditions, which are continually becoming more severe, can only realize its aims satisfactorily if a groundwork has been laid for it in the schools, and an improved preliminary training has been given to the raw material. The national school is not sufficient for this requirement. The general regulations which settle the national school system in Prussia date from the year 1872, and are thus forty years old, and do not take account of the modern development which has been so rapid of late years. It is only natural that a fundamental opposition exists between them and the essentials of military education. Present-day military education requires complete individualization and a conscious development of manly feeling; in the national school everything is based on teaching in classes, and there is no distinction between the sexes. This is directly prescribed by the rules.