The present writers started with the common assumption that the "Classical" scheme of a liberal education had long broken down in practice, and survived only as feudalism survived in eighteenth-century France, because sufficient energy had not yet generated to create a new scheme to replace it. In part it had already disappeared and given place to the patchwork innovations of the earnest but painfully cautious and conservative reformers who have ruled the schools since the days of Dr. Arnold.[1] The classical system had become the classical compromise, a clipped and truncated classics, fighting a losing battle for air space amidst a crowd of inadequately provided "new subjects"--history, literature, science, modern languages. In some ways the last state was worse than the first. For the first state had at least been based upon a great tradition and an ordered philosophy of life, but in the last state there was no tradition, no ordered philosophy; only a jumble and a scramble, and a passing of examinations. Such a system or lack of system must fall a prey sooner or later to some educational movement based on a coherent and defensible doctrine. Now, as it chances, such a movement is already in the field; we may call it the "Cult of Efficiency." It proclaims a great many truths about the necessity of increasing productivity, about the connection between education and the world of business, and generally speaking points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in its advocacy from advanced chemistry to shorthand and book-keeping. Much that writers on these lines have to urge against the present system is perfectly sound and reasonable. Many of their claims will have to be recognised in the educational system of the future. But the admission of their claim as a whole, of the claim of "efficiency" to be the true and rightful heir of the old classical education, would be, to speak without exaggeration, the greatest disaster that could possibly befall this country.