However that may be, the two facts remain, that there is a rather benighted tendency in the direction of intellectual activity, which the public school spirit makes no effort to assist, and that the public schools are inclined to produce gentlemen rather than citizens. Of course the former make better advertisements. Yet they ought not to. They would not in Germany. One day they will not here. The instance shows that the Chestertonian "England of Romance" is really the one that exists. The word "gentleman" is purely a romantic one, and a gentleman a purely romantic though enviable figure. A state in the future will not be able to thrive on gentlemen: it will need citizens. It has cost me dear to write down this, for in my illogical mind (and no one, by the way, save a politician, could have a logical one!) I would choose without hesitation the gentleman. But that is probably because, if I could, I would sell my quills for brushes. The conclusion from all this, then, is that I was not holding Germany up as a paragon just now, but leading up to an obvious improvement--a gentleman-citizen. Whoever thinks he fulfils the conditions implicated in the _role_ may know that not only is he an uncommon and a great man, but also the embodiment of a high, practicable ideal; in the attainment of which lies the solution of the whole educational question--how, of the two component parts, to maintain the moral position of the first and create one for the second. Except for the few, favoured with a productive imagination, the public school can as yet do nothing in this direction. It would be useless, for instance, to crowd a dull, technical science of politics on an already over-amended curriculum. One day it may not be useless. But until a new species of governess can be bred, it is. Of the species in question, I know of one example. There may be more, but not many, though of course they are, I am aware, rapidly multiplying. The only possible children's governess is the governess who attempts to teach nothing except how to learn. The ideal education is undoubtedly an _a la carte_ one, but as this is impossible both physically and because a public school master has not the time to find out how to teach any particular boy, the difficulty is solved if the boy has found out how to learn from any particular master.