“We find ourselves now, after marking step so long, upon the order of a general forward movement into the new century. My ancestors, with their fingers upon the pulse of time, have ever kept an alert and intelligent lookout upon the promises and threats of the future, and thus have throughout been able to maintain themselves at the head of whatever movement they resolved to embrace and direct. I believe that I have mastered the aims and impulses of this new spirit which thrills the expiring century. As on the question of social reform, so in this grave matter of the teaching of our young, I have decided to lead, rather than oppose, the working out of these new and progressive tendencies. The maxim of my family, ‘To every one his due,’ has for its true meaning ‘To each what is properly his,’ which is a very different thing from ‘_The same to all._’ Thus interpreted the motto governs our position here, and the decisions we have arrived at. Hitherto our course in education has been from Thermopylae, by Cannæ, up to Rossbach and Vionville. It is my desire to lead the youth of Germany from the starting-point of Sedan and Gravelotte, by Leuthen and Rossbach, back to Mantinea and Thermopylae, which I hold to be the more excellent way.” The effect of this pronouncement upon the German public was electrical. For years there had been growing up in the popular mind a notion that something was wrong with the _gymnasium_, but no one had had the courage to define, much less proclaim, what the real trouble was. Parents had seen their sons condemned to thirty hours per week in the _gymnasium_ (involving an even greater study time outside), and vaguely marvelled that of these thirty hours ten should be given to Latin and six to Greek, whereas mathematics claimed only four, geography and history combined got only three, German and French had but two each, natural science fluctuated between two and one, and English did not appear at all. * But though there was everywhere a nebulous suspicion and dislike of the system, it enjoyed the sacred immunity from attack of a fetich. So wonderful a thing was it held to be, in all printed and spoken speech, that people hardly dared harbour their own skeptical thoughts about it. But when the young Kaiser bluntly announced his conviction that it was all stupid and vicious and harmful, and pledged himself with boldness to sweep away the classical rubbish and put practical modern education in its place, the parents of Germany, to use Herr von Bunsen’s phrase, were simply enchanted. *See the interesting tabular statement in S. Baring-Gould’s “Germany Past and Present,” p. 181. London, 1881.