Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/226

 its subjects to military service, and for that purpose to take away children from parents, whether one parent or both be willing or unwilling? Yet this compulsion to adopt permanently a certain mode of life against one’s will is far more serious, and has frequently the most harmful results to the moral condition, health, and life of those who are so compelled. On the other hand, the compulsion of which we speak restores complete personal freedom when education is finished, and can have none but the most salutary results. It is true that even military service was formerly voluntary; but, when it was discovered that this was not sufficient for the purpose intended, we did not scruple to back it up by compulsion, because the matter was sufficiently important for us, and necessity demanded compulsion. If only in regard to education, too, our eyes were opened to our need and the matter became as important to us, that hesitation would vanish of itself; especially as compulsion will be needed only in the first generation and will vanish in the next, which will itself have passed through this education. Moreover, compulsory military service, too, will thereby be ended, because those who are thus educated are all equally willing to bear arms for their fatherland. Even if, in order not to have too much of an outcry at the beginning, it is desirable to limit this compulsion to public education in the same way as compulsion to military service has hitherto been limited, and to exclude from the former the classes that are exempt from the latter, no serious harm will result. The intelligent parents among those exempted will voluntarily hand over their children to this education. The children of the unintelligent parents of these classes, an insignificant minority, may continue to grow up as before. They will survive among the better generation that is to be created, and serve