Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/90

86 the nation would now be much richer than it is, and would have much less to fear from competition.

Suppose we were to set about putting our educational house in order, so as to secure a higher quality and greater quantity of brainpower, it would not be the first time in history that this has been done. Both Prussia after Jena and France after Sedan acted on the view:

 When land is gone and money spent, Then learning is most excellent."

After Jena, which left Prussia a 'bleeding and lacerated mass,' the King and his wise counselors, among them men who had gained knowledge from Kant, determined, as they put it, 'to supply the loss, of territory by intellectual effort.'

What did they do? In spite of universal poverty, three universities, to say nothing of observatories and other institutions, were at once founded, secondary education was developed, and in a few years the mental resources were so well looked after that Lord Palmerston defined the kingdom in question as 'a country of damned professors.'

After Sedan, a battle, as Moltke told us, 'won by the school-master,' France made even more strenuous efforts. The old University of France, with its 'academies' in various places, was replaced by fifteen independent universities, in all of which are faculties of letters, sciences, law and medicine.

The development of the University of Paris has been truly marvelous. In 1897-8, there were 12,000 students, and the cost was 200,000l a year.

But even more wonderful than these examples is the 'intellectual effort' made by Japan, not after a war, but to prepare for one.

The question is, shall we wait for a disaster and then imitate Prussia and France? or shall we follow Japan, and thoroughly prepare by 'intellectual effort' for the industrial struggle which lies before us?

Such an effort seems to me to be the first thing any national or imperial scientific organization should endeavor to bring about.