And the advantage lay in
this: Germany conceived a system of technical education matured and put in
operation by the State. Hence, so far as in human affairs such things are
possible, the intelligence of Germans was liberated from the incubus of
vested interests, who always seek to use education to advance themselves.
It was so in England. The English entrusted education to the Church, and
the Church was, by the necessity of its being, reactionary and hostile to
science, whereas the army, in the main, was treated in England as a social
function, and the officers, speaking generally, were not technically
specially educated at all. Hence, in foreign countries, but especially in
Germany which was destined to be ultimately England's great competitor,
England laid herself open to rather more than a suspicion of weakness, and
indeed, when it came to a test, England found herself standing, for
several years of war, at a considerable disadvantage because of the lack
of education in those departments wherein Germany had, by the attack of
France, been forced to make herself proficient. This any one may see for
himself by reading the addresses of Fichte to the German nation, delivered
in 1807 and 1808, when Berlin was still occupied by the French. In fine,
it was with Prussia a question of competition, brought to its ultimate
tension by war.
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