Germany and the Next War

by Friedrich von Bernhardi

We must not therefore be content to educate up for the army a physically healthy set of young men by elevating the social conditions and the whole method of life of our people, but we must also endeavour to promote their spiritual development in every way. The means for doing so is the school. Military education under the present-day conditions, which are continually becoming more severe, can only realize its aims satisfactorily if a groundwork has been laid for it in the schools, and an improved preliminary training has been given to the raw material.

The national school is not sufficient for this requirement. The general regulations which settle the national school system in Prussia date from the year 1872, and are thus forty years old, and do not take account of the modern development which has been so rapid of late years. It is only natural that a fundamental opposition exists between them and the essentials of military education. Present-day military education requires complete individualization and a conscious development of manly feeling; in the national school everything is based on teaching in classes, and there is no distinction between the sexes. This is directly prescribed by the rules.

In the army the recruits are taught under the superintendence of the superiors by specially detached officers and selected experienced non-commissioned officers; and even instruction is given them in quite small sections; while each one receives individual attention from the non-commissioned officers of his section and the higher superior officers. In a school, on the contrary, the master is expected to teach as many as eighty scholars at a time; in a school with two teachers as many as 120 children are divided into two classes. A separation of the sexes is only recommended in a school of several classes. As a rule, therefore, the instruction is given in common. It is certain that, under such conditions, no insight into the personality of the individual is possible. All that is achieved is to impart more or less mechanically and inefficiently a certain amount of information in some branch of knowledge, without any consideration of the special dispositions of boys and girls, still less of individuals.

Such a national school can obviously offer no preparation for a military education. The principles which regulate the teaching in the two places are quite different. That is seen in the whole tendency of the instruction.

The military education aims at training the moral personality to independent thought and action, and at the same time rousing patriotic feelings among the men. Instruction in a sense of duty and in our national history thus takes a foremost place by the side of professional teaching. Great attention is given to educate each individual in logical reasoning and in the clear expression of his thoughts.

In the national school these views are completely relegated to the background—not, of course, as a matter of intention and theory, but as the practical result of the conditions. The chief stress in such a school is laid on formal religious instruction, and on imparting some facility in reading, writing, and ciphering. The so-called Realign (history, geography, natural history, natural science) fall quite into the background. Only six out of thirty hours of instruction weekly are devoted to all the Realien in the middle and upper standards; in the lower standards they are ignored altogether, while four to five hours are assigned to religious instruction in every standard. There is no idea of any deliberate encouragement of patriotism. Not a word in the General Regulations suggests that any weight is to be attached to this; and while over two pages are filled with details of the methods of religious instruction, history, which is especially valuable for the development of patriotic sentiments, is dismissed in ten lines. As for influencing the character and the reasoning faculties of the scholars to any extent worth mentioning, the system of large classes puts it altogether out of the question.

While the allotment of subjects to the hours available for instruction is thus very one-sided, the system on which instruction is given, especially in religious matters, is also unsatisfactory. Beginning with the lower standard onwards (that is to say, the children of six years), stories not only from the New Testament, but also from the Old Testament are drummed into the heads of the scholars. Similarly every Saturday the portions of Scripture appointed for the next Sunday are read out and explained to all the children. Instruction in the Catechism begins also in the lower standard, from the age of six onwards; the children must learn some twenty hymns by heart, besides various prayers. It is a significant fact that it has been found necessary expressly to forbid "the memorizing of the General Confession and other parts of the liturgical service," as "also the learning by heart of the Pericopes." On the other hand, the institution of Public Worship is to be explained to the children. This illustrates the spirit in which this instruction has to be imparted according to the regulations.

It is really amazing to read these regulations. The object of Evangelical religious instruction is to introduce the children "to the comprehension of the Holy Scriptures and to the creed of the congregation," in order that they "may be enabled to read the Scriptures independently and to take an active part both in the life and the religious worship of the congregation." Requirements are laid down which entirely abandon the task of making the subject suitable to the comprehension of children from six to fourteen years of age, and presuppose a range of ideas totally beyond their age. Not a word, however, suggests that the real meaning of religion—its influence, that is, on the moral conduct of man—should be adequately brought into prominence. The teacher is not urged by a single syllable to impress religious ideas on the receptive child-mind; the whole course of instruction, in conformity with regulations, deals with a formal religiosity, which is quite out of touch with practical life, and if not deliberately, at least in result, renounces any attempt at moral influence. A real feeling for religion is seldom the fruit of such instruction; the children, as a rule, are glad after their Confirmation to have done with this unspiritual religious teaching, and so they remain, when their schooling is over, permanently strangers to the religious inner life, which the instruction never awakened in them. Nor does the instruction for Confirmation do much to alter that, for it is usually conceived in the same spirit.

All other subjects which might raise heart and spirit and present to the young minds some high ideals—more especially our own country's history—are most shamefully neglected in favour of this sort of instruction; and yet a truly religious and patriotic spirit is of inestimable value for life, and, above all, for the soldier. It is the more regrettable that instruction in the national school, as fixed by the regulations, and as given in practice in a still duller form, is totally unfitted to raise such feelings, and thus to do some real service to the country. It is quite refreshing to read in the new regulations for middle schools of February 10,1910, that by religious instruction the "moral and religious tendencies of the child" should be awakened and strengthened, and that the teaching of history should aim at exciting an "intelligent appreciation of the greatness of the fatherland."

The method of religious instruction which is adopted in the national school is, in my opinion, hopelessly perverted. Religious instruction can only become fruitful and profitable when a certain intellectual growth has started and the child possesses some conscious will. To make it the basis of intellectual growth, as was evidently intended in the national schools, has never been a success; for it ought not to be directed at the understanding and logical faculties, but at the mystical intuitions of the soul, and, if it is begun too early, it has a confusing effect on the development of the mental faculties. Even the missionary who wishes to achieve real results tries to educate his pupils by work and secular instruction before he attempts to impart to them subtle religious ideas. Yet every Saturday the appointed passages of Scripture (the Pericopes) are explained to six-year-old children.