The people's schools of Prussia, imbued with the enthusiasm of Fichte
and Pestalozzi,[3] gave to Germany the tremendous advantage that enabled
it so easily to overcome its hereditary foe, when, two generations
later, the Franco-Prussian War was fought; for the _Volksschule_ gave to
Germany something that no other nation of that time possessed; namely,
an educated proletariat, an intelligent common people. Bismarck knew
this when he laid his cunning plans for the unification of German states
that was to crown the brilliant series of victories beginning at Sedan
and ending within the walls of Paris. William of Prussia knew it when,
in the royal palace at Versailles, he accepted the crown that made him
the first Emperor of United Germany. Von Moltke knew it when, at the
capitulation of Paris, he was asked to whom the credit of the victory
was due, and he replied, in the frank simplicity of the true soldier and
the true hero, "The schoolmaster did it."

And yet Bismarck and Von Moltke and the Emperor are the heroes of
Germany, and if Fichte and Pestalozzi are not forgotten, at least their
memories are not cherished as are the memories of the more tangible and
obvious heroes. Instinct lies deeply embedded in human nature and it is
instinctive to think in the concrete. And so I repeat that we cannot
expect the general public to share in the respect and veneration which
you and I feel for our calling, for you and I are technicians in
education, and we can see the process as a comprehensive whole. But our
fellow men and women have their own interests and their own departments
of technical knowledge and skill; they see the schoolhouse and the
pupils' desks and the books and other various material symbols of our
work,--they see these things and call them education; just as we see a
freight train thundering across the viaduct or a steamer swinging out in
the lake and call these things commerce. In both cases, the nontechnical
mind associates the word with something concrete and tangible; in both