If Germany loses the war the chances are that the people may recognize
what it means for the people of a nation to let the title to their
lives rest with the state; they will know perhaps whether for the
protection they have been given and for the regulation of their
affairs and destiny they have paid more than the workers of other
countries, who, less protected by law, suffered the exigencies of
their assumed independence.
How much the German people depended upon the state and how much their
destiny is affected by it is illustrated better by their educational
system and its relation to industry than by any labor legislative
protective practices or policy.
George Kerschensteiner, the director of the Munich schools, in his
book on "The Idea of the Industrial School," tells us that the
_Purposes
community, and that this realization is possible in so far as the
educational provisions are made from the standpoint of the ethical
concept of each state. In America we do not think of the state as the
embodiment of our ethical concepts. The state, as we know it, is one
of the several instruments for realizing ends, ethical as well as
material. The state is supposed to serve the common ends of all
people. A state may be used, we are all aware, as an instrument,
either by Prussian junkers or American business men; either may
capture a state to serve their ends.
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