Note 8 — ANNO DOMINI 2071.

“That these obstacles were at least not insuperable you may easily gather from the fact that, even in the nineteenth century, the compulsory measure existed in some parts of Germany, and met with no opposition. Of course, on its application to other countries, some difficulties had at first to be surmounted; for all novelties meet with opposition somewhere, and all changes are fraught with more or less evil somehow. At first the measure had to be occasionally enforced by the arm of the law, but a very few years sufficed for the legal clause to grow into a popular habit; and the present generation, grown up under its beneficent influence, is so deeply convinced of the indispensability of some elementary knowledge in every member of society, that the law might be safely repealed without fear that any school would lose a single pupil.”8