The following is an extract from an open letter by Professor Schmoller, one of the most influential in the law faculty of the University of Berlin. Its publication has called forth a storm of controversy in the German newspapers. The fact that German students frequently spend the first half of their university course in idleness is not denied, even by those who oppose the views of the learned professor, and the chief argument of defence is that these years of idleness make up the only season of romance in the otherwise unbroken life of examinations and position-hunting to which German youths are doomed.

What I want to see done away with is the officially organized untruth, which excites my indignation every time I have to carry it into execution; every professor twice a year testifies that dozens of students have been present at his lectures, who, he knows, have never set foot in his room. It has happened repeatedly that students guilelessly presented to me Professor Eck's Pandects for me to sign, thereby admitting that they did not know either Professor Eck or me by sight.

I don't want to force anybody to hear tedious lectures; I've cut many a lecture myself, and know well enough that hard reading and industry in his own room are in the end more important, perhaps, to a student than hearing university courses. But I cannot persuade myself that the industry is to be found in the case of those who attend no lectures the first two or four semesters, and calculate from the very be ginning on the ability of a paid "coach" to cram them up for the examination. The number of these men, however, is very large - among the law students certainly from one fourth to one third; and so the question simply is, Cannot a system of marking, without compulsion, be employed? To all industrious students this would be a matter of indifference. Would it not save the majority of the lower layer of our future government officials from that "bumming" which must occur when one wastes from one to three years of his life? The academic freedom would not be affected in the leas; by this plan, only the right to conceal laziness from parents, guardians and the university officers would be put an end to.

I admit that the carrying out of such a change would not be easy. If it be deemed unworthy the dignity of a student to be thus daily controlled, let me merely call attention to our great military educational establishments. The officers in the war academy and in the artillery school, who are, on the average, much older than university students, who are in possession of offices and rank, and are many of them married men, must daily put up with having their attendance at course of instruction marked. - N. Y. Post.