Statistics as to students in the high school and universities of Germany appeared lately in the Medizinische Klinik. The brief record which brings us up to the present summer semester, holds the substance of an interlude in German history which marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another as yet unfinished.

Alike in study, in manufacture, in war, in efficiency itself, which wastes the life of the young, Germany has an extraordinary vitality; and it is not too much to say that, among these many efforts only in the universities is the place of this vitality taken by the vivacity and industry of women; in the universities and high schools the nation shows the clearest signs of the spur. Both schools lost the greater proportion of their students, but the number of women has increased. Of 66,000 young men at the high schools, 12,000 were students during the past year, while 54,000, or 81 per cent. were in the army. Of the 52,000 university students 10,000 remained at the universities, while 42,000, or 77 per cent. were serving their country. . . .

The greatest difference between the university year 1914-1915 and the past year is marked by the increase of women students. In the former year there were 900 women at German universities; there are now 4,820, of whom 200 are serving the Fatherland in various ways. Of these women 4,600 are Germans. There are 150 students, not German, who come mostly from Austria, Switzerland and America. Evidently it is no longer Teutonic to exclude women; they now make up 9 per cent. of the students, as compared with 4.4 per cent. in former years.

The studies chosen by women are matters of interest. It is chiefly to serve the needs of the empire that German women enter the universities. There are 1,160 women studying medicine; many others study branches of medicine, like dentistry and pharmacy, and only a small minority are studying law, theology and sciences.

The studies of the men are of the same practical and significant kind. The selection of medicine is marked and gives a clue to the present lack of doctors. Men are leaving classical studies for physics, chemistry and physiology. Most of the women are studying at the University of Berlin, but even the new universities of Frankfurt and Warsaw have a considerable number.

Formerly there were many foreign students. Until 1915 the number was 4,750, but it has now fallen to 1,505. The drop is due to the departure of enemy students and the decrease of students from friendly and neutral countries. Still, all alien and enemy students have not gone; there are sixty-two Russian students, two English five Italian and one Belgian, but they are doubtless of German origin, or possibly a cosmopolitan class of mosaic nationality. New York Sun.