As the British prime minister WilliamGladstone put it at the time in the Edinburgh Review, speaking of the remarkablePrussian success in the Franco-Prussian War: ‘Undoubtedly, the conduct of thecampaign, on the German side, has given a marked triumph to the cause ofsystematic popular education.’

Additionally, Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military–industrial–academic complex".[16]