534 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Through his eyes we are made to realise the wonderful advance which Central 

 Africa has made during the first sixteen years of the twentieth century. The 

 author writes from quite a detached position, scarcely (as one might expect, seeing 

 that he was born a British subject) showing any special preference for British rule : 

 yet one lays down his book with a very optimistic feeling. If he has much that is 

 good to say of what France has done to justify her rule in Dahome and the Shari 

 basin, if he praises emphatically the Belgian administration of Congoland, his 

 summing up of the benefits which have accrued to Nyasaland, Ashanti, Nigeria, 

 Uganda, and East Africa from British intervention are really heartening to any 

 one who may have doubts about the ethics of the white man's interference with 

 the Negro and the Negroid. 



Incidentally, Mr. Duplessis supplies some interesting zoological, botanical, and 

 ethnological information worthy of note, and he is to be congratulated on writing 

 in a style which is accurate without pedantry, which is concise, and entirely free 

 from gush. Perhaps the only carping remark I might make is that his frequent 

 quotations from ancient and modern poets are not always apposite, and are usually 

 an irritating excrescence like needless paper frills round an excellent mutton chop. 



J- 



The Public School System in relation to the coming Conflict for National 

 Supremacy. By V. Seymour Bryant, M.A. [Pp. xvii + 78.] (London : 

 Longmans, Green & Co., 1917. Price is. 6d. net.1 



In Finland they have a pleasant custom of taking you at the lunch hour to a 

 sideboard crammed with all sorts of cold meats and delicacies which the uninitiated 

 are more than likely to mistake for the real repast, to which these numerous dishes 

 form but a preface. To a caviller, at least, Mr. V. S. Bryant's book on the public 

 school system suggests a certain number of resemblances to the Finnish mode of 

 serving the midday meal. First there is a hors d'aiuvrexn the shape of a foreword 

 by Lord Rayleigh, followed by another fresh from the author's pen, while the 

 preserved element (let us add it has no taste of the tin !) is represented by a third 

 preface on the essentials of a liberal education by Huxley, and finally the first 

 chapter bears the title of Introduction. 



Apart from this plethora of presentations and introductions, we can honestly 

 say we have rarely come across a book on education of so modest a compass with 

 so many good things in it, which are so pithily and convincingly put. Some 

 statements may seem too sweeping, but the note of good temper and sanity and 

 the desire to be fair are everywhere in evidence. The author is a public school 

 master, who has also had experience in industrial and commercial life. In a short 

 review one can only catalogue some of the many excellences of the book, while 

 adding here and there the briefest of comments. But if it is the moderate man in 

 English politics who really decides what shape reforms should ultimately take, 

 then Mr. Bryant s book, which seeks to provide a via media between the ultras on 

 the classical and scientific sides, should wield a good deal of influence. 



Mr. Bryant's case against the classical monopoly in our public schools seems 

 irresistible, thanks to the hard facts on which it is based. We learn from his 

 pages that, out of 1 14 schools, 92 are under classical head masters, and these contain 

 28,300 pupils out of a total of 33,400. Incidentally he informs us that Oxford at 

 least is in even a worse plight : of the 21 heads of colleges not one has had a 

 scientific education. En passant, the author disposes of the futile allegation 

 that reformers who desire to give Science its proper place in the school studies 



