98 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



years ago, Charles Lamb made his humorously querulous 

 complaint that the schoolmaster was abroad. Fifty years ago, 

 under the initiation of the Prince Consort, a vain attempt was 

 made to stir the dry bones of classical education, and to vivify 

 them by the vitalising influence of an infusion of science. 

 Forty years ago, after the tremendous impression made upon 

 the country by the rapid and overwhelming success of Prussia 

 and her German Allies against France, a success that we attri- 

 buted without much reason to the superior education of the 

 Germans, the first Act making education compulsory on every 

 child in these realms was passed ; and since then the system of 

 Education pursued in our schools and Universities has been 

 perpetually tinkered at and altered in this detail and in that. 



It is the terrific strain of racing that reveals the latent weak- 

 nesses of a motor car, and shows in what respect it needs 

 strengthening and improving, and it is the terrific strain of 

 such a war as the present one that reveals the weaknesses of 

 nations. The war has revealed to an astonished world the 

 most abysmal ignorance, not only here and there, but generally, 

 and almost universally, among the men to whom we have 

 entrusted the government of the country, both the politicians 

 whose cultivation of the arts of the politician has left them 

 neither time nor inclination for the cultivation of any other, 

 and the permanent officials of the Government, who gain their 

 position by passing examinations, and in whom, therefore, 

 extreme and discreditable ignorance is more surprising. Some 

 of these instances of ignorance were so gross and astounding, 

 and had so direct an effect upon the conduct of the war, that 

 a clamour broke out, demanding that our rulers should be 

 educated. A great gathering of men of the highest scientific 

 eminence formed itself into a Neglect of Science Committee, 

 and urged upon the Government and the nation the claims of 

 Natural Science to a position in the national scheme of educa- 

 tion. Committee after Committee has been appointed, has 

 sat, has reported, and no other Committee has produced so 

 admirable a report as that officially known as Cd. 901 1. 



In ordinary circumstances and in ordinary times, the appoint- 

 ment of the Committee would have served its purpose in allaying 

 public clamour, and in tiding the Government over an awkward 

 and embarrassing moment ; by the time its Report had 

 appeared, public interest in the subject would have evaporated, 



