NOTES 285 



A Shakespeare Theatre (Sir R. Ross) 



The proposal to institute a national theatre for the performance of Shake- 

 speare's plays and other great dramatic works has been before the British 

 public for many years, but always with no results. Everyone is familiar 

 with Sir Frank Benson's fine efforts in this direction ; and at a lecture on 

 Shakespeare delivered before the British Academy by Mr. John Masefield 

 on the 27th of April, he reiterated the hope that this proposal would mature 

 some day. He said that we take great interest in all the dead matters con- 

 cerning Shakespeare — where he lived, his business affairs, etc. — but that we 

 did nothing to honour him in the proper way, namely, by providing a place 

 where the public may be educated by seeing his works performed in their 

 entirety. British apathy towards all intellectual effort is an extraordinary 

 and disquieting phenomenon. Some years ago I suggested to Mr. Fisher, 

 the Minister of Education, the advisability of instituting, solely in the interests 

 of education, a House of Poetry where readings of our great poetical literature 

 could be given for all to hear. The cost would have amounted, let us say, 

 to one thousand pounds a year ; but Mr. Fisher turned down the proposal, 

 while the sum which we are now spending for the alleged education of the 

 British public has, I understand, doubled or trebled in the last few years. 

 The fact is, that our education is based upon wrong principles : we teach our 

 public to be little men, and not great men ; we hold no real ideal before them ; 

 we teach them little more than what any young people can teach themselves 

 if they take the trouble ; and the fact remains that the vast mass of the 

 public are uneducated. The real great educators are not the schoolmasters 

 but the poets, the men of science, and the historians ; and nine-tenths of 

 the vast sums expended upon our education-fallacies are really more or less 

 wasted, except as regards the primary education of small children. Frenchmen 

 and Germans are better educated, because more rationally educated. English 

 people are becoming exceedingly dull people, interested only in games and 

 party politics ; and they will not be able to hold their own in the world 

 much longer unless they look at things from a higher point of view. 



Mount Everest 



We mentioned in Science Progress of January 192 1 that proposals had 

 been made to ascend Mount Everest in the Himalayas, the highest mountain 

 in the world. Reports in the Times as to the progress made are now fre- 

 quently appearing. Though Mount Everest is just visible from Darjeeling 

 behind the mighty Kinchin junga, the enterprising mountaineers have to 

 make a long round before they are able to approach it with any hope of 

 success, because they must ascend it from the northern, that is, the Tibetan, 

 side. By June last they had reached as far as a place called Tingri Dzong. 

 From this part of the country Mount Everest stands out all by itself, " a 

 wonderfully shaped peak towering several thousand feet above its neighbours, 

 entirely without rival." That is not what had been expected. Apparently 

 it is very inaccessible even from this direction. Colonel Howard-Bury 

 gives some interesting details of the Buddhist convent at Shekai Dzong. 

 The altitudes may be imagined when it is understood that the Tibetan plains 

 here are themselves as high as the summit of Mont Blanc, and that Everest 

 soars the same distance still higher above them. 



A Growing Cancer 



Those who possess the laudable desire to see our own country always as 

 great and as prosperous as possible view with disquiet what seems to be a 

 growing tendency amongst our countrymen to abuse their fatherland on 

 every occasion, to find fault with everything that our Government does, and 

 to accuse our nationals of crimes which they excuse in our enemies. Criticism 



19 



