XXiv. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
preventable, being solely the result of ignorance. It is an 
established fact that proper mastication and inselivation of 
all food practically prevents indigestion, which is the cause 
of nearly all disease. Yet this fact, which if properly 
instilled into children would vastly improve the race, is 
ignored and instead they are thoroughly drilled in such lists 
as the names of the principal capes in England! 
One other point in the State control of education is 
badly neglected. We offcially test lawyers, and dentists 
and State school teachers and others ere they practise, and 
yet we allow anyone who pleases to start a private school 
and charge the public presumably for education supplied. 
The education of any people is of quite sufficient import- 
ance to justify the State in seeing that all who take part 
in it are qualified for the positions they take up either in 
State or private schools. 
I have already pointed out that the State does not 
control the subjects or methods in the small amount of 
secondary education provided. It is therefore not much use 
to criticise them, but I would like to point out that the 
classical education still holds pride of place in the Grammar 
Schools, and commercial education in the Technical Colleges. 
As the Head Master of the leading Grammar School has 
often pointed out, the Southern Universities determine the 
subjects taught in our Grammar Schools, so until we provide 
a University of our own we must needs, at least for students 
intending to go South, accept their lists of subjects. I 
sincerely trust that when the University is established 
here, no foreign language, dead or alive, will be listed as 
compulsory in the matriculation, and that to obtain degrees 
in any one branch of knowledge it will not be necessary to 
show a knowledge of subjects in a totally distinct branch 
of knowledge. One of the most famous Professors of 
Edinburgh University, failed to take his arts—which is a 
literary—degree, because his brain was not built on 
mathematical lines and he failed to pass in mathematics. 
Why should he have been deprived of a degree that required 
brain power of one kind, because he had not brain power 
of a totally different kind ? 
While I would be sorry to see the classics entirely 
omitted from our educational system, I trust they 
