February i6, 1922" 



NATURE 



199 



tion from education is obvious when a Committee 



III make such drastic proposals without giving 



ine assurance that the recommendations would not 



(luce national efficiency. It may be easy to deal 



ith educational finance on the shipping and rail- 



ly plan, but it is not possible to deal with educa- 



■n on the same plan. Education means something 



uger than business accountancy. It means know- 



Ige, vision, a sense of humanity, and some recog- 



lion of the spiritual aspects of civilisation. 



Apart from considerations such as these. Sir Eric 



< '.t'ddes and his Committee have made one or two 



rdinal blunders. Even as business men they have 



iwn themselves singularly short-sighted. To de- 



inive the universities of 300,000/. a year may re- 



lie\e the income tax of one-twentieth of a penny for 



moment, but in the long run the effect will be 



istrous. This is just the sort of policy which 



!>ples the nation in the higher reaches of com- 



and industry. Similarly, as business men 



ought to know that, in a profession such as 



ling, in which the financial rewards at the best 



meagre compared with those in other walks of 



, there is a salary limit below which it is impos- 



|le to recruit the profession with men. During 



past twenty years the statistics show a serious 



itive decline in the number of men teachers. If 



proposals of the Committee are adopted, the 



gline will be still more serious. In another 



)ect the Committee seems to us to have gone 



ray: Its proper function was not to show how 



[reduce the quantum and efficiency of education, 



rather to demonstrate how these could be main- 



led, if at all possible, at a lower cost to the 



itry, and it has failed to do this. 



)n the other hand, we are not disposed to main- 



that our educational system is flawless, or that 



cannot be administered with greater efficiency and 



fless cost. Undoubtedly there could be a saving 



round, and one might very reasonably begin 



the Board of Education itself, which, to a 



pge extent, seems to have escaped the financial 



ticisms of the Committee. Nor are we disposed 



take too seriously the Committee's observations 



irding the impotence of this Board, which 



hitherto shown no great anxiety to limit its 



powers. 



■"ortunately, however, another and wider tribunal 



decide upon the larger questions of policy in- 



ired in the Report, and, in the light of know- 



le and criticism, determine the value or other- 



of the recommendations. There is little doubt 



'to the verdict ; most assuredly these recommenda- 



NO. 2729, VOL. 109] 



tions will not be endorsed in their entirety by Parlia- 

 ment or by the more thoughtful section of the com- 

 munity outside Parliament. National efficiency and 

 progress must be the first consideration, and any 

 action which would lower the standard of either 

 of these may be immediate retrenchment, but would 

 not be economy. 



A^ 



The Supply of Gaseous Fuel. 



Modern Gasworks Practice. By Alwyne Meade. 

 Second edition, entirely rewritten and greatly 

 enlarged. Pp. xii-j-815. (London: Benn Bros., 

 Ltd., 192 1.) 55^. 



MONG the many truths brought home to the 

 country by the two national struggles in 

 which it has recently been engaged, the i^nportance 

 of the coal distillation industry stands out conspicu- 

 ously. The rational treatment of coking coal by 

 such means before its combustion (a process which 

 has been carried out in our chief cities for 

 more than a century) provided during the 

 world war enormous quantities of material for 

 belligerent use. It was no less effective as 

 an instrument of social peace during the coal 

 war, for our town-dwellers of all classes 

 throughout the length and breadth of the 

 land satisfied much of their requirements for the 

 cooking of food, and in most cases for lighting 

 their homes, by a mixture consisting chiefly of the 

 lightest of the common gases, hydrogen, fortified 

 with carbon in various combinations, produced in 

 the main by the direct or indirect gasification of 

 coal. Its centrally organised provision has now 

 become a necessity of modern life in all our towns 

 and most of our villages, just as are those for the 

 supply of water and electric energy, and for the 

 disposal of sewage. These have been almost wholly 

 developed as engineering problems, though in the 

 three latter cases the mathematician and the chemist, 

 the physicist and the bacteriologist, have from time 

 to time laid down certain principles to be followed. 

 It will not, however, be denied that the finger of 

 science was too often disregarded in working out 

 the processes ancillary to the production of town's 

 gas, and it is interesting, therefore, to observe that 

 a change of this attitude is indicated in the pages 

 of this latest work upon the subject. 



In this exhaustive compilation, profusely illus- 

 trated with diagrams and working drawings, the 

 technologist's debt to science, whether in the com- 

 pounding of refractories or their usage, the com- 

 position of the coal or of its treatment in the cold 



