564 



The Review of Reviews. 



SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL. 



INFANT MORTALITY. 



The death of a child appeals in a peculiar way 

 to the emotional side of human nature, remarks 

 M. Greenwood, Jnr. , at the commencement of 

 his paper on the above subject in the Eugenics 

 Review. He summarises the opinion current in 

 influential quarters as follows : — 



A certain number of deaths occurring in the first 

 year of life are due to causes entirely beyond human 

 control. Some children born with grave developmental 

 anomalies of the circulatory or nervous systems are 

 examples ; some cases of premature birth are also 

 instances. These cases, however, although absolutely 

 numerous, form but an insignificant proportion of the 

 whole number of infant deaths. The bulk of the infant 

 deaths are the result of bad feeding, bad housing, 

 insufficient and unskilled attention, an unhygienic 

 environment in the widest sense of the word. The 

 removal of these immediate destructive conditions is 

 within the sphere of an enlightened system of public 

 administration, and we may hope, with a sufficient ex- 

 penditure of money, brains, and energy, enormously 

 to reduce the present rate of infant mortality. In one 

 sentence, a low or high rate of infant mortality is 

 mainly a matter of good or bad public health adminis- 

 tration, actual or possible. 



After discussing the question fully, and giving 

 the opinions of foreign specialists, along with 

 the result of their research, he sounds a note of 

 warning : — 



What may be termed a collective sense of pity, the 

 will to bring light to them that sit in darkness, to raise 

 those who have been struck down in the battle of life, 

 is a development of the national conscience which few 

 outside a tiny circle of extremists would desire to arrest. 

 Even were it true that public efforts to lower the rate 

 of infant mortality by increasing the amount of atten- 

 tion otficially devoted to nurslings did not produce all 

 the results claimed for them, it does not follow that 

 they should be diminished. But we must remember 

 that the bulk of persons with whom ultimately the 

 decision rests, those who find the money, are neither 

 very highly educated nor very logically minded. If 

 the public-spirited men and women appealing to their 

 fellow citizens on behalf of the children make 

 exaggerated claims with respect to the measures they 

 advocate, they may at first receive more support than 

 would be accorded to modest pretensions. In the long 

 run, however, a Nemesis will overtake them. There 

 will be the usual revulsion, the customary recoil from 

 exaggerated credulity to exaggerated scepticism. 

 Before now useful therapeutic measures have been dis- 

 credited in consequence of the exaggerated claims made 

 on their behalf in the first flush of enthusiasm. 



EMPIRE UNIVERSITIES. 



The Editorial comment of the Brifish 

 Columbia Magazine deals with the recent Con- 

 gress of Universities of the Empire held in 

 London. This Congress was described by Prince 

 Arthur of Connaught as " a sort of quintessence 

 of the wisdom of ages and the brain-power of 



to-day," and to British Columbia, which islaying 

 the foundations of one of the great universities 

 of the future, was of special interest : — 



The keynote of the whole Congress was given in the 

 splendid uttera.ice of Lord Ro&ebery's inaugural 

 address. It is the voice of the scholar and the states- 

 man. " I do not think any intelligent observer can 

 watch the course of the world without seeing that a 

 great movement of unrest is passing over it. Whether 

 for good or for evil — I cannot doubt for good — it is 

 affecting not merely England and the Empire, but is 

 affecting the entire universe. After centuries of dead- 

 ness it is affecting the East. The Ottoman Empire is 

 apparently in the throes of preparation for some new 

 development. More striking even than that, it has 

 touched the dormant millions of China, which for the 

 first time in its history appears likely to take a new 

 start and a new development, a new progress to some 

 ideal of which we ourselves are incapable. 



" Is not the whole world in the throes of a travail 

 to produce something new to us, something perhaps 

 new to history, something perhaps better than anything 

 we have yet known, which it may take long to perfect 

 or to achieve, but which, at any rate, means a new 

 evolution? We want all the help we can get 

 for the purpose of guiding that movement, for the 

 purpose of letting it proceed on safe lines that will not 

 lead to shipwreck. We need all the men that the 

 universities can give us, not merely the higher intelli- 

 gences that I spoke of, but also the men right through 

 the framework of society, from the highest to the lowest, 

 whose character and virtues can influence and inspire 

 others. I am looking to-day at the universities simply 

 as machines for producing men — the best kind of 

 machines for producing the best kind of men — who may 

 help to preserve our Empire, and even the universe 

 itself, from the grave conditions under which we seem 

 likely to labour." 



STANDARD OF CHILD 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



After a deluge of relativity, men's minds 

 now-a-days are reverting more and more to 

 the quest after standards. In a paper in the 

 Forum bv Edward M. Wever, on what the 

 schools do ■ not teach, we have described, 

 though not under that name, a standard of 

 intelligence for children. Much effort, he says, 

 has recently been directed to the making of a 

 trustworthy scale of intelligence. A distinction 

 is now made between the age of the child 

 chronologically, physiologically, intellectually, 

 and pedagogically. The Binet tests are to 

 ascertain the child's true mental age. The 

 writer thus describes the tests : — 



The eight tasks that any child should creditably per- 

 form, who has a mental age of seven years, are (i) to 

 indicate the omissions in a figure drawn in outline; 

 (2) to give the number of one's ten fingers; (3) to copy 

 a written phrase; {4) to copy a triangle and a diamond- 

 shaped figure; (5) to repeat three numbers; (6) to 

 describe an engraving; (7) to count thirteen separate 

 pennies; (8) to name four pieces of money. 



