198 



NATURE 



[May -3, 1917 



at least eight hours a week up to eighteen. These 

 classes are " to include general, practical, and tech- 

 nical education," and they will probably in many cases 

 take the form of trade schools carrying on the educa- 

 tion of young workers who have found employment. 

 The advantages of manual training in primary schools 

 are not sufficiently emphasised in the report. Manual 

 dexterity can be acquired at an early age, and boys 

 might thus gain a truer conception of the dignity of 

 hand labour, while experience shows that technical or 

 elementary scientific knowledge, if attained by prac- 

 tical work, becomes a permanent possession. Greater 

 differentiation between the work of rural and of urban 

 schools is another pressing need. 



No one can maintain that our system of primary 

 education has been a failure. As the Presi- 

 dent of the Board of Education pointed out 

 the other day in his admirable speech, we 

 owe to it, in part at least, the new armies 

 which have brilliantly upheld our national honour on 

 many stricken fields. But we believe that education 

 can do more in the future in developing moral strength 

 and in inculcating the sense of duty and good citizen- 

 ship. Mr. Fisher has laid down as the ideal of his 

 office that it should build the foundation " for a 

 patriotic and social education worthy of the genius of 

 our people, and a fitting monument to the great 

 impulse which is animating the whole f)eople in the 

 war," We all ho(>e he will be spared to realise that 

 high ideal. 



In the tremendous tasks which lie before the nation. 

 Government can play an important part. Statesman- 

 ship worthy of the name must lead, inspire, direct, and 

 initiate. In guiding education, assigning defined func- 

 tions to experts carefully selected for special purposes, 

 exercising their enormous patrpnae'e with a single eye 

 to knowledge and efficiency, as well as in encouraging 

 the proe^ress of applied science, and guarding against 

 legislation which mav hamper trade and industnal 

 activity, there is ample scope for the action of Govern- 

 ments. Interference in the manaf^ement of business 

 enterprises will usually be harmful, since, for well- 

 known reasons, the conduct of business affairs by 

 ofl^cials in democratic countries is rarely efiicient. 



Some tariff adjustments may be found desirable; 

 but the idea that national prosperity can, in the long 

 run, be assured bv fiscal devices is baseless. In so 

 far as tariffs can stimulate the operation of natural 

 laws, they mav be beneficial. When thev aim at pro- 

 ducing- artificial conditions in defiance of law, they 

 usuallv defeat their ends. Thev mav be used legiti- 

 matelv. and we have been told that thev will be used 

 to further the develooment of the resources of the 

 Emoire. and the object having been attained, they can 

 be dispensed with. 



I have only dealt with reconstruction in the material 

 sense, which cannot alone guarantee the purer and 

 happier national life which we all earnestly desire. 

 That can be reached onlv if the whole nation will, in 

 the difficult times that lie before it, follow the shining 

 examoles of dutv. discioHne, and self-sacrifice which 

 have been set by our heroes on the seas, in the field, 

 and in the air. The men who have constantly faced 

 death and shared in daneers and hardshios wHl come 

 back with a new outlook on life. In the trenches there 

 have been no oarty divisions, no attempts to set class 

 ag-ainst class, but onlv shared efforts which are briner- 

 ing certain victory to a sacred common cause. May 

 we not hone that the e^reat lessons learned by our 

 best manhood in the storm and stress of war will 

 react uoon the nation as a wnole and render the formjs 

 of politics to which we have p^fown accustomed impos- 

 sible in the future? The strife of parties and of indi- 

 viduals contendingf for office and power, the intrigues 



NO. 2479, VOL. 99] 



which have not wholly ceased during this crisis in our 

 fate, the machinery by which party chests are filled 

 and constituencies are manipulated, the false discipline 

 which, by preventing men from voting according to 

 their knowledge and conscience, vitiates the decisions 

 of Parliament upon vital issues, the triumph of words 

 over experience and powers of action — all these things 

 and more have had their day, and we begin to realise 

 the inevitable rfsults. 



Reconstruction in the highest and fullest sense can be 

 achieved only by a great national party, seeking solely 

 the welfare of the commonwealth, examining every 

 public question from the view-point of the interests of 

 the community as a whole, and choosing leaders irre- 

 spective of class or party, who can be trusted to bring 

 a lofty patriotism and trained intelligence to bear upon 

 the vastly complex and far-reaching problems with 

 which we are now confronted. If these are only 

 visions, then I see no certain prospects of restoring 

 the shaken fabric of the State, of rebuilding our pros- 

 perity on a broader and an enduring foundation, of 

 healing the open wounds in our body politic, and of 

 w-resting lasting good from the gigantic evils of war. 



! UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 



; INTELLIGENCE. 



^ St. Andrews. — The University museum has just 

 I received the entire collection of local and other birds, 

 ' many very rare, made by Misses Baxter and Rintoul (of 

 Largo and Lahill), for years known as authorities on 

 ornithology, and joint editors of the Scottish Naturalist. 

 They have, moreover, in interpolating these, gone 

 over the entire University collection of birds and re- * 

 arranged and labelled them. Accompanying this note- 

 worthy and valuable gift, for most are exquisite ex- 

 amples of the taxidermist's art, are eight cases with 

 drawers containing named collections of the eggs of 

 birds and of Lepidoptera and other insects, as well as 

 a few skulls and stuffed mammals. 



Dr. p. M.-vrie has been appointed to succeed the late 

 Prof, Dejerine as professor of clinical neurology in the 

 University of Paris. 



Fraulein A. M. Curtius, recently appointed lec- 

 turer in French by the philosophical faculty of Leip- 

 zig, is, according to the Nieuwe Courant, the first 

 woman on the staff of a German university. 



Three research fellowships in, respectively, patho- 

 logy and bacteriology, medicine, and surgery have 

 been endowed in the University of Chicago by Dr. 

 F. R. Logan, who has given a sum providing an 

 income of 600Z. a year for the purpose. 



In his presidential address to the Institution of 

 Mechanical Enjrineers on .April 20, Mr. Michael Long- 

 ridge considered the provision in this country of tech- 

 nical education for engineers. Many persons, he said, 

 still fail to understand that the manual training which 

 enabled an apprentice to become a master craftsman 

 in times gone by does not suffice to turn a schoolboy 

 into an engineer to-day. Differentiation is needed 

 now in the training of the various classes of engineers 

 and workmen, aijd it is this lack of differentiation 

 which seems to be one cause of the inefficiency of our 

 technical education relatively to its cost. The educa- 

 tion available for the higher ranks of engineering is 

 fairly satisfactory m Mr. Longridge's opinion, but that 

 provided for the workman, both general and technical, 

 is most unsatisfactory. " Yet the workman must have 

 better education to qualify him to rise if capable, and 

 to give those who have not the ability to rise some 

 interests outside their daily work and football matches, 

 and also to lessen drunkenness. The need will become 



