August 17, 1916] 



NATURE 



501 



lUE PRESIDENCY OF THE BOARD OF 

 EDUCATION. 



THE office of President of the Board of Educa- 

 tion has again become the shuttlecock of 

 politics, pointedly illustrated by the remark so 

 aptly made by a member of the House in the course 

 of the important debate of July i8 on the introduc- 

 tion by Mr. Henderson of the Education Estimates, 

 that " I have sat for eleven years in this House, 

 and I have heard during that time no fewer than 

 five Ministers make their statements on educa- 

 tional matters." It is thus that we are content 

 to deal with the vital question of education. The 

 circumstances of the war have forced home upon 

 the attention of the least reflective of politicians 

 the claims of the subject to the serious attention 

 of the nation. 



The course of the debate, in which members of 

 very diverse political views participated, indicates 

 that the time is fully ripe for a drastic review of 

 the question in all its bearings. To do this effec- 

 tively requires that there should be placed in con- 

 trol of the department, v.hich should now take 

 an equal place in the hierarchy of Government 

 with the other great departments of the State alike 

 in respect of the salary attached to it and of the 

 dignity and responsibility in which it is held, a 

 man of large and clear vision, of intimate know- 

 ledge, and of deep sympathy with the educational 

 well-being of all classes of the people, and who is 

 prepared with a single mind to devote all his time 

 and thought to the consideration and solution of 

 the serious problems which beset it. We have 

 got as the most pressing need of the time to create 

 in the English nation, as distinguished, say, from 

 the Scotch, a genuine belief in the value of educa- 

 tion as the true and only uplifting and sustaining 

 force in the spiritual life and continued progress 

 of the people. This can only have some chance 

 of realisation in the event of the office of Secretary 

 of State for Education — since that should be its 

 rightful designation — being in the hands of such 

 a.' man as is here described, who enjoys the con- 

 fidence of the people and is prepared to regard 

 the office, not as a stepping-stone or mere adjunct 

 to some other, but as one demanding a continuity 

 of thought and policy throughout the whole time 

 his Government is in power. Such a Minister 

 should be prepared, not merely from his place in 

 Parliament, but from time to time in various great 

 centres of population, to set forth his policy and 

 to seek to arouse in the people by the enunciation 

 of his ideals and by the methods of their realisa- 

 tion a great enthusiasm for education as the true 

 foundation of the national salvation. It is not a 

 question of a classical education versus an educa- 

 tion in science, nor a question of industrial and 

 comm.ercial supremacy, nor of one class as dis- 

 1 tinguished from another, but of the right upbring- 

 • ing and development of all the children of the 

 j nation according to their gifts and capabilities. 

 t To a man of such distinction as is here fore- 

 j shadowed would inevitably be committed a full 

 inquiry under his presidency and with the aid 

 I not merely of officials, but also with that of the 



NO. 2442, VOL. 97] 



best available thought and ripe experience of every 

 class, into the present conditions of education as 

 exhibited throughout its entire range, from the 

 kindergarten up to and including the university, 

 with a view to its unification and to the establish- 

 ment of a broad highway along which the gifted 

 children of the nation might freely travel. This, 

 as the course of the recent debate shows, is the 

 psychological moment, and it should be seized 

 with a firm hand. It will mean, as Mr. Henderson 

 puts it, "money and more money." It w^ill 

 demand a higher and more attractive status for the 

 teacher, with a clear avenue for the highest public 

 service of which he is capable. But it will result 

 that the coming generation of Englishmen will 

 possibly be as receptive and as appreciative of the 

 fruits of investigation, often enough due to the 

 patience and genius of their own countrymen, as 

 are the foreign enemies whose culture they hold 

 in such disdain. 



EXPERIMENTS IN AERODYNAMICSA 



THE volume before us gives some of the first 

 results obtained in the four-foot wind tunnel 

 which has been erected at the Massachusetts In- 

 stitute of Technology, and consists of ten sections 

 dealing with various phases of the work. The 

 first section gives a detailed description of the 

 wind tunnel, the design of which is practically 

 identical with that of the four-foot tunnel at the 

 National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. This 

 is followed by a discussion of the dimensional 

 theory as applied to aerodynamic problems. The 

 theory is treated in a simple and easily followed 

 manner, but due credit has not been given to 

 Lord Rayleigh, who first proposed the theory in 

 this form. Lord Rayleigh is mentioned, however, 

 in this connection in a later section of the book. 

 Section 3 deals with the inclined tube alcohol 

 manometer for measuring small pressure differ- 

 ences. The results of the calibration of such an 

 instrument against a standard Chattock mano- 

 meter are given. The inclined tube instrument 

 certainly has no advantages over the Chattock 

 form, and experience at the National Physical 

 Laboratory shows that the latter is exceedingly 

 convenient for use. The theory of the pitot tube 

 is considered, and experimental results are ap- 

 pended to show that several types of combined 

 pitot and static pressure tubes give identical cali- 

 brations. 



An interesting comparison with the National 

 Physical Laboratory is given in the form of char- 

 acteristic curves for the w'ing section known as 

 R.A.F.6, and this comparison shows in a striking 

 manner the accuracy of wind tunnel experiments. 

 The results obtained in the two wind tunnels agree 

 to the order of about 2 per cent., which is as 

 good as the accuracy of manufacture of the 

 models will allow. 



The question of the steering of a dirigible is 

 dealt with in one section of the volume, and the 

 conclusion is drawn that it is almost out of the 



1 "Report on Wind Tunnel Experiments In Aerodynamics." Smithsonian 

 Miscellaneous Collections, vol. Ixii., No. 4. . 



