NoveMBER 15, 1918] 
The financial test shows a deplorable in- 
feriority to the United States and Germany, 
and must indicate roughly the relative im- 
portance attached to higher education in these 
countries and our own. Thus the total in- 
comes of state-aided modern universities and 
university colleges in England and Wales is 
about £700,000, of which 34 per cent. is de- 
rived from parliamentary grants. The corre- 
sponding figures for Germany are nearly 
£2,000,000 and 80 per cent., and the Univer- 
sity of Berlin alone receives from the state 
an annual grant nearly equal to that given to 
all the university institutions of England and 
Wales. The annual income of the American 
universities and colleges is £20,000,000, of 
which £7,000,000 is at the disposal of the 
colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. 
Private benefactions towards higher education 
in the United States amounts to more than 
£5,000,000 a year. With us they do not reach 
one twentieth part of this sum. 
The only possible inference from these fig- 
ures is that, as compared with the United 
States and Germany, our higher education is 
lamentably inferior in quantity. We are not 
producing trained leadership sufficient for our 
needs, and the diffusion of knowledge is piti- 
fully inadequate to the requirements of a mod- 
ern state. If an analysis of the kind of train- 
ing received by our governing classes were 
possible, it would be found that scientific know]- 
edge was exceedingly rare and even non-exist- 
ent in some quarters, where it is essential. Sir 
Robert Hadfield states that in one important 
government institution devoted to educational 
work, about 90 per cent. of the principal offi- 
cials have received a classical training, and 
only 5 per cent. have been educated in science. 
Mistakes and inertia in the direction of public 
policy and in administration are thus ex- 
plained. There is not enough knowledge of the 
right kind in governments, departments of 
state, or parliaments, while, in the world of 
industry, a sufficient supply of trained research 
workers can not at present be obtained. Until 
this requirement is fulfilled, the development 
of new industries on a large scale must be im- 
practicable. 
SCIENCE 
481 
The excellent report of Sir Joseph Thom- 
son’s committee on the position of natural sci- 
ence in education throws a flood of light on our 
national deficiencies, and points the way to 
educational reconstruction. The committee 
justly claim for sound science teaching that: 
It quickens and cultivates directly the faculty 
of observation. It teaches the learner to reason 
from facts which come to his notice. By it the 
power of rapid and accurate generalization is 
strengthened. Without it there is real danger of 
the mental habit of method and arrangement being 
never acquired. 
All thoughtful students of our public affairs 
must admit that, alike in peace and in war, our 
leaders in all classes have shown a certain lack 
of the qualities which science training can im- 
part, and that national interests have suffered 
grieviously for this reason. The power of rea- 
soning from facts and of “rapid and accurate 
generalization,” combined with the habit of 
“method and arrangement,” is the best pos- 
sible qualification for cabinet ministers as well 
as for all leadership on lower planes; and the 
British Science Guild has persistently urged 
that science should take a prominent place in 
the education of our public servants. 
The committee recall the fact that the neg- 
lect of science was noted by a Royal Commis- 
sion on the public schools more than half a 
century ago. The position of scientific in- 
struction in the United Kingdom was also sur- 
veyed in detail in 1872-75 by a royal commis- 
sion, of which the Duke of Devonshire was 
president and Sir Norman Lockyer, the 
founder of this guild, secretary. But although 
there has been advance in recent years, it has 
required the shock of a world war to make us 
broad to our shortcomings. The champions of 
classical learning are now moderate in their 
claims. The Council for Humanistic Studies 
declares that the future citizen should possess 
knowledge, not only of the physical structure 
of the world, but of “the deeper interests and 
problems of politics, thought and human life,” 
and that he needs “ scientific method and a be- 
lief in knowledge even more than physical sci- 
ence.” This marks a change of attitude, and 
the advocates of the dominance of science in 
