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REV. H. COSTLEY WHITE, M.A., ON 



in which on other grounds they secretly cherish but little 

 faith. But why, in the face of so much demerit, are the pubhc 

 schools more overcrowded than they have been at any time in 

 their history ? If the verdict against them on so many charges 

 be one of at any rate limited condemnation, the sentence seems 

 to have been pronounced by a strangely Gilbertian court. 

 Several contributory causes are at work, some of them of a 

 temporary character due to the unusual conditions of the last 

 six years. What the increase in population has been since 1911 

 we must await the census returns next month to know. But 

 whereas there will doubtless prove to have been at least a normal 

 decennial growth, in spite of certain obvious counter-conditions, 

 the normal provision of school accommodation throughout the 

 country for public elementary and public secondary education, 

 which was required in order to keep pace with a growing popu- 

 lation, has not been made. Hence the overflow from public 

 elementary schools has swelled the numbers of the public 

 secondary schools. These in turn have passed on their surplus 

 to the grammar schools and smaller public schools, and by a 

 continuation of the process of pressure as it were from below 

 the great public schools have expanded to their utmost limits. 

 Together with this movement, which is a merely arithmetical 

 one, there has developed in the country a real interest and 

 belief in education. This is a happy awakening in our national 

 life. The experiences of the war have brought home the 

 reflection that education is power — power to live a fuller and 

 nobler life — to thousands who in former days w^ere indifferent 

 or sceptical. Nor, I think, should we overlook the influence 

 in the last few years exercised upon the popular imagination and 

 understanding by the fact that for the first time in our annals 

 the administration of public education is in the hands not of a 

 politician, but of a practised educationist. At the same time 

 many of those who valued scholastic training and wished to 

 provide it for their sons in the best form that lay open to them 

 have had unprecedented financial opportunity to gratify their 

 wish. But this is not all. Pubhc school education has been 

 throughout the war, and still is, one of the few commodities 

 that can be purchased at a cost considerably below the current 

 standard of prices, in some cases indeed at a figure below its 

 cost price. We are officially informed that prices a few weeks 

 ago were 176 per cent, above the pre-war rate — a computation 

 which perhaps included the cost of many things that nobody 



