19 
years in shaping higher education so as to direct it more 
into our industrial, commercial, and technical activities, 
and possibly in developing the scope of the secondary schools 
to meet this end. 
But when all our organisation had been done, what most 
counted was the teacher. Really successful teaching deman- 
ded from the teacher great skill, energy, and perseverance, 
much devotion and self-sacrifice. Teaching could be made 
the hardest of all occupations or the easiest. Given self- 
sacrifice and the rest, teaching, though hard, was full of 
absorbing interest, or it could be conducted in a very per- 
functory fashion. Under present-day conditions, given a 
head teacher with a high standard for the work of himself 
and his staff and his children — a standard pursued with 
devotion and self-sacrifice— and you could not give too much 
honour and emolument. For over fifty years we had been 
building a system of national education which still had many 
imperfections and many lacuna. We were learning the value 
of thoroughness of education, and we should need greater 
effort devoted to national efficiency. The problem for us 
was to get out of the Britisher the best of his capabilities, 
and to cultivate to the highest possible extent individual 
and collective efficiency, and to direct all our efforts to true 
and noble ends, and Britain would still stand four square 
to the blasts of the murderous Hun. 
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