70 
EDUCATION AND NATIONAL 
EFFICIENCY. 
By THOMAS FOSTER. March 14 th, 1916. 
Mr. Foster described “ education ” as training and 
“ efficiency ” as fitness. Training might produce desirable 
or undesirable types, useful members of society or useless 
ones, and the result of the training depended upon the 
motive or ideal by which the training is actuated. What 
we mean by national efficiency depended upon our ideal 
of what a nation should be. The lecturer therefore asked 
whether we, as a nation, had a definite and desirable ideal 
towards which to train. 
The lecturer then went on to speak of the clearly con- 
ceived German ideal of man being considered as existing 
solely for the state and said that Germany with this ideal 
of a" state-controlled life had a very thorough system of 
which led her citizens to a very high degree of one type 
of efficiency. This country however seemed to the lecturer 
to have divided and conflicting ideals — some similar to those 
of Germany, e.g., a governing state and a governing caste 
—others, intensely individualistic, based upon the economics 
of the Manchester school. These latter were largely respon- 
sible for the idea that life is an opportunity for the accumu- 
lation of material riches with resulting power over the lives 
and services of others. At the same time, we were con- 
scious of our professed religious and moral standards which 
commend personal service and sacrifice as the basis of duty 
to our neighbours. All these ideals tending in different 
directions were confusing, for to travel in contrary directions 
at one and the same time is impossible. 
Mr. Foster then proceeded to lay down certain fundamental 
axioms. Membership of a community has its obligations 
and that nation is the most efficient which has the largest 
number of its citizens able and willing to discharge those 
obligations. On the other hand, a citizen has his rights ; 
