Speeches

It is more than twenty years since Mr. Matthew Arnold succeeded in attracting for a time the attention of thoughtful people to certain problems of British government. Of these problems one was the condition of Ireland. His diagnosis of that condition was that it was due to certain differences of temper and outlook between the people of Ireland and ourselves. The desire for Home Rule he set down as a consequence rather than a cause, as the outcome of our failure to blend Ireland with ourselves in national feeling, as we had succeeded in blending Scotland and Wales, and as Celtic and Catholic France had once succeeded in blending German and Protestant Alsace. The adequate remedy of the disease, he predicted, would not be found in the results of Irish Church Disestablishment, nor yet in land legislation, proper and useful though these might be. Nor yet in either governing Ireland as a Crown colony, nor, on the other hand, casting her as nearly as practicable adrift. What we really had to do was to put intelligence and courtesy into our mode of dealing with the people of Ireland, to shake off certain habits of mind which were but too characteristic of the governing classes in England, and particularly of the great middle class.

“The temper,” he wrote, “of the Irish must be managed and their good affec­tions cultivated. If we want to bring the Irish to acquiesce cordially in the English connection, it is not enough even to do justice and to make well-being general; we and our civilisation must also be attractive to them.”

And this involved nothing less than that we must, “and that as speedily as we can, transform our middle class and its social civilisation.” Prophetically he pointed out in passing (Irish Essays, p.75) that we should be confronted with an evil similar to that in Ireland in the Transvaal, where the English “will all be commercial gentlemen―com­mercial gentlemen like Murdstone and Quinion. Their wives will be the ladies of commercial gentlemen, they will not even tend poultry. The English in the Transvaal, we hear again, contain a won­derful proportion of attorneys, speculators, land-jobbers, and persons whose ante­cedents will not bear inspection. Their recent antecedents we will not meddle with, but one thing is certain―their early antecedents were those of the middle class in general, those of Murdstone and Quinion. They have almost all we may be very sure, passed through the halls of a Salem. House and the hands of a Mr. Creakle. They have the stamp of either Murdstone or Quinion. Indeed we are so prolific, so enterprising, so world cover­ing, and our middle class and its civilisa­tion so entirely take the lead wherever we go, that there is now, one may say, a kind of colour of Salem House all round the globe.”

Yet he was not as one without hope. He knew, he wrote, that the most flagrant narrowness of the British middle-class mind in its attitude in Irish affairs would be hard to get rid of. What he held to be of several things the one most wanted, the establishment in Ireland of “schools and universities suited to Catholics, as England has public schools and universities suited to Anglicans, and Scotland such as are suited to Presbyterians,” could not at the moment be done even by Mr. Gladstone. But the English people were, he believed, capable of improve­ment. “Slowly this powerful race works its way out of its confining rus and its clouded vision of things, to the manifestation of those great qualities which it has at bottom―piety, integrity, good nature, and good humour.” Commenting on the friendly Goethe's criticism of our race, “Der Engländer ist eigentlich ohne Intel­ligenz,” he remarks that Goethe did not say that the Englishman was stupid, but only that he is particularly apt, from a certain insularity, from some want of suppleness in his mind, and indeed from his very strength, to take as the rule of things what is customary, or what falls in with his prepossessions and prejudices, and to act stoutly and without misgiving, as if it were the real natural rule of things. What he needs most is what the Germans are fond of calling Geist, a large outlook and understanding.

It was not only Ireland that Mr. Arnold had before his mind when he wrote to this effect. It was the great subject of education, in which he saw his country­ men sadly fallen behind other nations. The battle for State regulation of elemen­tary education he knew was virtually won. But he pointed out that the battle for middle-class education was yet to be fought before we could enter on the process by which alone the want of Geist in our middle and governing classes could be made up for. Nearly a quarter of a century has pissed since he wrote, and but for one circumstance this battle would still be remote. That one circumstance has arisen. Our middle classes find their position threatened by a new commercial combination. They have been forced to realise that courage, energy, enterprise are in these modern days of little more avail against the weapons which science can put into the hands of our rivals in commerce than was the splendid fighting of the Dervishes against the shrapnel and the Maxims at Omdurman. It is not wonderful that instead of having, as a few years ago we had, the lead of the world in the manufacture of iron and of steel, we have fallen behind the United States with their enormous natural resources. But it is startling that we have also been beaten in this particular race by Germany. Great Britain regards herself as the leading industrial nation. She has been so for long, and until recent times her place has not been seriously disputed. She must continue to increase her commercial output. For it is the foundation on which rest her financial resources, her fleet, her hold on her colonies and dependencies. And yet if anything is clear, it is that she is under the necessity, in these early days of the twentieth century, of making a resolute and successful effort if she is to hold her own. She may not continue to surpass the United States, for Nature has handicapped her in the race with America. But Great Britain must not only maintain the volume of her trade, but increase it, as the demand for expenditure goes on increasing.

Let us glance at one or two instances of the phenomena which are causing national concern in these islands. I will start, as a good illustration, with the brewing industry. Thirty years ago Germany exported no beer, to-day she exports almost as much as Britain. In former times the knowledge of brewing was at a low ebb in Germany. The whole brewing process was carried out empirically, according to the ideas of the individual brewer. There was no understanding of the chemical changes which took place in the process, no estimate of the output of the malt, no ice cellars, very little machinery, no saccharometer. At last two German brewers, Sedlmayr, of the Spatenbrauerei, in Munich, and Dreher, of Vienna, visited England in order to learn our methods In England the then methods were still empirical, but the native skill of our brewers had been greater than that of the Germans, and their efforts had been much more successful. Sedlmayr and Dreher learned a great deal before they returned to Germany, and they realised that there was more still to be learned from science. In 1862 an association called the Brauer­ bund was formulated for the promotion of the common interests of the German brewers, and by 1871 it was thoroughly organised. Its motto was this: “Die Wissenschaft ist der goldene Leitstern der Praxis; ohne sie nur ein blindes Herum­tappen in dem unbegrenzt li Reiche der Möglichkeiten.” The result of the efforts of the Bund were twofold. Scientific stations were established, notably a great one at Munich, to which the technical problems which confronted the practical brewer could be referred, and where these problems were solved. As we shall see presently, this kind of institution has also taken root in Germany in other industries, and with great results. In the second place, brewing schools were founded. There are now, if Austria is included, ten of these in different parts of Germany and Austria. The largest are those at Weihenstephan near Munich, at Worms, in Berlin, and in Vienna. These schools, and also the six smaller ones, are provided with class-rooms and laboratories. They have in all cases experimental maltings and a brewery attached to them, and their teachers are the most competent that can be procured.

Let us look at the education which a young brewer gets in these schools, but in order to appreciate the situation let us glance first of all at his preliminary general education.

In England elementary education is compulsory, and is provided and organised under the supervision of the State, largely by local authorities. Secondary and tech­nical education is not compulsory, The State in a limited measure assists, but does not organise or control it. Educa­tion of a university type is in a small measure assisted by the State, but it is not organised by the State at all.

In Germany it is quite otherwise. Not only are elementary, secondary and tech­nical, and university education, all three of them, controlled and organised and brought into close relation to each other by the State, but they are in a large measure made compulsory, either directly or indirectly. Primary education is given in the Volksschulen. Attendance there or at a higher school is compulsory up to the age of fourteen, and after fourteen the pupil must, as a rule, attach himself to an evening continuation school for three years longer, where his elementary education is continued and developed. Nearly 9,000,000 children are just now being educated in the primary schools of Germany, and these number about 60,000 schools with about 138,000 teachers. The cost of these schools is £17,500,000 annually, of which the State governments provide £4,780,000. The balance is raised locally out of rates. Secondary education is not directly compulsory, but indirectly it is made difficult to dispense with. On a satisfactory leaving certificate from one of these secondary schools depends the right of entering on the further courses of study in the Universities and tertiary high schools which have to be pursued by the student who would enter certain very important professions, and the title to exemption from one year of compulsory military service. The secondary schools are of two kinds, classical and modern. The classical schools are known as Gym­nasien. The modern schools are divided into those where Latin is taught, the Real­-gymnasien, and those where Latin is not taught, the Realsschulen. The Gymnasien, as a rule, prepare for the University, and the Realsschulen for the High Technical Schools. There are in Germany 1,100 secondary schools for boys, and 300 for girls. These schools educate about 375,000 pupils under about 20,000 teachers. The cost is upwards of £4,000,000, of which a great part comes from the local authorities and the fees. Secondary education in Germany is not in general free, though primary education is so. But few of these schools are private; all are inspected, and no one is allowed to teach in them without having obtained a certificate of competency. A pupil may go into a secondary school as young as ten or eleven. He remains there about six years, during which he studies, if he is in a Realschule, German, English, French, mathematics (including such higher subjects as logarithms, trigo­nometry, etc.), physics, chemistry, and certain other sciences, and freehand draw­ing.

With the Universities and technical schools to which this training is the portal we will deal presently. It is time to return to the young brewers. In Germany these begin their work when and not before they have reached the status of the pupil who has had in a secondary school a scientific training up to the 'standard which exempts him from one year of military service. Besides producing evidence of this, the would-be student in the brewing school must show that he is over seventeen years of age, and that he has had at least two years of practical ex­perience in a brewery. Indeed, he has often had more experience than this, and the result is that his average age is upwards of twenty-four. As to what follows, I will quote from a description of the course of study at the Weihenstephan school given by Dr. Frew in a paper read before the Society of Chemical Industry three years ago. This course lasts for a year, which is subdivided into a winter and a summer session.

“During the winter session there are lectures on physics, general machinery, brewery machinery, inorganic chemistry, botany (with special reference to yeast), hops, brewing practice, attenuation theory and control of work, book-keeping, the theory of exchange, and taxation of beer. There are also practical courses in the chemical laboratory and in the use of the microscope, besides practical work in the makings and brewery attached to the school. In the summer session lectures are given on brewery machinery, organic chemistry, fermentation chemistry, zymo­ technical analysis, barley, brewing, faults in working, pure yeast culture, architecture, and theory of exchange. Then there is practical work in the chemical laboratory (zymotechnical analysis), in the physio­logical laboratory (pure yeast culture), and in the makings and brewery as before. Besides all this, the student may also, if he so wishes, hear lectures on law, out­ lines of political economy, commercial geography, and distilling, but these are not obligatory. At the end of the summer session, examinations are held in the various subjects, and the successful men receive their diplomas; the student's work for a whole year is taken into account and is thrown into the balance along with his written examination, thus rendering the cramming system more or less useless. After leaving the brewery school, the brewer works for a year or two in different breweries, so as to get the maximum of experience, or else he may take the position of brewer (Brumcister) in one of the smaller factories. He then gradually works his way up, perhaps taking a position as maltster (Obermälzer), foreman in the fermenting-room (Gährführer), or washroom-man (Bierseider) in one of the larger breweries, until at last he attains the aim of his ambition, and is chosen as brewer or brewing director in one of the large breweries.”

I have dwelt thus upon the teaching of brewing in Germany because I wanted to illustrate how the industrial life of that country is in close contact with its academic life. The case of the brewers is but an illustration of the need which those engaged in commerce there feel for the education of a university type which produces the teaching and organisation of their own technical schools. I have chosen brewing as a good illustration of this, because it is a less familiar illustration than certain others, while hardly less striking. Throughout the industrial world of Germany one finds science applied to practical undertakings by men who have learned, if not in the Universities and high technical schools, at least under teachers produced by these institutions. This is true of a multitude of trades. In electrical engineering, in the manufacture of chemicals, in the production of glass, and of iron and steel, and of.many other articles for which Britain used to be the industrial centre, we are rapidly being left behind. A striking case is that of the aniline colours, discovered and first produced in England and manufactured out of English coal-tar. The industry has almost wholly shifted to Germany, although the dyers in this country are the largest consumers. And why? Because in Germany the manufacture has been fostered by research in the university laboratories, and by careful teaching in the technical schools, with the result that great producing institutions, such as the Badische Anilin Fabrik, have an endless supply of directors and workmen trained in a fashion which we have not the means to imitate.

But the school is in Germany by no means the only point at which the professor comes to the aid of industry. Too little is known in this country of that type of institution sometimes called the Central - Stelle, which has no parallel among our business men. I will give one illustration to serve as an instance of numerous others. In this country and in Germany alike, a very important branch of industry is the manufacture of explosives. In Germany, as here, the manufacturers of dynamite, nitro-powders, etc, are rivals, excepting in so far as prices are (and this is often the case) regulated by a mutual arrangement of Groups and Trusts. But while the rivalry of the Englishman is without stint, the German knows a better way. He is aware of the enormous extent to which he is dependent, in such branches of manufacture, on high science, and further that the best high science cannot be bought by the private firm or company. Accordingly the rival German explosives manufacturers, to follow out the illustration chosen, several years ago combined to subscribe about £100,000, and to found close to Berlin what they call their Central­ Stelle. This establishment which is maintained by subscription at a cost of about £12,000 a year, is presided over by one of the most distinguished professors of chemistry in the University of that city, with a staff of highly trained assistants. To it are referred as they arise the problems (in this industry these abound) by which the subscribers in their individual work are confronted. By it is carried on a regular system of research in the field of production of explosives, the fruits of which are communicated to the subscribers. The great manufacturers, men like Herr von Duttenhofer, are in constant communication with the establishment, in which they take the keenest interest. In this country, it is needless to say, there exists nothing “Of the kind. And yet we have to compete with the Germans, not only at home, but in such important markets for explosives as South Africa, where their use is the life of the huge mining industry.”

I have lingered thus long over the practical side of the relation of science to industry in Germany, because I do not think that anyone can appreciate the form and fullness of university life there without having this relationship before his eyes. I want now to turn to this life itself.

In Germany academic institutions, just as is the case with her educational institutions of a secondary nature, fall into two groups, that of the University proper, and that of the Technical High School. In the latter the education is in the main of the tertiary or university type, almost as much as in the case of the former. Indeed, the connection between the two is very close. Anyone who visits Berlin to-day may see in the middle part of the city certain huge buildings. At first he will take them, from their size and appearance, to be factories. But if he inquires what industry the tall chimneys serve he will be told that they belong, not to factories at all, but to the laboratorie of various university teachers. In the university of Berlin the professors of chemistry, instead of numbering one or two as with us, consist (I take the figures from the list in the latest edition of the Minerva Jahrbuch of three ordinary, seven extraordinary, and twelve Privat-docenten, who arrange their work so as not to overlap. specialised work is thus possible. The great laboratories are places where every kind of research is carried on, and the student has not the hopeless feeling that he has, say, in Edinburgh or in Glasgow, where a single professor gives a stereo­typed course of instruction to all the students of chemistry, however various their aims in life. No wonder that Berlin has been the theatre of marvellous ­conquests by science of the secrets of nature. It was, to mention a single. instance, by patient use of the means placed by the State at his disposal in these laboratories that one of the best known of modern chemists, the late Professor Hofmann, developed so enormously the theory of the aniline colours and their production from coal-tar that this industry has passed from British into German hands. His pupils and successors completed a great career by showing how to produce indigo synthetically, and they extended the pro­cess from the laboratory to the factory. Whereas in 1886 Germany imported over 1,000 tons of natural indigo, in 1896 she imported none, but exported 256 tons of the artificially produced article. One of the great natural products of India, is in consequence in serious danger. At the present moment a capital of nearly two millions sterling has been devoted in Germany to its supersession. Taking the coal-tar colour industry as a whole, the comparative figures are only less remarkable than their consequences. In Germany there has been invested in this trade by the six largest firms, such as the Badische Anilin Fabrik, over two and a half million sterling. They employ about 500 chemists, 350 engineers and technical men, and over 1,800 workpeople. The total capital invested in this manufacture in England (a manufacture, as already observed, of English origin) is about £500,000. It employs only some 30 or 40 chemists and 1,000 workmen. What has been the result? The exports of coal-tar colours from England have fallen from £530,000 in 1890 to £360,000 in 1900. The imports, on the other hand, have increased from £509,000 in 1886 to £720,000 in 1900. According to the figures as given in an address on the coal-tal industry, delivered this autumn by Dr. A. G. Green, in the Chemical Section of the British Association, the colours used by the Bradford Dyers Association are now 10 per cent, of English make, 80 per cent. of German, 6 per cent. of Swiss, and 4 per cent. of French.

But the provision for chemistry in the University is not the only provision made for the would-be student of its application to industry. Near at hand, on the other side of the Thiergarten, is that Technische Hochschule, the reputation of which is now world-wide. Here there are six departments, manned by professors of university rank. Architecture, civil engineering, marine engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry and general technical science are, mainly at the cost of the State, taught on a scale which has no parallel in this country. So great has been the public appreciation of this institution, that the magnificent buildings which were erected in 1884 are already quite inadequate to the needs of the three or four thousand students who attend the lectures and work in the laboratories. The studies of these students, who are of university age, and can only enter on production of proper certificates of competency from the secondary schools, are directed by a great staff of pro­fessors and Privat-docent of University rank. I visited the school last spring and found it crammed to overflowing, not only with students, but with all kinds of specimens and apparatus. Every new invention of importance, e.g. in electrical machinery, appeared to have been procured and made the subject of practical study.

This kind of alternative University (the Kaiser has recently conferred on the Berlin school the right to grant diplomas of certain kinds) has taken firm root in Germany. There are ten of them (including the one in course of establishment at Danzig, eleven), in addition to the twenty­ two Universities of the ordinary kind. They have been established because the Government has thought it a good investment to pay seventy per cent. of the cost of equipping and running them. They are not free, but the fees are low, and the students appear to make no difficulty about finding these fees. When people in this country talk of the remarkable decrease in the attendance at the Scottish Universities, and ask whether the remedy is not to find the fees of the students, they would do well to study what has taken place in Germany. It is evident that the reason of popularity of the Universities and technical schools there is not that they are free, for they all charge fees, but that they help the student to a position in life. In Berlin· I was told that the manufacturers regularly watch the careers of the promising students, and offer them employment as they leave in the great chemical and engineering establishments. How little inducement do we here offer to our manufacturers to act similarly, and how little inducement there is for the student to come to the University if his aim be to go into business afterwards!

The double aim of the German university system―pure culture on the one hand, and on the other the application of the highest knowledge to commercial enterprise―is a growing feature of German life. In Berlin it has been developed with the aid of the taxes on a magnificent scale. In Leipzig, where alongside the existing great University a new commercial University has recently been established, the same thing is to be witnessed. Over all Germany the Minister of Education is constantly on the watch, and his business is wherever he deems it necessary to establish a new school of tertiary education or to add to an existing one, to approach the Minister of Finance and get out of him the requisite funds. The Germans grudge expenditure at least as much as we do, but this kind of expenditure experience has taught them not to grudge. Besides the 22 Universities with their 2,500 professors and 22,000 students, and the 10 Technical High Schools with their 850 professors and 11,000 students, there are 18 other technical schools of a lower grade, and also a number of Commercial High Schools or colleges. Of smaller institutions there are 259 Schools of Agriculture in Prussia alone, attended by 10,000 pupils, and 1,000 other schools where instruction in agriculture is given. Taking primary, secondary and tertiary education together, the expenditure of public money (including rates) on education and instruction amounts to £25,000,000 annually. In 1898, out of 250,000 recruits for the army and navy, there were only 200 who had not been to school―in other words, 1 in 1,250. It shows how the huge system thus slightly sketched has made education progress that ten years ago the proportion was 1 in 141, and twenty years ago 1 in 59.

He would be a pedant who thought that education alone could determine the commercial position of a nation. Yet more than ever, as science tends increasingly to reduce nature to subjection, education becomes important. In the United States highly practical people are taking this view, and it is noticeable that the rapid increase there of universities and technical schools is largely due to the faith in their efficacy shown by practical men of business. The millionaire in America seeks to save his soul by building, not churches, but colleges, and if he insists on embodying in their constitution ideas of his own which are not always the highest ideas, this shows his zeal. The British people are not yet a decaying race. The Anglo­-Saxon, here as in America, is probably in energy, in courage, and in doggedness of purpose superior to all his European rivals in commerce. If proof of this be wanted it will be found in the way in which the absolute volume of our trade continues at a high level. It is a remarkable tribute to our race that the assessments for income tax purposes have, during the last ten years, shown an increase of about 20 per cent. while the population has increased only 10 per cent.

But organisation and instruction have been carried to a far higher pitch in Germany and Switzerland than with us, and if we are to hold our position we must furnish ourselves with the discipline and the weapons with which the foreigner has prepared himself for the contest.

Now in suggesting that reform of our education, and particularly of our tertiary education, is essential, I am far from desiring to suggest that we ought to wish to see it entirely subordinated to utilitarian considerations. Culture is an end in itself, and if it is to be won it must be sought for its own sake. But the Germans have shown us how the University can fulfil a double function without slackening the effort after culture. In a certain exquisite­ness the flowers of scholarship which Oxford and Cambridge have produced are probably without examples to rival them, unless it be in France. But for breadth and understanding who will dare to place the record of the work done in Oxford and. Cambridge in the department of classical literature above what has been turned out in Germany? Take the edit­ing, and with it the criticism, of Greek philosophy, and compare the shallow formalism which did duty in the English Universities up to about thirty years ago, when German ideas began to penetrate, with the work of German scholars. The memories of Plato and Aristotle owe the influence they have to-day to a Hegel, a Schwegler, a Prantl, and a Zeller, and certainly not to the commentators who until about thirty years ago ruled in the Universities of this country. But it is not right to try to exalt one phase of scholarship at the expense of another. And when we turn to the history of mathematics and of physical science we may well be proud of the series of great thinkers whose spiritual mother Cambridge has been. Only let no one imagine that in the record of the German Universities, in pure scholarship and pure science alike, in the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone, the work done at Berlin, at Leipzig, at Jena, at Gottingen, during the past hundred years, has not been of a quality as high as any that the world has seen.

The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be that we could establish in Great Britain and Ireland a system of teaching of a university type, with the double aim of the system of Germany, and that without injury to quality in culture. We are proud of Oxford and Cambridge. They have taken centuries to grow up, they are rooted in splendid traditions which we seek not to disturb. But that does not make the educational reformer desire the less to see the expansion of another kind of teaching which they are not adapted to give, and which is none the less a national necessity. The Victoria University and the University of Wales have taken the way we want. Let us assist still further the magnificent private efforts which made them what they are to-day. Why should not Liver­pool and Manchester, with their public spirit and rapidly increasing populations, possess, as in Germany they certainly would, their own Universities? How ridiculous it is to dread that. such Universities would prove Lilliputian! Why should Leeds not be the headquarters or a Yorkshire University? Why should not Birmingham, where the energy and influence of Mr. Chamberlain have brought about a remarkable fresh development, be the centre for the Midlands; and why should not Bristol, where the soil so far has proved somewhat less fertile, be made by State cultivation the centre for the South-west of England? Why should the four Scottish Universities, by their very nature of a popular and accessible type, but in the main, owing to the sluggishness and want of ideas of their governors, of little use from the point of view of the application of science to industry, remain as they are to-day? Their students are falling off, and why? Because the young men of our Scottish middle classes are more and more turning their minds to careers in commerce, at home and abroad, and their native Universities offer them but little opportunity for special training. No amount of freedom from the obligation to pay fees will meet the necessities of the case, though the splendid gift of Mr. Carnegie has in it other possibilities which should not fail to be recognised. Why, again, should we not establish in Ireland say two teaching Universities, one in Belfast and the other in Dublin, adapted to the local requirements? We can make them open Universities. The Hierarchy has solemnly and explicitly accepted, in the resolutions passed at Maynooth in the summer of 1897, the principles of the Test Acts, of a preponderance of lay government, of non-employment of State moneys for denominational purposes, and of security of tenure for the teachers. The Presby-terians of the North are ready to follow suit. No doubt it is true that in Ireland undenominationalism means, and apparently for the present can only mean, the equal treatment of denominations. No doubt the University at Dublin.would have a Roman Catholic savour, while that at Belfast would be redolent of Presbyterian­ism. We may regret this, but we cannot help it, and there is no reason for denying what would at all events be new light in the dark places in Ireland. After all, Ireland is not the only country where education has to take its chance in the struggle with prejudice. We govern here according to English ideas, and our business is to govern Ireland, as far as possible, consistently with the ideas of Ireland.

We have hardly yet realised how many of our difficulties in that unhappy island have arisen from neglect of this useful but forgotten maxim of statesmanship; to how much of failure the constant yielding to the British cry of “No Popery” has condemned us in our struggle to improve the condition of Ireland. Lastly, why should not the great teaching University of London, called into existence by the Act of 1898, but so far only a somewhat unruly infant in swaddling clothes, become the educational centre of our empire? It was only the other day that the Government of New Zealand was announced in the newspapers to have suggested that the best form of memorial to Queen Victoria would be to establish in the new University of the British metropolis a post-graduate research college, where students from every part of the empire could come to carry their scientific training further than is possible in the less specialised colonial and other Universities and colleges. The fear of local jealousies will doubtless prevail over the somewhat mild enthusiasms of our rulers, ahd the memorial will not be permitted to assume any such useful form, and thereby will be lost, one more opportunity of establishing a new link in Imperial Federation of probably the only type, apart from that of sentiment, that is possible the type that consists in linking the colonies to us by ties of interests and institutions which they may possess in common. with us. London, with its vast industrial population, with its colossal enterprises in commerce and finance, with its huge gas production, it's great industries, such as tanning and brewing, its ship-building, is surely of all cities the one where the application of science to industry ought to be developed in special forms without equal elsewhere. How far off we are from the realisation of the idea of a great post-graduate teaching centre for the empire those know best who have had most, to struggle with the apathy, the ignorance, and the jealousy that retard the mast strenuous efforts.

The truth is that work of this kind must be more largely assisted and fostered by the State than is the tradition of to-day if it is to succeed. Probably we have a greater capacity for local effort than any other nation. Our municipal life is becoming more and more permeated by intelligence. But the work is not only far too great, but far too important to be left to local or private enterprise. It concerns not localities merely but the nation, and the effort must be the effort of the nation as a whole to gain its feet. The expenditure cannot but be great; but it will be salvage expenditure and cannot be stinted, however desirable economy in other directions may be. For it goes to nothing short of the sources to which our people have to look for the future of that commerce which is their life-blood as a nation.