New Age, Vol.12, No.22, April 3, 1913
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CONTENTS, NOTESOF THE WEEK......................................................... 513 ASH WEDNESDAY.By Oslaf H. Hartland ........................ 526 A BALLADEOF FUTILE QUESTIONS....................................... 516 LITERARYNOTES ............................................................ 527 CURRENTCANT ............................................................... 5’7 THE CHRONICLESOF PALMERSTOWN-V.By Peter Fanning ... 528 FOREIGNAFFAIRS. By S. Verdad .................................... 5’7 LALIVRE DU MAL ......................................................... 530 MILITARY NOTES. By Romney ....................................... 518 LETTERSFROM ITALY-VIII.By Richard Aldington ......... 531 You MONEYMEN ! By Sidney Brisbane (from the “New York VIEWSAND REVIEWS.By A. E. R. ................................. 532 Journal”) ............................................................... 5’9 REVIEWS........................................................................ 533 NOTESON THE PRESENTKALPA : REPRESENTATION (cont.). By PASTICHE.By “Livy,” Ernest A. Parsons, C. W., Marion J. M. Kennedy ......................................................... 521 Pryce, Pho ............................................................ 53 5 ARCHITECTUREAT DELHI. By Robert Williams, F.R.I.B.A. ... 523 LETTERSTO THE EDITORFROM Arch. Gibbs, Wordsworth THE CAT AND THEMOUSE. By Beatrice Hastings ............ 524 Donisthorpe, Gaylord Wilshire, Dorothy Thurtle, Charles AN ECHOFROM HADES.By Paul V. Cohn ........................ 525 Cecil, Wilfrid Humphrey .......................................... 536 . __ Subscriptions to the NEW AGE are at the following thefirst, until the second andthird stages are trans- rates :-- formed.Both thesestages, it is true, are in a weedy Great Britain. A broad. state absolutely ; but relatively to elementary education 8. d 8. d. they arealmost paradisaical. And whatis even more One Year ... ... 15 0 17 4 certain is that,.good or bad, they cannot be greatly bet- Six Months ... 76 88 tered until the impulse from the primary schools in their Three Months ... 39 44 direction is vastlyincreased. At present, of thesix million children attending our elementary schools, only All communications relative to THENEW AGE should five per cent. ever enter a secondary school at all, and be addressed to THENEW AGE, 38, Cursitor Street, nothing near one per cent. enter a university. And the E.C. reason is not that both secondary and university educa- tion of a passable kind could not be provided, if the pro- visionalone were necessary, butthat the appetite for furthereducation is killed in theelementary schools. NOTES OF THE WEEK. We can allow, of course, that parents often think them- LORDHALDANE owes a good deal of his reputation as a selves unable to keeptheir children idle between the thinker to the vagueness of his language as an orator. ages of thirteen and seventeen ; we can allow that local He must be profound because he is incomprehensible. authoritiessometimes appear to dotheir best to dis- AtManchester in January he fluttered the romantic couragethe admission of elementaryscholars into dovecotes by describingthe neweducational policy of secondaryschools by providing none; but we cannot theGovernment as “an affair of thespirit” ; and at allow that these difficulties would be insurmountable if the Teachers’ Conference at Cardiff hst week he pro- the desire for education had not been just about extin- ducedwhat Matthew Arnoldwould call a “glow” by guished in the primary schools. As a matter of fact, the repeating the phrase and adding a newclause to the pressure of elementaryscholars upon the secondary effect that we must in future “organise from the top.” schools is only at this moment a little more than the re- This windy laxity of language is all very well in Mr. sistance. Five per cent., as we say, do now find a way Ralph Waldo Trine or Professor Gilbert Murray ; but it in ; but, even if there were as many secondary as ele- does not strike us, coming from a practical statesman, mentaryschools, not more than ten per cent., we as indicating any hold on reality. Quite the contrary, it believe, at the outside, would avail themselves, without suggests an attempt to escape from reality and to con- compulsion, of the open door. To stimulate secondary ceal the disappearance in a cloud oi words. What we anduniversity education, therefore, it is putting the suspect is that the Government has decided-in vulgar cart before the horse to deal with these stages first. As terms-to bite off more than it can chew, to propound a anybodycan see, the realproblems of secondaryand large idealistic plan and to let that serve as an excuse university education have not arisen yet. They will only for a verysmall real reform, or fornone at all. And ariseand can only thereforebe seriously considered .this procedure was, in fact, suggested still more plainly when, instead of five, fifty per cent. or a hundred per in the following sentence from Lord Haldane’s address. cent. of our elementary scholars are clamouring for ad- “They could not,” he said,” put primary education on mission or are actually admitted. Until that happy time a proper footing without taking into account the next arrives, therefore, the only problem worth practical-we stage, and they could not put secondary education on a do not say theoretical-consideration is the problem of proper footing without considering that university edu- primaryeducation ; andthis may be crystallised into cation came after.” This, we fear, can only mean that a singlephrase : how toensure that ourelementary elementary education in England is to wait until second- scholarsshall conclude their course with a vigorous aryeducation has beenreformed, and the reform of appetite for the continuing- and complementary courses. secondaryeducation itself is to bepostponed tothe ** * reform of university education. In short, the reform of It is not denied, we take it, by any competent person elementary education is to be postponed for ever. that our elementary system of education is the worst in *** the world. Not only has it the effect of quenching,in all savethe most determined, the preciouscuriosity While not denying in the least that primary educa- withwhich we are born, and the desire for perfection tion ought to look forward to secondary and university with which a high civilisation endows its children, but education as itscontinuation and complement, we do it appears to be, from its machinery, code, and adminis- deny that there is any need to wait, before reforming tration, diabolically intended forthis very purpose. 514 Some ,of our readers will n'ot hear (of thleir darling states- dwarfingand stunting children's minds, they would men being engaged in a conspiracy, even a tacit con- rise to the salaried profession 0.f education; .md with spiracy to k.eep theproletariat under. They r,eadily that promotion we 'could expect tlo see in them what we believe, ne0 doubt,- that th,e Church in its palmiest days look in vain tlo find at present : a will to make them- was capable of such treachery against tbe human race; selves responsible, as a guild,$or the national service but of the ,stock-jobbing materialists now in the place delegated tlo tbem. Flor the rest, as wehave said, we of the Church, they can, it seems, think eo great evil. can very well afford to wait. There is no need to raise Nevertheless, as the few profound 'educationists kaow, the age of 'compulsory elementary attendance. Thirteen ther,e is better ground for the theory of deliberate malice is nottoo soon Lo leave primaryschools as they are; in elementary education than for any other hypothesis. nor is it to.0 s0o.n to leave for a secondary course. Prcr It is simplyincredible that statesmen with love of vided thattbe elementarysystem is transformed,the education alone in their hearts should create and main- pressure gradually accumulated on a secondary system tain ,a system of primary education which bears in almost would become in a few years irresistible. In ten years' every part of it the signs of being inspired by hatred, time a secondary course would bethe rule; and in greed,and fear. We challenge,indeed, any educa- twentyyears' time a university completion course tionist, intimately acquainted with the elementary sys- would be equally the rule. " Organising from the top" tem, to maintain that if it is nlot designed to suppress may ormay not be Lord Haldane's phrase for sc~m- individuality and to suffocate high curiosity, it can work thing .or nothing. In either case it iswrong. to anyother conclusion. And since,for the present, * *. *, that is cur only concern, th,equestion of personalre- sponsibilitymay be h'el'd over. The remedies,on the In one sense, however, even the reform of elementary other hand, if so be thatthey are truly desired, are education must wait upon something still nearer reality : simple and stareus in the face. There is,we repeat, the Labour movement. We do not, as our readers no need for Lord Haldane and his "strong Cabinet know, put economics before everything else in value; committee'' (including Mr.Lloyd George !) to fetch a but necessary as it may b,e to plan from the top down- compassabout the whole world of knowledgebefore wards,it is from the bottom upwardsthat we must dealingwith th'e elementary system. Ourdew needs build. And thebottom, on earth, is economics. The not to be brought from the still-vexedBermoothes. success of the Labour movement in the largest sense is, As we said last week, a revolution