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clear to all the world that Ire- not point out that Ireland land is not a poor down-trodden did not go very far into the oreature, deprived by a base war, but did go very far into Saxon Government of joy and a traitorous commerce with freedom. Rather is it over- Germany. Such, then, will be loaded with comforts and privi- Ireland's bitter memory-to leges, exempt from all the have conspired with the comrestraints and hardships of mon enemy and to have failed. war, and promised the highest rewards for small acts of condescension.

So long as the war lasts, Ireland, from its own point of view, will have nothing to complain of. No gratification is denied it, except the gratification of commerce with the enemy. But after the war? How will Ireland stand then? In neglect of its duty it will stand almost alone, It will have no single rival in rebellion and in trafficking with the Germans, Of course, its own egoism will protect it from any self-reproach. In its own blinded eyes it will still appear the injured innocent of the world. The question it will be forced to ask and answer is: How will Ireland appear in the eyes of others? It will be friendless and alone. Its amiable allies, the Germans, will be powerless, even if they are willing, to help. Not only has it forfeited the sympathy of America by its misdeeds; it is now avenging itself upon its former friend with flouts and gibes. "After all," says the Freeman's Journal,' "when all is said and done, Ireland was in the war while America was hesitating." The boast and the taunt are alike unmerited. The 'Freeman's Journal' does

Mr Herbert Fisher was recently described as a "born Parliamentarian.” The compliment, wholly deserved, can have given him but little pleasure. Parliamentarians are not very popular just now, and it is doubtful whether they merited much praise at any time. To be a Parliamentarian is to know how to press a measure through the House whatever be the measure's design and purpose, to be able to drive a sufficient number of members into the useful lobby, to possess the sophist's trick of making any cause you like to appear the just cause. All these things Mr Fisher has succeeded in doing, and we suppose that his Education Bill will pass into an Act of Parliament with as little delay as possible. And Mr Fisher has proved himself a true Parliamentarian in adaptability as well as in persuasiveness. We are told that if a man, unaccustomed to business, goes into the city in middle life, he outdoes in astuteness and cunning those who have grown up in the tradition of commerce. So Mr Fisher, who has spent many years in the wise seclusion of Oxford, swiftly goes beyond his colleagues in all the arts of the

politician. His Education Bill is the bill of a politician, not of a statesman. It was certainly born in a department, and has already lived an inglorious life of some years in the dust of an office. Then some permanent official, knowing that Mr Fisher was in want of a bill, washed the face of the poor foundling, furbished him up as well as possible, and gave the Minister a chance of conferring, as we are told, a greater benefit upon the world than it has known since 1870.

But is it of such a great benefit after all? It is true that it achieves many ends which seem desirable to-day. It will enormously increase the power of a public department; it will call into being thousands of inspectors and overseers; and it will invent a new set of crimes, which hitherto have escaped the eye of justice. Henceforth any poor boy or girl who, after the age of fourteen, refuses to receive the palatial benefits of what the State calls education, will be fined the sum of £1 for a second offence. Who is expected to pay the money we do not know. The parents will be charged only if they are guilty of connivance. But if the alternative to a fine is a term of imprisonment, then we may expect to see our jails constantly full, and may wonder piously at the might and ingenuity of the British Government.

What is offered as compensation for the new crime and the new punishment we do not yet know. We are told the number

of hours assigned to the compulsory process of education. What is to be done in those hours is still a profound secret. Who shall choose the subjects to be dealt with? Shall the enforced student be permitted to select for himself what he desires to study, or shall he be obliged to follow the taste and fancy of others? Probably, as a sort of sanctity hangs about a ballot-box-as the only virtue known to democracy is the virtue of numbers-the poor victims will be invited to vote; and since minorities have no rights, forty-nine will be obliged to learn what is distasteful to them, if fifty-one insist upon it. But however the problem be solved, we cannot believe that every boy and every girl will ever be free to choose his own method of study and his own teacher. That would be too eostly an operation to be lightly undertaken even by those who are desirous of purchasing votes. And how shall the new Act be applied in the remoter villages? In towns some sort of a makeshift may be devised which shall persuade the masses that education is being handed out to them as a useful commodity. But in a village which contains (let us say) twenty "young persons" ripe for the continuation school, the method of training will not be easy. To satisfy their needs some twenty teachers might be necessary, and these even the zeal of the local authority would be powerless to provide.

Probably the Act will end

in a series of what used to be called "penny readings," with magic-lantern slides-an ingenious method of pretending to teach without much trouble, and of safeguarding the "young persons against any risk of mental discipline. But what is also of great importance is that we should know the purpose of Mr Fisher's new scheme. Does the Government desire to increase the commercial value of our "young persons," to make them what is called in the jargon of politics a "useful asset," or does it cherish 8 love of education for its own sake? If national assets are our aim, the only kind of education which will be worth the money will be strictly technical. The "young persons" of England will be brought up upon a uniform plan, like so many little Huns, and if they do not serve the State efficiently they will be regarded as waste products. And whether they succeed or fail, the process of their education will have done much to abolish that diversity of talent and temper which has always been the boast of England. We shall have our men and women cast to pattern, warranted to earn high wages and to vote as they are told. But we shall not look to them for surprise or invention. The soul of a part of the nation will be destroyed to satisfy the politicians.

If we are aiming at education for its own sake-the only aim worth attaining-Mr Fisher's bill is likely to fail

also. Education, in this, the only true sense, is not good for everybody, and it can be forced upon all and sundry only with a vast waste of time and money. There are many thousands, in all classes, who rebel sturdily against education of any kind. They are not worse or better than others. Sincere in their dislike of books and all that books mean, they would be far more wisely employed working in the fields or in workshopsin using their hands, not their heads. No good can come of sending them to school until they are sixteen or eighteen, at the public expense, and no Act can hope to succeed which does not admit this obvious diversity of types. Indeed, the only sound education is that which a man gives himself, and that must come always not by compulsion but by free will. Nor is there anybody less competent to give it, or to suggest how it shall be given, than a Government Department, and we can only pity the sad "young persons" mentioned in the bill, some of whom will have education forced upon them, though they hate it, while others, genuinely desirous to educate themselves, will find that they are fobbed off compulsorily with a sample of learning concocted in an office, and duly inspected by obedient officials.

There should be, moreover, a limit set to what is provided freely by the state. If all our "young persons to be educated for their own pleasure, then it should be

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understood that they do some sort of national service in return. In the public schools there is not the smallest show of reluctance to serve the country. The O.T.C. is of universal acceptance. But what is good enough for the boys of Eton and Harrow is held to be disastrous for the boys who attend elementary schools. The mere hint that it is sweet and comely to fight for their country must be kept from these tender spirits. With incredible carelessness Mr Fisher had given the local education authority power to include in their schemes military training or drill for young persons between the ages of 14 and 18, who would be compulsorily required to attend continuation schools." We have been four years at war. We should by this time have learned that it is not wholly useless for boys to acquire some knowledge of military drill. We should not have been so long in beating the Germans if military drill had been permitted in our schools. After all, there is nothing disgraceful in learning the rudiments of defence and attack. As a member of the House was bold enough to assert, "the training of Boy Scouts is distinctly a form of military training.' But the Boy Scouts are nothing to the Government, and Mr Fisher refused to be led away by an evil example. So he gave "a satisfactory assurance that there was no desire on the part of the Government to

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introduce compulsory military training into continuation schools." We are easily persuaded to believe this, and we hope, for the sake of the sorupulous Government, that it will never be whispered in the ear of the "young persons that England has been at war.

There also Mr Fisher proved himself a born parliamentarian. A man who believes "it would be unfortunate if it should be thought that the Government were attempting to introduce anything like compulsory military training into our schools" might have been born and bred in the House of Commons. We hope that he will carry his scruple a step further, and insist that his teachers should speak always of Swedish exercises, not of Swedish drill. The word "drill" savours of militarism, and if the boys and girls, who are born into the world for the sole purpose of voting at the proper time and on the right side, accustomed their ears to the sound of so dangerous a word as "drill," it is dimly possible that the next war might find us not wholly unprepared. The democracy might even become interested in national defence, and then not even Viscount Haldane would be able to withstand its clamour. However, all's well that ends well, and our young democrats of both sexes will be as closely guarded against the contamination of military drill and "Chauvinism," its natural result, as though they were conscientious objectors.

Henceforth, then, from the age of five to fourteen wholly, and partially from the age of fourteen to eighteen, the children of the working classes will belong to the State. They will be fed and taught as the State wills, and if only they were put into uniform they might as well be living in reformatories. That the working classes should approve of this servile policy is astonishing enough, and yet they appear to support Mr Fisher's Bill with a whole heart. Now the basis of every strong State is the family, and it is the family and the responsibility which it brings with it that the Government has set itself to destroy. Nor is the paradox mitigated by the reflection that at the very moment when they declare themselves ready to give up their children of five years of age to the public oustody, the working classes demand to take into their own hands the sole and undivided government of the Empire. How shall a man rule a great State who declines to manage his own household? How shall we dare to talk of freedom when we have put into the chains of a compulsory and undefined system of education all the "young persons" in the land?

And education, thus freely given, must be paid for, and here we are faced by a second injustice. The bulk of the money, which will be spent upon the training of the children of the working classes, must be wrung from the middle class, upon which tax

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ation falls most heavily. The result will be that the middle class will find the education of its own children, which it has always undertaken itself, increasingly difficult. And this difficulty is the more to be deplored, because from middle class, independent and self-supporting as it is, comes much of the best talent and the best intelligence of the country. This hardship cannot be exaggerated. The middle class, often worse paid than the working class, which rules us to-day by force of numbers, will be asked to pay for the education of children whose parents are perfectly well able to pay for it themselves. Thus the burden will be put upon the wrong shoulders; the continuation schools will be supported by those who do not frequent them; and the best profit that the country can hope to extract from them will be the fines levied upon the young defaulters, five shillings for the first, and a pound for any subsequent offence.

Nor is the Education Department likely to stay its hand at the continuation schools. Its aim is nothing less than to take hold of all the schools and universities in the land. All the parents in England are to be dragooned as the working classes wish to be dragooned to-day. The House of Commons has passed a clause which will prevent a parent from sending his sons to any school which the Board of Education does not deem efficient. Eton or Harrow or

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