WHAT THE PAPERS SAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 8

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY.

POINTS FROM THE PRESS. AN EDUCATION TEST. The lazy teacher, if not the lazy pupil, is bound to disappear with the advance of education over the air, for everybody from the humble parent, who wishes to know what they "learn them" in the schools, to the most gimlet-eyed educationist in the country, will be able to tune in and test the quality of the pabulum upon which the niind or soul of the student is supposed to be nourished. But what of the student himself? Will he pay due attention to the reverberations of the loudspeaker, or will it be necessary to create a new school officer, a kind of argus-eyed functionary to stand behind the instrument and make sure that due deference is being paid to the message? Or will television unite the instructive voice with the magnetic personality of the teacher? —" Christ-; church Star."

RATIONING THE DEPARTMENTS. The operation of the law of diminishing returns has become plainly visible. Further taxation would not only be an additional impediment to recovery, but also might bo positively dangerous. The only alternative is economy in expenditure. That may mean further unemployment, or it may not. It depends upon whether the economies are applied to cutting salaries or to displacing individuals or to reducing services. Or how much of each. In any case, increased taxation would probably mean more unemployment than would result from economies in State expenditure. t Discussing in a recent leading article the British Civil Estimates, "The Times" observed that retrenchment on a large scale depends upon policy. "That policy," it added, "has in the past built up a mountain of statutory commitments which cannot be evaded without a volcanic upheaval in policy. . . . The bulk of the expenditure of many Departments is dictated by Statute." That is a realist view of the problem, prompting the question, "Is there no other way?" The late Lord Oxford (Mr. Asquith), confronted in 1925 by a financial situation which by comparison with present-day difficulties was far less intense, spoke of rationing the Departments. For most items of expenditure, the Departments concerned can usually produce arguments which have all the appearance of reason and necessity. Lord Oxford thought that this inertia of official objections could be overcome if the Departments were rationed, and if it was left to their discretion how the ration was spent. "It sounds a crude and perhaps a somewhat dictatorial procedure, he remarked, "but> there is no. other way, or, so far as I know, suggestion by which the unprecedented exigencies of our national finances can at this moment be adequately met." The point has been raised in these columns before, but it derives additional force from the authority above quoted. Admittedly the system might be found difficult to apply. In principle, however, it rests upon the sound rule in all financial practice that the coat must be cut according to the cloth. The individual placed on short commons has to make shift the best way he can, and Government Departments similarly placed would, within reason, have to do likewise. At all events, the point is worth considering. The alternative is a reconstruction of policy that will substantially and permanently relieve the Government from the impedimenta of its commitments in respect of social services.—"Dominion."

"IFS" IN GOLD MINING. There arc certain things, well known to gold miners, that the public seldom grips—things which have to be repeated when public speculation in gold-mining ventures takes a new lease of life. The director of the Waihi School of Mines, therefore, does a public service in reminding the public that a perfectly correct assay of a parcel of stone may mean nothing. A school of mines can guarantee that the stone sent to it yielded, under assay treatment, certain gold, silver, etc., in proportions that would make a ton of the stone worth so much gold, so much silver, etc., if all the rest of the ton were the same quality of stone, and if the extracting process applied on the large scale were as efficient as the assay process applied on the small scale. But this guarantee bristles with "ifs." Treatment of ore on a large scale has to be cheap enough in cost to make large-scale operations profitable; if these operations fail on the ground of cost, or through lack of efficiency of extraction relatively to extraction by assay, then the whole calculation of profit-making is undermined. There is no reasonable presumption that a large body of ore corresponds in richness and character with the sample of stone forwarded to the school of mines unless the sampling has been expertly and honestly done, and unless the samples have been taken from the ore-body they are supposed to come from —not from some gold pocket somewhere else. Tha<t is why the director of the Waihi School of Mines emphasises the "how" and the "where." As to the "where," false representation of stone as being the product of a reef it never came out of is the oldest of tricks. What check can a school of mines have on that? As to the "how," sampling (the taking of samples) across the face of a reef, and at regular intervals in driving along the reef, is something of an art. Unless the sample is representative the whole calculation is discounted —that is to say, a fool or a knave may make the assaying of 'parcels useless to the investor. Many people who read prospectuses containing assay tests know the various pitfalls. Not much thinking is needed to warn the reader. But for those who aro not warned, the director's remark that an assay test of £100 a ton may mean nothing at all is a timely statement, and helps the industrial mine against the wild-cat.—"Evening Post."

FAME, The study of New Zealand's past should be stimulated by the many speeches of the GovernorGeneral and his great and generous interest in the preservation of national shrines of history. Unfortunately the educational authorities are not enthusiastic, scarcely even mildly interested, in such things. More attention is given in the primary and secondary school courses to the affairs of the early Britons and the Saxons and their foes than to the country in which the school children live and to the past of the scenes at their doors. This lack of concern in the country's story is reflected in the ignorance among young and old of people and events that went to the making of history. Individual teachers, however, do their best to tell their charges something of a subject which should be more interesting than the history of the Kings and Queens of England and the dates of their accessions. The other day a Wellington secondary school teacher who intended to give some variety to the next day's history hour by breaking away from the Norman Conquest, went into the old city cemetery to look up the grave of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. She was not sure of its position, and she made inquiry from a man and his wife who were strolling through the burying ground looking at the graves. They did not know where it was; they did not know the name, though they were Wellington residents. She went on and saw an elderly man sitting on an ancient capsized tombstone reading a Bible. She ventured to interrupt his studies by asking whether he could inform her where the grave of Edward Gibbon Wakefield was. He looked up with a frown, said abruptly, "Never heard of the man," and returned to his Bible. Persevering, my informant went on. She met another man. He, in answer to her question, said politely that he fancied he had heard there was a family of the name there, but lie could not say where they were buried. The grave-slab was discovered at last by the slow but certain process of reading many inscriptions until the right one was reached. The pioneer of - the science of colonisation has yet to win something like general remembrance in the city which owes its origin to him. But no one could ever be in doubt about the location of the Seddon monument, or of the grand memorial to Mr. Massey which intelligent strangers coming up Wellington Harbour have been known to mistake for a replica of an ancient Grecian temple. —J.C.