THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14823, 14 November 1913, Page 11

THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

(FBOM OCR OWN COMIESrONDENT.) LONDON, October 4 THE ROYAL EXAMPLE.

Mrs Sumncr (founder of tho Mothers' Union and widow of tho Bishop of Guildford) at the Church Congress: "Set before you the example of our King and Queen, both in their parental relations and in their married life. I consider these two noblo people the best. King and Queen England ever had, and ivo should look upon them as models for the nation." Continuing, Mrs. Suraner said: "Tho foundation of a good home is faithful marriage—husband and wife as lovers, lovers after marriage, lovers all their life long— according to the solemn and indissoluble vow made by them on the day when they were united in holy matrimony. Tho example set by a beautiful and devoted married life is of lifelong value to their children. It is never forgotten and it is the root of morality in a nation. 'fhero is an innate loyalty towards parents in sons and daughters, unless" it is destroyed by selfishness, unkindness, over-indulgenco, or evil habits, such as intemperance arid betting and gambling." ADVICE TO WOMEN. -

Canon C. l<. Ivens (a member of tue Mission to New Zealand) at the Church Congress: "You may be, and doubtless are, good faithful wives to your husbands, and careful mothers to your children. You are not extravagant; you keep your homes clean; you are straightforward and hardworking. Yes, you may be all that, and yet it may be that that bitter, nagging temper of yours may be tho blemish which darkens tho lifo of your husband, brother, or eon. You say that your bark is worse than your bite; that if you lose your temper the storm is over in a minute. Yes, but the sting rankles all the same, and for hours after your husband or your children are smarting under the sense of it. Even an outburst of righteous anger will do its work more effectually if you are naturally kindly and even-tempered." CHIVALRY IN LUFE. Canon Ivens: "Women are largeiy ■what women make us. It is the height of foolishness for you to lower your standard because you think that it pleases us. Why is it that some men do not know how to treat a woman with chivalry? It is because the women with whom that man comes in contact are not worthy of respect; they do not demand courteous and chivalrous treatment, and that man judges all : women by those he knows best. If a man in a crowded, tramcar does not offer you his seat, ii is not always because \thoro is something unfeminine about you, but because that man's wife or sister is a rough, slangy person whom he may treat as he treats another man, and his treatment of you is based on his estimate of her. In these days, when men and women are brought into closer contact with one another than in the past, in working side by side at tie university, in the office, the factory, and the sports field, it is very important that the women should insist upon receiving from men the same chivalrous, courteous treatment as was accorded to their homekeeping mothers in days gone by.'-' THE VALUE OF SCIENCE. Sir Francis Darwin, at Birkbeck College: "To many people is wearisome and somewhat ridiculous. iMy own subject of botany, 1 am sorry to say, is caricatured, and in a French play a botanist is described as a little man with a green box over his shoulder, and he is the butt of the whole play. The scientific man, as a matter of fact, is extremely practical in only asserting those things to be true which rest upon a wide and accurate generalisation. This is an ideal from which it is, however, very easy to.fall away. It. is easy to bo sectarian in science, and to belong to a school, and to find oneself opposed to men in the opposition school. When some exception to the rule was found, my father followed it up as a new discovery instead of pushing it on one side. When doing an experiment, say, for ten times with the same result, and getting a different result at .the eleventh and twelfth attempts, people often do not enquire into the cause, and they let it slip by. What it ought to do is to rouse the spirit of Sherlock Holmes. How necessary it is for a teacher to have leisure to study, especially in the case of progressive subjects. Often lack of time results in a teacher becoming less efficient because he has no time for selfeducation and original work and research in the laboratory. I remember how, forty years ago, there was a demand for laboratories at Cambridge, and the 'dons of that day were horrified at the amount of money which was proposed to be spent on them. They asked why conld not tho students believp what tbeir teachers told them. And some of tfcos* teachers were clergymen of the CTmrch of England."