ITTERNATIONAL EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17393, 2 March 1922, Page 5

ITTERNATIONAL EDUCATION.

/ POWER OF THE -PRESS. DB. n-TT.-R-p.PT MURRAY ON BABEL, (noil OTTB OWWT-COBEISrONMK*.) LONDON, January 10. Under the auspices of the League of Nations Union, Professor. Gilbert Murray, during the Education Conference, delivered a very interesting address on international in the course of -which he dealt with the value and, the limitations of the newspaper Press as an educational mediuni. Referring to the obstacles with which international business was faced, % through the "curse of Babel," he suggested that the natural way out of the difficulty would, be for the League of Nations t 0 recognise one of the two artificial languages, Esperanto or Ido. "The League of Nations-and International Education" was his subject. He was inclined to think that as soon as one looked beyond tlie mere rial disintegration of Europe and tlie physical ravages of the war, one realised that intellectual or mental civilisation had N been torn to pieces. Regarded as an intellectual entity, the civilisation of Europe was perhaps not too diverse, but in many ways too monotonous and too uniform; it was terribly disjointed and broken. In some serious respects it was wrong m quality—it was not merely a little inferior and unsuccessful in achieving the aim it had set before it; it was aiming wrong. The first need in the solution of this problem was the more rapid and' easy exchange of knowledge, and this , could be done partly by improvements in organisation. Bibliography, of course, came in, and facilities for visits to foreign universities, hospitals, and workshops of every description were desirable. The interchange of the teachers and the taught was already in operation, and arrangements were being made in most universities for the exchange of professors, and for some sort of assimilation of degrees. - The Corse of BabeL What he believed would rapidly become a very practical need was an international subsidiaiy language. When he was at the Assembly of the League at Geneva it was forcibly borne upon him that the difficulty of the curse of Babel'was really very serious in.the handling of international business, and he thought the natural way out would be for the League to recognise one of the two artificial language^—either Esperanto or Ido. Such difficulties he called the normal sources of the disjointed quality of our civilisation; but there were also certain special . obstacles or interruptions, the greatest of which was the difficulty certain countries experienced in getting books because of the fall in the exchange. Another cause of interruption was the mutual hostility between nations, and the dislike of one another's products in any form, but he did not think that this was any longer very serious. Where it was serious was not, as a rule, in the circles which were specially interested in intellectual activity. Another question, more fundamental, was.; Are we satisfied with the general aimi which our Western civilisation seems to set before it? There was no j doubt that, making every allowance for sentimentalism and national vanity, the first impression in European civiU*.

ation made on certain Orientals was rather a shocking one. We were, perhaps, the central pillar of a great organisation which now dominated and largely directed the world. It was probably the best now going, but that should not blind us to the fact that it was a civilisation with the most tremendous faults and dangers. Many school books a complete absence of any sort" of international consciousness tbout the people who drew them up, and the result was that deplorable spirit seen in almost all the nations during the war. People might ask what could the League or any private society do to remedy this state of affairs. The remedy was publicity. As soon as any book or phenomenon was of the sort that really did seem ridiculous or vicious to the massed opinion of the world, people would have nothing to do with it. But schoolmasters and schoolmistresses were not the only educatorsEducation was a sort of spiritual activity continuing through the greater part of a man's life; it was not to be measured by examinations and timetables. Newspapers and Journalists. There were a great many other educational influences, perhaps the most important of which were the newspapers. Somebody 'had to solve the very great social problem these presented. He put aside the ordinary attacks that newspapers belonged to individuals who had either sinister interests or, for one reason or another, distorted views. It was known, too, that the dependence of newspapers upon advertisements occasionally resulted in • undesirable financial pressure. But j the essential trouble seemed to be that i the newspaper's upon, which' a country depended for its most | vital Social and political action, had to j be provided in a form having those twistings, exaggerations, inaccuracies, and violences which made it attractive to the vast, uneducated public. If he •spoke.to a journalist he had the feeling that he was talking to an educated, j usually well-informed man. when ho read the newspaper he felt he was reading something written altogether j below -his standard of intelligence. | iWhvP Because the newspaper, in , order to live, had to appeal to a very large number of people, all on one day. i How many of these would havet had j oven a secondary education? It was j a huge problem, the greater because i the newspaper did reflect, perhaps more accurately than any other social phenomenon, the every-day qualities of Western civilisation, with all its faults and dangers. One other problem *ngaging the attention of the League was the underpayment of the intellectual worker as compared with the manual worker. It was a very serious situation, because it was not safe for any country to create an oppressed ■ intellectual proletariat. Any nation where such a disproportion occurred would teiid to neglect its higher duties. A social ferment amonga really oppressed intellectual class would be of the most dangerous kind, becailse the means of destruction had increased quite out of proportion to the means of defence. Almost anybody who felt himself an enemy to society, and was ready to incar some loss and risk for the sake of doing some gigantic damage, could now do it. The advance of science had brought us to that state; the defence did not lie in material measures. In the general campaign for disarmament the first thought of the human race had been to remove the means of destruction; but that would not solve the difficulty. We had to face the fact that wo could not afford to have nations, or even classes within nations, permanently or desperately embittered, because even the smallest minority in that, state of mind now had weapons with which it could wreak the most awful havoc against the strongest executive or the most enormous majority. (CheeraJ