NATIONAL CULTURE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1912, Page 6

NATIONAL CULTURE

In his time Mr. James Bryce, a veteran soldier in Britain's legion of Honour, has received many compliments which achievements in literature and statesmanship have well won, but perhaps no tribute ever surprised him more than yesterday's at the Town Hall. An assembly of University students, full of "capping" spirits, instead of directing pleasant banter, according to precedent, at the Ambassador, lent him its collective ear, at a remarkable, rate of interest. This was well done, for the speaker had treasure of wisdom to distribute. In his farewell speech he gave words which should make some of the sad ultra-So-cialists and equally lugubrious ultra-Con-servatives less dismal about this country's future, and the dominant note of his address was the need of individual and national culture by a eound and sane system of education. "The University should not be disjoined from practical life," he said. "The more you develop the brains of the nation, the more you advance the nation as a whole. You want to get the best possible teaching, to stimulate the life and thought of your young people from one generation to Lnother." This has been Baid here before, but Mr. -Bryce gave a distinctive emphatic ring to his words, and the clarion tone of them should pierce the ears of politicians who may be deaf to the suggestions of less distinguished advisers. "It seems to me," remarked tho visitor, who is a shrewd student, with X-ray vision, "that it would be of the greatest value and importance ,to the, Parliament of this great Dominion if it always included among it© members a large proportion of those who had studied at its colleges and graduated in its university." Alas for that "if" ! How many wise, industrious students of sociology, history, and economics are there ih the present Parliament? Tho number in the House of Representatives of eighty members is lamentably meagre. The few men of wide knowledge can be overwhelmingly outvoted by those whoso knowledge is scant and superficial. For this lack of adequate help for politics from the University two things are to blame— politics and the University, and perhags the greater fault lies with the University. It is notoriously well known that the "University man," trusting mainly to an intellectual survey of political issues and a logical appeal to electors, can be hopelessly beaten by an inferior man with a cunning acquaintance with "human nature," which is sometimes another term for human ignorance. One man hopes to stimulate minds, and he is not understood. The other man tickles ears, and is elected. Unhappily the electoral law and the system of government — the political dispensation of money for "railways, roads, and bridges, post offices (with or without chimes) — have' helped the more artful type of politician in the past to prevail against a candidate of higher principle. This system has long been known. Why, then, has it been so long tolerated by Young New Zealand, that Young New Zealand with a University training? Why was there no irresistible force of enlightened enthusiasm in a national cause to raise the standard of politics ? For tho answer we revert to the words 'of Mr. Bryce :—: — "The University Bhould not be disjoined from practical life." The fact that men trained year after year at the New Zealand University Colleges have had so comparatively small a part in shaping public opinion can well be used as an argument by University reformers that some change in the system is needed. The country's young manhood is right, but its Btrength is not sufficiently revealed in public life. The country is not getting a fair return for the money spent on education. There is waste of effort, waste of time, waste of money. A change for the, better must come.