Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 31 August 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

“For the first time, a squadron of eleven Hawker Hurricane fighters shot beyoqd British frontiers to the Villacoublay display WONDERS IN at Paris, says the THE AIR. “Economist." This

; took 66 minutes a head-wind; but they shot iback to Northolt in 51 minutes, at an ' average speed of 263 miles per hour. Both record flights, being in uninterrupted close formation, are a tribute to men, material and machinery. They were led by Squadron-Leader Gillan, who flew, also in a Hurricane, from Edinburgh to London last February, by night but with a tailwind at the prodigious pace of 408 m.p.h. Two young Englishmen put up a gliding record, remaining in the air for more than 22 hours. Four Vickers Wellesleys made a non-stop record formation flight of 4300 miles from Lincolnshire to the Persian Gulf 'and back to Egypt before landing. The world which looked to Jules Verne’s Phineas Fogg (who composed it in 80 days) like an orange, begins to look more like. a pea—a petit pois at that. When, how l ever, we hear, as we now do, an aljnost continuous drone above our heads, we would prefer not to think the noise is ‘as if man fought upon the earth and fiends in upper air.’ ”

I Sopne 10,000 London school children, |by the simple process 0 f taking an inI telligence test, have dealt another I blow to father. iANOTHER BLOW Fathers are an | FOR FATHERS. unfortunate set. I No one praises I them. Mothers, crowned with lau- | rels, get buttered up all over. Two I celebrated English dramatists have I recently published autobiographies full of praises on the maternal side, but somewhat critical of other branches of the family. And now even the children have joined ' in; all the more effectively, perhaps, from not knowing exactly what they were doing. It seems that London’s cleverest children are the sons and daughters of university teachers. The children of professional people come next, followed by those who have been brought up in the 'atmosphere of big business. Right at the bottom are the children surrounded from birth by an atmosphere of want and poverty. This educational inquiry, carried out by Professor J. L. Gray and Miss Moshincky, leads to the conclusion that the scholastic ability of children in the hiass, though not necessarily individually, varies according to the professional and social status of their parents as reflected in the opportunities that this status provides.

To this rule, however, there is one important exception. The children of ordinary seamen rank much higher than might have been expected. It is suggested that this is because they see so little of their fathers, who are naturally 'away from hpnde a great deal. But fathers, much. maligned though they be. are noble fellows, comments a contemporary. They can rise above their natural chagrin at the result of these investigations so far as it affects them personally, and patriotically rejoice that the final conclusion of all is that Great Britain, like other countries, is fully equipped with an inexhaustible store of gifted children.