THE OLD DOMINIE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 14 August 1924, Page 3

THE OLD DOMINIE

MR, RAMSAY MACDONALD’S

TRIBUTE

SECRET OF SCOTTISH GENIUS

Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who was presented with the honoray degree of Doctor of Laws at. Glasgow University in recognition of his attainment to the highest office of tire State without the aids of birth or wealth," delivered an interesting address at a lunch which followed the ceremony. ‘•I W as once asked very hurriedly (said Mr MacDonald) what was my university, and as hurriedly 1 replied, ‘Cassell’s Popular Educator, and it was a very profoupnd pleasure to me that evening to find, alter the ceremonial part of the dinner was over, a rather elderly grev-iiaired man come round the table and sit down by me and ask mo when I had bought 'Cassell s Educator. I gave him roughly the time, lie held out his hand to me and said: I was really editing ‘Cassell’s Popular Educator’ in those years.’ He was one who was known, 1 am sure, to a great many Glasgow men, particularly of the medical profession, as the late Sir Malcolm Morris. . . . “1 think sometimes—perhaps it is a. rough-a iid-re.idy generalisation, but it is very largely’ true—that the greatest service that the Scottish universities have done for the nation was to produce a unique race of schoolmasters. (Applause). , Every little village and every small parish ' had its schoolmaster who had gone through (lie university, who taughtelementary knowledge with a background of university attainments behind it, whose pride was in his pupils, whose interest was in the boys and girls under his charge, and who with all the affection of a father, and indeed all the tenderness of a mother, watched our first tottering steps along the broad, hard, and dustv road of life. “Happy and rich is the nation that has such a race of schoolmasters. (Applause.) And if I may say a word in praise of the nation to which they belonged, it would be this: that that nation npr-soiated them. You can pay your teachers, you can put them in palaces, and yet you have not secured the secret of'education. What education' wants, What the teacher wants, is spiritual appreciation on the part of the great mass of the people with whom lie is living.” (Applause.)