NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18016, 15 February 1922, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

ART IN EDUCATION.

Lecturing to members of the County o( Middlesex Education Society, Professor W. Rothonstein, principal of the Royal College of Art, urged the importance nf utilising tho extraordinary imaginative power and aesthetio intuition with which nearly all youug children are gifted—but which seems to disappear at an early ago —to help them to realise truth and sincerity in art, literature, and music. The purpose in art was the pursuit of truth. If thoy made use of what were roughly called the arts early in life, it would be the means of interesting a child in the interesting things in life, in sincerity and honesty, It would be the beginning of what education really meant. It was not a question of giving children certain exercises for a few hours a day in flower painting and cul>o drawing, so that a certain standard of ability might be reached. Those things seemed to be quite apart from the real question of education. Nobody, even to-day, was quite sure how drawing should be taught. Simplicity, which waa the end of all art-, was the very last thing anybody arrived at. Therefore, to attempt in schools to deal seriously with the teaching of art seemed to be setting a problem to teachers which could not really be 6olved by anybody. If they did their best to encourage acute observation in the children, and combined that with tho development of their power to see things which ought to interest them, they would get on better. They should put tho child on a higher road in the pursuit of some form of human truth rather than attempt to help him to solve the very complex aesthetic problems they had to deal with.

» EMPIRE AIR SERVICE. Some technical aspects of the projected service of airships between Britain and the Dominions were presented recently by Major G. H. Scott in a paper read beforo the Royal Aeronautical Society. He , stated that an airship of 2,500,000 cubic feet (75 tons) could be built without introducing any experimental or untried features. Tho hull would last, in continuous service, for at least rive years, and would have a useful lift for freight of 12 tons for non-stop journeys of 2400 miles—from England to Egypt. A journey of that distance could bo completed in 48 hours, or at a speed of 50 miles per liour. Tbe ship would be of a rigid con- ■ struction, built for long life and low | maintenance cost, and capable of standing up to the worst weather conditions, both in flight and at the mooring mast. Arnvals at and departures from a mooring mast could bt made to scheduled time, | and a regularity on passage equal to that jof steamships would bo possible. An investigation of tho present commercial requirements on Imperial routes indicated that some livo or six tons of muils and freight and 30 to tU passengers would bo availablo weekly. The urgent need for speodiug up Imperial communications was acknowledged throughout the Empire, and an examination of the possible means by which this demand could be adequately met, with due regard to cost, pointed, iii his opinion, to the use of the airship, Tho requirements for an airship enguiu were essentially different from those of an aeroplane engine, and were not mot by the iatter; but no British airship engine had yet been developed, the only engine specially designed for airships being the German Maybach. In a numbor of ways the Germans, who held optimistic views of the future of the airship, vere ahead of Great Britain. With regard to the fuel question. Major Scott said that the idea of burning hydrogen in the engine as a means of economising fuel and thus increasing the jierformsnce of the airship had been under consideration for some time. Recent experiments indicated a; method of using hydrogen and petrol mixed. The use of kerosene or crude oil to replace petrol in both aeroplanes and airships would substantially decrease tho danger of fire. The development of the use of kerosene or crude oil was obviously important for commercial airships, and (.ould be confidently prodicted once this demand was realised.

AFRICA'S HIGHEST PEAK. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, is an extinct volcano standing near the Equator in Tanganyika Territory (formerly German Eaat Africa). There are two peaks, Mawonzi, 17,570 ft., and Kibo, 19,720 ft. The top of the latter was reached for the first time in 1889 by Dr. Hans Moyer in the company of L Purtscheller, tho famous Alpine climber, and seven German scientists and officers re-1 peatcd the feat during the following 251 years. Last October a party of officials of I tho Territory Government—the Hon. Chas. Dundas, Messrs. P. Nason, F. J. Miller, and C. Gillman—set out to reconquer tho icy height. Pour days of steady climbing brought the party to the eastern foot of Kibo at an altitude of 15,390 ft. Describing the final rush, Mr. Gillman says:— "The weather, under a bright moon, was glorious, though an ice-cold wind was blowing from the glaciers with the thermometer standing at 7dcg. below freezingpoint. Unfortunately, the lack of oxygen in the rarified atmosphere affected most of our party sooner than anticipated. Nason and I, although several times near the; point of despair, continued the grim fight against Nature over shingle slopes ever increasing in steepness, until we finally ' reached the hard blue ice of 'Ratzel Glacier,' over which progress became \ somewhat easier, though the cutting of j ■ stops with the ico-axo was an additional burdon to our hardworking hearts and i lungs. At last, after seven hours of toil , and suffering, we stood on the rim of the mighty ice-field crater at an altitude of \ 19,600 ft. Tho exhausted state of my companion did not permit of a further advance over rather rough ice in the direction of > the point which Dr. Meyer's observations . have fixed as the highest. But as the ' 'top' of Kibo is an almost horizontally : cut-off obtuse cone, it is ueally immaterial I at what point of the crater-rim it is '. reached. The Union Jack was hoisted on I a needle-shapod rock protruding from the I surrounding armour of ice, at a point i where the German climbers, succeeding Dr. i Meyer, had deposited their cards. Many i pho'tographs of tho crater and its icy wall's < were taken, the altitude determined by i boiling-point observation, and after a stay i of nearly an hour and a-half in the wonder- i ful solitude, 10,000 ft. above an endless sea ; of clouds, we returned in a little less than I two hours, sliding joyfully down over the i shingle slopes winch had been so severe i a trial during the ascent." |