NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19177, 17 November 1925, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TRAINING OF CITIZENS.

Discussing' citizenship from the viewpoint of the biologist, in his presidential address to the Royal Philosophical Society at Glasgow, Professor Graham Kerr said the passage of time had caused evolutionary changes in relation to the community that necessitated corresponding changes in the training of the citizen. The evolution of Parliamentary government had tended to place leadership more and more in the hands of the persuasive speaker and writer, and progress in that direction had been enormously accelerated by modern developments, such as printing and wireless broadcasting.' A stage was being rapidly approached, in which it would be essential for the safety of democracy that the citizen should be so educated as to be able to form judgments for himself regarding statements of policy that were put before him, and in that way be preserved trom being simply moulded to the will of the persuasive advocate. The school curriculum of every boy and girl should include training of the powers of observation, by'some simple physical science, in what might be called the ethics' of citizenship, such as loyalty to his country and his comrades, honesty, and industry; by economics—not theoretical views of this or the other economist, but a few simple facts illustrating great principles; and by some of the main principles of biological science which had an intimate bearing upon communal life. The last-mentioned included realisation of the facts that the main wealth of the country consisted not of those tokens called money, but of its biological capital, its living men and women, with their productive capacities; and that its future prosperity lay notalong the lines of selfish limitation of the population, but of nn active increase of population, accompanied by such a teaming as to make for the highest degree of communal efficiency. BRITAIN AND AMERICA. Dr. Robert McElroy recently arrived in England to become the first Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University, the chair having been founded by Lord Rothermere in memory of his son. Professor McElroy studied at Oxford many years ago, and for more than a quarter of a century has been Professor of American History at Princetown University. Addressing a gathering of the Pilgrims in London, he said past differences and old misunderstandings between Great Britain and America, had been covered over by the memory of a brief period of common struggle for the grandest cause that ever asked the sacrifice of men. Americans did their little, far, too little, and late; the British their prompt and glorious much; but for a few God-granted months tl'.ey fought side by side. To-day, therefore, it was easy to cast past differences into the shadow by recalling how their sons stood together cheering one another in the very face of death. Fate gave them a common vision; courage a common death; they sleep together side by side in their last resting places on the fields of France, under the Belgian poppies, on jshadowed hillsides and in sunlit glades; and no one could say, until the trumpet sounded, which were the sons of England, which the sons of England's sotis. "I have little patience with the theory that • because two peoples speak the same language, view justice from a common standpoint inherited from a common past, and react similarly to questions involving the sporting spirit, they could see eye to eve in all things," Professor McEirov concluded. "Always and for ever, if history teaches us anything, nations have laid their own courses regardless of kinship or background, and they always will. We are America, and shall remain America. You are Great Britain and despite the chaos of a shattered world, remain, and will remain, the centre of the greatest Commonwealth of Nations that the world has ever seen. To-day, as always since Drake went round the Horn»and Medina Sidonia lied with the shattered remnant of the Spanish fleet, your fleets patrol all oceans giving the world the freedom of the seas. 'I, ask no greater freedom of the seas than British freedom. And in the future, whatever misunderstandings may temporarily arise, it will bo seen, as it has always been seen, that, despite human passion, despite human prejudice, there is between England and America a common vision of justice which reaches to ■the skyline where the strange roads go down,' a unity which is of the spirit, and which, means safety for those institutions which we hold in trust for all humanity."