NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19214, 31 December 1925, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TRUTH IN POLITICS. In his Rectorial Address to the Edinburgh students Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, took for his subject truth, with particular reference to truth in politics. He described the exceptional temptations which beset politicians to overstate, and he showed that the harsh judgments passed upon them, though they were no doubt salutary, did not take into account the real difficulties. Politicians habitually spoke of matters which aroused public passion, and generally they could not express themselves with the precision which they might use when- talking to their equals in education because of the intellectual deficiencies of their audiences. Moreover, politics could never be an exact science. Obviously a politician was never dealing, as investigators in wime happier fields deal, with things that can be accurately weighed and measured. THE OLDEST CITY OF THE WORLD. Of all cities continuously inhabited, Damascus is the most venerable. It was there that Abraham, four thousand years ago, found his steward Eliezer. It was Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, that Naaman, the Syrian, visiting Elisha, compared so favourably with the Jordan —and with reason, for springs of water, welling from Lebanon, have maintained amid the wilderness a garden of flowers and fruits. The ruin of Damascus by Assyria was foretold or described by the prophets, Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, yet the city, with its commerce, recovered. After his conversion "on the road to Damascus," it was on the street still called Straight that St. Paul lodged in the house of one Judas. Over the walls he escaped in a basket. In due course, Damascus fell by the sword of Islam. But it was her looms that furnished our housewives with their first " damask " and her orchards that yielded the first " damsons," while in the annals of chivalry no steel was keener than a Damascene blade. THE POOR STUDENT. A recently-published book, " The Poor Student and the University," by Me. G. S. N. Ellis, definitely puts the onus of finding money to provide university education for the bright sons and daughters of poor parents on the local authorities. Mr. Ellis says:—" The workers of the nation are increasingly demanding equality of educational opportunity for all children, irrespective of the income or social position of their parents. This demand neither can, nor ought to be, resisted, for it is in the interest of the whole community that talent, wherever it is found, should receive the education best fitted to develop it. The next steps are obvious. The law should insist that at least one scholarship should be awarded annually by each local authority for every 50,000 or part of 50,000 of the population of its area. This is a fair average of the present practice among the different authorities, and is such a proportion as could be reasonably applied to the whole country irrespective of existing school-leaving endowments. It would compel every authority to interest itself in the scholarship problem, and it would ensure that scholastic talent of a high order could not anywhere be quite neglected. In no sense is this an extravagant demand, and in many areas it would merely give legal recognition to existing practice. A more adequate minimum would give two such scholarships annually, and would ensure that they were equally divided between boys and girls. The population of England and Wales is nearly 38,000,000, so that the more generous proposal would give annually 1420 scholars to the universities." FAITH AND THE DOCTOR. Whatever may bo the realities behind those concepts which we term mind and body, there can now be no question as to their intimate connection and capacity for mutual influence, says a writer in the Weekly Westminster. The therapeutic efficacy of faith is, at any rate within certain limits, accepted by science because it has been demonstrated by methods on which science relics. Every doctor is aware that much of his success depends on his power of suggestion—on the measure of confidence with which he can inspire his patient. Nor are the effects of this " suggestion " or emotional influence limited to the subjective. Physical and chemical consequences, measurable by the observer, also result. Everybody has firsthand experience of physical phenomena directly following on, or accompanying, emotional states. The diminished digestive secretions in periods of anxiety; the contraction of the surface blood-vessels and the more vigorous beating of the heart consequent on fear or coincident with it ; the blush of selfconsciousness; these, and dozens of similar illustrations, prove how impossible it is in practice to draw the line which has often been attempted between the psychic and the " material." Indeed, on the basis of established fact, the most rationalistic of us can but set very wido limits to the theoretically possible effects of thought and emotion. UNIVERSITY SCHOLA RSHIPS. A report on the Universify scholarship system of England and Wales prepared by Mr. G. S. M. Ellis for the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, states that the total sum awarded by the local education exceeds annually £220,000. He emphasises not only the urgent need for reform in the existing system, but also the backwardness of England in the provision of university facilities for poor scholars. Those facilities are in actual fact two and a-half times greater in Scotland than in England and three and a-third times greater in Wales than in England. In a foreword to the report, Lord Haldane points out that England in 1922-23 had 31,079 full-time students in its universities, while Scotland, with less than a seventh of England's population, had 11,170 full-lime students. Scotsmen, Lord Haldane drily adds, do not think that their country has been " ruined " by expenditure on education. Mr, Ellis points out that about 30,000 English boys and girls at any time are deprived of the university educational opportunities which they would have enjoyed had they lived in Scotland. Ho suggests that one scholarship annually should be provided by each local authority for every 50,000 or part of 50,000 persons in its area. In many areas this would give legal recognition to the existing practice. Ho considers that a more adequate minimum would be two scholarships annually, one for each sex. This would give the universities an annual inflow of 1420 scholarship holders, but it would still leave England far behind Scotland.