Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10479, 15 October 1912, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15. EDITORIAL NOTES.

WE have on various occasions urged the necessity of [cutting down our enormous expenditure on Education and the desirability of endeavouring to obtain better results. Among our suggestions was one that the State should after, say the fourth standard, has been passed, make the future educational progress of the pupil depend ou his or her own merit and ability. It is therefore interesting to note that the New South Wales Government propose ‘to act on these lines. A contemporary informs us that they do not propose to make the entire system of education free to all. They recognise that it is only a small proportion of tho population that it would really pay to send to a university. So they have devised a scholarship scheme sufficiently wide to give, wc may suppose, everyone a chance, but sufficiently searching to keep out those not likely to make a good return for the opportunities extended to them. The majority of students entering the university in future, .will consist of lads who, after - gaining scholarships leading .from the primary to the secondary schools of the State, have won' leaving certificate scholarships admitting them to free university instrnc-

iiou. By university instruction is meant not merely arts and science courses, but also the professional and “bread and butter” courses which are sometimes designated as technical. The number of these scholarships is to be not less than one for every 500 of the persons within the State who are between the ages of 17 and 20. We gather that the professorial staff—or at all events the bulk of it—is delighted with this proposal. At present the State is giving about 20 bursaries: tinder the new scheme-it will give 200. And, provided that the State’s subvention is sufficient to meet this great increase of students, it is obvious- that the staff will find their sphere of usefulness greatly extended. . “If all revolutions were to be equally beneficial,” says Professor Carslow, ‘‘we should all he revolutionaries. ’ ’ Hitherto in nearly all cases a university career was closed to a poor man’s son. In'future the picked pupils of the schools, without distinction of wealth oi: position, will he able to carry on their studies at the university. That seems an excellent result to have attained.

IN his hook “The Valour of Ignorance,” General Homer Lea proved the vulnerability of the United States to attack. In his new book “The Day of the S<axoii.,” he discusses the question of the permauGHC3'’ and' safety ot the British

Empire. In this he says: —“The security of Australasia rests entirely on one condition —the integrity- and continuance of the British Empire. Concomitant with its defeat and disintegration Saxon dominion in the South Pacific comes to an end. With the loss of India through revolt or conquest, the Empire is shattered and Saxon Australasia will at that time, or in the final political and military readjustment of the Pacific, pass under the tenure of another race. The first principle of Australasian defence is the defence of India. ’ ’ He considers that if war does come it will come because of the oversea possessions.

It will come because the existence of the Empire is a check to the expansion of the other nations. “There can be no retention of present British sovereignty,” he says, “without a repression of the territorial and political expansion of other nations —a condition that must culminate in war, one war if the Empire is destroyed, a series if it is victorious. The intensity of these conditions increases with each yeai of added population; each year of augmented arts and sciences that open up to mankind new wants, while at the same time diminishing the source of their supply; each year of new invention that shatters time and space and crowds the greater nations, by irresistible and uncontrollable expansion, against the circle of the British Empire. ’ ’ ■ He says: If the Saxon race is to survive it can do so only as a whole: ( (1) Through the military and naval I unification of the Empire; (3) the complete separation of the military and naval systems from the civil f government of the Dominions and 1 Colonies; (3) the introduction of universal ‘ and compulsory military k service among the Saxons through--1 out the Empire; (4) all armies to be I organised on the basis of expendit ionary forces. ”