TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

Southland Times, Issue 22510, 19 February 1935, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

Narrowness of Specialists. A plea for a broader educational base in education was made by Lord Eustace Percy, in an address to the conference of Public Schoolmasters at Harrow. “It seems to me,” he said, “to be more and more doubtful whether we are remembering in all our liberal and progressive ideas that the prime function of the school is to train the intellect. The world is getting fuller and fuller of people who cannot think outside their speciality, and the position is not helped by the trend of our educational psychological thought and the trend of the sociological and anthropological sciences which tend increasingly to put reason into the background and to speak in terriis of man’s almost instinctive adaptation to environment. We are turning out from our schools better and better products, men and women more human and more reasonable and more skilled in many ways than former generations, but we are turning them out in increasing quantities, and of all classes, and from all types of schools who do not know how to think outside their speciality. Particularly do they not think in the most important sphere of human activity, the relation of man to man, the relation of man to society, the way society ought to be governed, the principles of government, the principles of conduct between nations, man in his relation to the world and man in his relation to God.”

British Currency Policy. A statement of Britain’s monetary policy, indicating that there was no present intention of stabilizing the currency, was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Neville Chamberlain, in replying to a debate in the House of Commons. Everyone recognized, he said, and certainly no one more than the members of the Government, that it would be very helpful if they could get established once again a common standard of currency. But Britain had made perhaps the best contribution that it could in the circumstances by stabilizing sterling in the sterling area, and the policy it had followed there had, he thought, achieved a very considerable measure of success. The level of currencies in the countries of the Empire and in those countries which were linked up with sterling had remained really very Steady for a period of two years. The exchange of goods and trade in the countries in the sterling area had shown a very gratifying increase at a time when international trade generally was inclined to shrink. But at the present time we had on the one side of us what was called the gold bloc, the countries which were on the gold standard in Europe, and on the other side we had the dollar. We held an intermediate position between the two, but the real difficulty—and one which we ourselves could not control—was that the dollar and the franc, taking the franc as representing the gold bloc, were not in harmonious relations with one another, and the pound, which stood in between the two, was dear in terms of dollars, but not so dear as the franc, and it was weak in terms of francs, but not so weak as the dollar. In our present condition if, in consequence of this disharmony between the gold bloc and the dollar, there was a pressure and strain on the pound, there was freedom to move in either direction, and thus to achieve again a fairly stable position for the pound. But if we had stabilization we lost that freedom. We could not then move either in one direction or the other, and the only result, therefore, of trying to stabilize while this disharmony existed, would be that we might find ourselves in a position where we had either to go on gold again or follow that policy of deflation which he was sure would be the last one suggested by members.