STANDARD OF MEN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 12, 27 December 1911, Page 5

STANDARD OF MEN.

THE GIRL’S VIEWPOINT

“Nearly everyone lias daughteio .■■rowing 'up a lid going to good schools,” writes the “Morning Post. “These young women are very nuic.i alive and alert, thinking for them so - ves and looking out on the world with eves that take things in. They all want husbands, though that is the last thing they are going to tell the Front Benchers. But they are putting up the standard. The girls have taken to themselves the hint given a while back to the country to waken up. They are thinking about England and her future. They think England must be lifted up; they look to their brothers and the other girls’ brothers to do it, and they are going to bring up their boys to faith and works for England. This is a point on which those who want votes and those who do not want votes aie orotty well agreed. Up to Standard? “Now the first point for the politician in a lucid interval—someone should define a statesman as a politician in a lucid interval —is whether the young men we are turning out arc quite up to the standard that the oirls have at the back of their minds. The girl of to-day is not as artless as the girls of a few decades hack, Sue lias the physique and the spirit of the Spartan girl and the outlook of the Athenian. The man who will suit her must have a wide outlook as well as the capacity to play games. Ho must be able to turn out and fight when his country wants him, and lie must be able to hold his own in the competition for a living. “But what is the politician doing for the girls themselves, and what is lie doing by way of bringing the boys up to the standard for them. To the first question, the answer is that while the politicians are debating on other things the girls are being put under the examination Jug-o-ernaut, which for them is ten times worse that it is for the hoys. The crirls* schools ore in the hands or a set of admirably keen and devoted women, mostly unmarried. They are helpless to resist Juggernaut, for lie has rolled over them, and they are apt to forget that their schoolgirls are not destined to bo teachers, but most of them to be mothers. So the girls are now in danger of too much lesson and too much examination. . . ‘Could not all yon Front Benchers and your Parliamentary friends agree to drop education out of politics, and let it ho run as a national concern by a professional? How? asks the political magnate. Simply by determining between °i Friday and a Monday that the next time either Front Bench has to appoint a Minister of Education no politician need apply, and that the appointment shall he given on the principle that no member of eithei House shall be eligible, but only a man who has made his mark ns an educator, that is as a schoolmaster, Who has shown that he understands young people, and has a wide outlook on life. There are some matters in regard to which it may he a .mod thing to Dish the Whigs, hut in the interest of the hoys and girls it would be a fairer thing to Dish the Whips, which can always he done on a Friday to M, outlay agreement tween the front Benches. On Choosing the Fit SVJan. ‘‘Another matter for informal conversation is the value of Men who have a vocation for some particular branch and have pursued it. After all, a man who has given most of his lixe to a particular occupation . has generally better insight into it than a man' who takes it up at fifty because he must. Few men go into Parliament at fifty and make a mark. How then can a man who has boon occupied till fifty in getting his living, .rotting into ✓ Parliament and getting on to the" Front Bench, begin, at fifty on the art of surgery?; No one thinks he can. He might in five or six years go through the courses, pass the examinations, and write M.D. or M.IIC.S. after his name, hut would any sane man send for this M.R.O.b. when his wife or child had appendicitis?”