LEADERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 12, 27 December 1911, Page 7

LEADERS.

AllE WE EDUCATING THEM?

The “Mdrning Post” complains that we are not educating leaders for the future—that while we gladly spend sixty millions a year on our Army and Navy we only spend a quarter of a million of national money on our Universities.

“Since the South African war the people of this country have been gradually waking up, and by now are well aware that for the next quarter of a century England will have to work her hardest if she is to keep her place,” says the “Morning Post.”' “The goodwill to work is there, but first-class leaders are needed, and plenty of them if there is to be a step forward in competition with Germany and the United States. Leaders mean men of exceptional power and of exceptionally wide outlook. For that they must have a line mental training, as good as they are able to take. We want to show exactly what Ministers are doing to supply leaders to forty million people. 400,000 Young Men. “In this country about 400,000 young men reach the age of twenty every year, and a rather larger number of young women. How many of these are getting such a training as, if they can benefit by it, would help them to become leaders in soino branch of life? 'The best training to be had, except for certain special occupations such as the Army and Navy, or that of which the mark is a University degree. At the Universities of England and Wales the total number of students entering each year to prepare for a degree is about two thousand seven hundred. It would have to bo more than doubled before it would reach one per cent of the young people of University age. “The Government, wliicli is responsible for scqing that the nation has sufficient opportunities for i education, spends upon “Universities altogether £290,000' a' : year. If a .Government were to Universities in one year as much as the price of one modern cruiser the education of the picked young people of the country would receive a stimulus such as has never bepn known.;. If .it, gave that amount every year the spurt would be not only continuous, but constantly increasing. “Every thinking man in England lias realised this for now;.twenty years. Every serious .man knows quite well that unless I .'something, of the sort is done England 1 ’ must drop , more and more hopelessly behind. r Here, then, is a pressing national need neglecte 1. and long neglected. The £290,000 now spent on'Universities has gradually risen up to that amount. There has never been a Minister who could make a stand for more and carry his point. “The Minister at present responsible in this matter, tiie President of the Board of Education, is Mr Pease. His predecessors, those who share the responsibility for the neglect of Universities, have been Mr Hunciman, Mr McKenna, Mr Birrell, and Lord Londonderry. There is no difference in this matter between the parties. Neither Front Bench believes that Universities need money ought to have it. Yet it is years now since at a meeting, if we remember right, of the British Association, Sir Norman Lockyer estimated at twenty millions the capital sum needed to set the Universities on a sound basis for rendering the nation the services of which they are capable. Fifteen Universities. “Sixty millions for Army and Navy and a quarter of a million for Universities; less money for fifteen Universities than for one item—the War Office—in the Army Estimates! Yet those who sit on the Front Benches—from Mr Asquith and Mr Balfour downwards—are ready to go to the new Universities and express their profound belief in University education. “The modern Universities of England and Wales are doing a better work than anyone not closely connected with them can imagine. But they can scarcely compete with their foreign rivals because they have not the means. The worst case is that of the University of London.”