NEGLECT OF SCIENCE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 169, 6 April 1918, Page 2

NEGLECT OF SCIENCE

SIK H. JOHNSTON ON DEFECTS OF GOVERNIIJiNT. Sir Harry Johnston, in his presidential address at tlio eighteenth annual meeting of. the public school science musters, dealt with' "The needs 'of our - education at the present day,' with spetfarreference to science teaching." He said that this was to havo been tho title of the.thesis which' Sir Ronald Boss would have delivered bad it not happily occurred to tho War Office after three years of warfaro in very malarious regions that the greatest and most practical, on .tpalafje." Jrtigh t ~bfl' ;of ;'6oimv usejtt-diAct-ing the' operations of local Tiygiene. Wo drifted into this war. Sir Harry •proceeded,"ihvoush-sheer lack; of-expert foreign countries,find foreign languages. Wo had muddled and conducted our war operations on sea and land through lack of expert knowledgo of science on the part of thosa commanding at Homo, and som.etir.ies—happily, not always-of those commanding, abroad. The one sure way .to beat .the Germane and keep them in their place was to be-, come bettor educated'than they were, and apply our new education to developing the resources of our own land and of the four or five million sijiiaro miles in the tropics dependent oil the Loudon Government for direotion. Before the war, because of our contempt for a scientific education, we offered little or no inducement to our young men and women to serve tho country and the Empire in the application. of science to industry, commerce, and tho enlargement of the national intelligence. Therefore, we had had to recruit our science teacherß frequently from Germany. But never ogam within tho lifetime of the youngest man present should we send to Germany for wstructors in any branch of learning. Consequently it was more than over vitally necessary that we should reorganise our education and produce as home-bred articles all the botanists, philologists, forestots, zoologists, entomologists,, chemists, astronomers, translators of Oriental manuscripts, and musicians required for our home nc-eds and for the Empire. • We needed equally -to give a -glimmer, a general idea of these branches of bCience to all the people, of the realm. • • In this hour of our bitterness and abasement, when our uneducated Government, wliicli could neither, carry the war to a conclusive victory, nor make peace on equitable terms, was engaged m its madness or levity ill hacking at the foundations of true knowledge; when, with 50 other more suitable .buildings at its disposal, it had seized on the three most adapted to tho people s studies giving with the glee of ft. (roth of 500 a.g. trie Viotoria'and Albert Musoum to tho Board of Education for tho incubation ot its addled eggs, and sequestrating two branches of the British Museum, tarranging and perhaps hopelessly ruining collections beyond price which many a pioneer had risked his life for so that his people might become learned m the marvels of the world-when these outriujes were perpetrated so that the yivoy Hotel might still bo available for Ministerial and military luncheon, tea, and supper parties, so that ww-fledged Ministers might place their fool soles on Persian carpets n thousand years old and drop their cigarette ash into Majolica faience, or gaze up from their littcied bureaux at the busts of the Caesrn: when we had reached such a disastioi.B period in our history it behoved all who really loved learning, whether under the jrinKA nf the "classic*, under the ferule of hard-rMiiea Muses of the> Square and Cube, or the more genial enticement of the biologist, or the spell of tho chemist, to compose their quarrel, to ]Oin hands, and to swer.r a solemn oath that thev would yet sn.vn England irom tho barbarism with which she was tin-eaten-P d by Sir Alfred Mnnd and Lrnl Mothermere, and the Cabinet belund them. Victorv to tho German Too would lie lessened in the relief and joy it should bnnj if it was associated with the memory of a British Louvnin. laid in ruin by a Tiril'isli .Administration.