TRIUMPHANT MORAL

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 59, 4 December 1918, Page 8

TRIUMPHANT MORAL

A.LESSON.Of THE WAK. > _____ "No feature of the great conflict now being waged in the' European arena is more significant that the steadily ascendant superiority of moral, over even the niost stupendous organisation and the most gigantic accumulation of material equipment," says the Minister of Education in his annual report. "In the earliest and most critical stages of the war it was the national' spirit alone of British, French, and Belgian soldiers which enabled thin, battered, and retreating lines, all too poorly equipped with the mechanical appliances of war, to withstand and aftepvards to hurl back' the onrush of exultant masses of highly-trained and minutely-organised forces equipped to the hist requirement.

"This national spirit is the result of ■ education in its broadest sense, in that it is the product of all the influences brought to bear by one generation upon the next, and particularly upon the youth of the nation, whose spirit and ideals are largely the reflex and the evolution of those of their forefathers. It is scarcely. necessary to prove that even in its narrowest sense education—that is, the specific training given to young people of the nations referred' to—has been largely responsible for the production of a type of manhood which showed such qualities, of endurance, resource, and devotion a? were displayed during a period in which the solo struggle narrowed itself down to a contest, between arrogant phalanxes and subliino moral. "It is of vitnl importance, however, at the present juncture not only to recognise that education is the most potent factor in the creation of that moral which makc-M individual manhood superiors to marshalled masses, but to perceive that the human'factor iSiJsupremfi in education. Tn the midst of all the planning and discussion about efficiency, reconstruction, readjustment, and the development of a high form of democracy, the all-persuasivo importance of education must be recognised. It is also clear thiit in our attempts lo make education adequate for this responsibility no single principle will be of such vnluo as tho conviction that the human factor is predominant in education. A clear grasp of this conception should furnishus with the most worthy ideal, stimulate us to rigorous action, co-ordinate otherwise conflicting or divergent, agencies, systematise our endeavours, free us from side issues, subordinate our prejudice or sflf,interest, nnd in general provide us with a touchstone with which to test ourselves as well as our plans and methods."