SCIENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 74, 30 June 1916, Page 4

SCIENCE.

The experience of the war has brought home to many people in Britain the necessity for doing more for science (says the Auckland Star). The war found the nation unprepared in many ways connected with science, and a heavy price in blood and treasure has had to be paid for this uuproparedness. We have seen the astonishing success which ■ devotion to ■science hqs produced iin .'-Germany, not duly ,dn winning chatties, hut ,in enabling,i the [Ration to continue its; resistance 'radekadet 11 TJie ardent champions, j oh shienco fori British t schools- . audj Upj,Versities/[have to: .meet the ob.iccJi.qjj, that the pursuit oh /science, /n Gc}:pm has helped to produce, that •sph’it .Of, lawlessness and cruelty which , has stained the. German character’ with ( eternal infamy. As a correspondentj in an English paper puts it, ‘‘lf Gei'-j man education produces the people we are fighting, how cun any enlightened Englishman write of its excellence i" The answer to that is, as stated by Professor Sadler, of Leeds University, one of the leading English authorities on education, that all observers whose words have weight have observed great, faults,as well as great merits in the german system. We should not he above loaniihg front' an eneinj, ’even'if, be is despicable; ■ Ghd dh tlie merits of German education is that-it has made the nation “alert to 'w-i----ence.!V On the other hand, professor Sadler iucludeii aniong what he doilsiders' the gravest defects of Efigtish education, these faults; “Tile absence of an exacting standard in the training of the mind (as contrasted with training in conduct), with a resulting disparagement of the importance of general knowledge, and a failure to realise the value of pure science as the fruitful source of new applications of scientific knowledge to the needs of life ami industry.” “Inertness of mind towards science, alike in industry, in public administration, and in domestic management.”