by a Party Committee; the other was that, so long as there was a House of Lords, he thought that the Prime Minister should be in it, so as to be out of the dust of the popular arena. His reason was that matters of foreign policy and defence were of primary and paramount importance. He thought that both these closely connected spheres of things should be outside the region of party conflict. It was due in part to his efforts that the Imperial Committee of Defence, under the Prime Minister, was evolved, in order to coordinate policy and military and naval preparations. The breakdown of the old system in the South African war proved the necessity of this. Allied with Mr Arnold Forster and Mr Spencer Wilkinson, Sir Charles Dilke brought incessant pressure to bear on the reform of our military system. He was never tired of pointing out that, while we were spending more than Germany, we were getting far less for our money, for want of intelligent application of means to ends. He was a Home Ruler all round,' for, among others, the best of reasons, that he wished to separate business of imperial importance from domestic issues and from social policy. He was entirely in the right. British government has hitherto been too much centralised, far more so than that of the German Empire; and both in provincial and municipal matters we ought now to have boldly extensive decentralisation of control.

There is no space in this review to deal with Sir Charles Dilke's extraordinary activity in regard to all social and industrial questions. He spent the last evening of his life studying and marking a blue book on this class of question, the ruling passion, strong in death.' In the last year of his life was passed the Trade Boards Act, the 'first instalment of the principle of the Minimum Wage,' due mainly to his exertions. At the end of this same year, 1910, Sir Charles Dilke, in his sixty-eighth year, in miserable health, and with a heart which could only just carry on, fought and won his last election in the Forest of Dean; and the effort killed him within a few weeks. Is it best to die thus 'in harness,' or to retire and make one's salvation,' as the French say? The answer depends upon one's view as to the nature of life and death. It is a question of values. Sir Charles

Dilke, like most Radicals, was an optimist about this world; and it was everything to him.

Sir Charles devoted much of his never-ending energy to the protection of the interests of native coloured populations against exploitation by capitalists in our own tropical possessions, the Belgian Congo, and elsewhere. It is truly valuable service to stir up lethargic Government Departments in these matters, because such populations have far less means of self-protection than have the working-classes at home. Dilke had a true and passionate sympathy with the 'under dog' everywhere; it was, perhaps, the leading motive of his life.

There is much in this Memoir to show the character and tastes of Dilke. He was a man of very great charm, kind and generous, feeling and inspiring true affection. His experience of men and affairs and various regions of the world was almost, or quite, unrivalled in his day; his memory was powerful, and his conversation vigorous, cheerful, and fed by an inexhaustible stream of ideas and varied knowledge. The contribution to the book made by his second wife's brother-in-law the Rev. W. Tuckwell, gives excellent samples of his table talk. His favourite study was history, especially that of modern times, and, locally, that of his favourite region of Provence. In literature his tastes were limited but strong. He knew much of the science of trees and plants, and was fond of animals, especially of cats. This should be noted. Sympathy with, or antipathy to, cats is one of the main divisions of the human race. He was a fencer and an oarsman, carrying on both pursuits much later than most men, quite to the end of his life. He was also fond of horses and riding; and he had a true eye for the beauties of Nature.

If all the writings and letters and speeches of Sir Charles Dilke were printed together, they would make a very long array of volumes, something like the Works of St Chrysostom in cubic contents. He only published three or four books of the political kind, but wrote countless reviews and articles on many subjects in the Athenæum -a family property-and in the Quarterly Review' and monthly periodicals. He certainly had not an original turn of style, either in speaking or writing, and was intent always on the subject, not the art. He said to

Mr Tuckwell one morning, after rapidly finishing a newspaper article to his satisfaction, that 'papers dashed off under an impulse are always the best.' Mr Tuckwell demurred. Those papers of mine,' he said, 'specially praised by you have been always the fruit of long labour.' 'Ah,' said Dilke, 'but you have style, a rare accomplishment; that is what I have admired in yours.'

Sir Charles Dilke himself compiled his Memoirs from private diaries which, till 1892, he kept very fully, and from letters. The Memoirs were unfinished; and, after 1892, he made but few entries in his note-books. The present book uses the Memoirs very fully, so that it is nearer in character to autobiography than are most Lives; and this adds very much to its charm and interest. Sir Charles Dilke, in his Will, appointed Miss Gertrude Tuckwell to be his literary executrix, and added that 'it would be inconsistent with my life-long views that she should seek assistance in editing from any one closely connected with either the Liberal or the Conservative Party, so as to import into the publications anything of the conventional attitude of the old parties.' Therefore' Mr Stephen Gwynn, M.P., whose name was among those suggested by Sir Charles Dilke, was asked to undertake the work of arranging the Memoirs, and supplementing them where necessary.' This work was far advanced when Mr Gwynn joined the forces at the beginning of the war; and Miss Tuckwell herself, with the assistance of friends, has completed the book. Evidently the greatest care and trouble have been taken to render the work as perfect and accurate as possible; the editorial writing is in good style and taste, and extremely sound. The book should hold a permanent place in our political literature, both as the portrait of an interesting man, and as a most valuable contribution to historical knowledge.

BERNARD HOLLAND.

Art. 10.-NATIONAL EDUCATION AND NATIONAL LIFE.

1. A Bill [89] to make further provision with respect to Education in England and Wales, and for purposes connected therewith. H.M. Stationery Office, 1917. 2. Notes on certain clauses of the Education Bill, 1917. White Paper. [Cd. 8713.] H.M. Stationery Office, 1917. 3. Federal Aid for Vocational Education. By I. L Kandel. Carnegie Trust: Bulletin 10, 1917.

4. Education of Apprentices: Report of the Committee appointed by the Council of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders upon the Education of Apprentices. 1917.

5. Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools. By Edith Abbott and S. P. Breckinridge. Cambridge University Press, 1917.

6. Education Reform. Being the Report of the Education Reform Council. King, 1917.

7. The Times Educational Supplement, 1915, 1916, 1917 [contains texts of educational reform documents].

THE Bill introduced by Mr Herbert Fisher on Aug. 10 on behalf of the Government, 'to make further provision with respect to Education in England and Wales, and for purposes connected therewith,' marks the opening of a new stage in the history of English education. It is not possible to understand this lengthy Bill without some reference to the streams of events that have met in its provisions, and in their new unity give hope of a larger outlook in national life.

One of our earliest historical documents is an edict of the Emperor Gratian regulating the salaries of teachers. That subject has been ever with us, and stands in the forefront of the educational question today. The teachers of the Middle Ages were for the most part priests or monks, men without family responsibilities. They were paid on that footing; and the Reformers, while they swept away the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, failed to enlarge the stipends of the teachers. The idea of reasonable remuneration, though the need for it echoes through post-Reformation literature, never presented itself in a practical form to the

private benefactor. In the Elizabethan age the State did what it could. It relieved the teacher of almost every form of tax, but the pious founder whose legacy supplied the stipend still contemplated a celibate profession. Stipends, as the 17th and 18th centuries passed by, did not rise with the rise in prices; and, when the reform movement of the early 19th century began, even so earnest a reformer as Brougham proposed salaries too low to attract even poor scholars. It was the poor scholars who had kept education at its high level in the age of Elizabeth; but there were very few scholars, rich or poor, when the social disasters of the Industrial Revolution brought Mr Whitbread and his Bill for universal schools on the scene in 1807. At that moment the new monitorial schools, introduced by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, were beginning to gather momentum. The scarcity of teachers had necessitated the revival of a device that had met the lack of masters in the 13th and again in the 16th century-the teaching of children by children. At the present day there are those who advocate, in the increasing dearth of teachers, yet another return to this desperate expedient. One of Mr Fisher's chief difficulties is this question of the supply of teachers; and it is with much satisfaction that we observe his intention to revert to the methods of Gratian rather than to those which the Plantagenet Bishop Poore of Sarum, Richard Mulcaster the Elizabethan, and the Georgian Societies founded by Bell and Lancaster, were compelled to advocate and adopt.

If history illuminates the persistent difficulties of the supply of teachers, it is not less valuable in relation to the vexed question of teaching areas, with respect to which Lord Haldane has made during the last few months some suggestions that recall the legislative theorisings of the Abbe Siéyès. Lord Haldane, unwisely departing from the safe fields of tradition and continuity in action, has advocated the division of England into an educational Heptarchy, and has been supported in half-hearted fashion by the Education Reform Council, but by no other reform body. He desires to divide the country into educational provinces, and to create new administrative areas unknown to history, with the view of relieving by the slippery methods of devolution the