and labour were hard to come by. Education officers coming over from France, anxious for the welfare of their men, were almost mutinous at the small quantities of text-books doled out to them. But in time this problem was also solved. The schools of England generously gave their surplus text-books; second-hand booksellers' shops were ransacked; private organisations, such as the Central Library for Students in Tavistock Square, came to the rescue; above all, the Stationery Office, which undertook the printing from publishers' plates and the binding of many of the text-books, at last produced books enough to satisfy the needs of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Indeed, one of the remarkable results of this educational experiment is the immense amount of good-will and active help it has evoked in all classes of the civil community. The idea of bringing the army back into touch with the normal life of the nation, and fitting the soldiers for their task as peaceable citizens, caught hold of people's imagination, and made the most exclusive bodies anxious to do their share in the good work. The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, and other great educational establishments, to a greater or less extent, opened their doors to military students, gave them lodging and provided teachers for them. Nay, more, attendance at army courses of instruction and possession of a certificate granted by the army educational authorities have been recognised by all the universities of the United Kingdom as exempting soldiers from matriculation or other entrance examinations, so that on discharge they can become undergraduates without further loss of time. Most of the learned and professional bodies have likewise admitted these army qualifications as equivalent to their own entrance examinations. The interests of the working man have been cared for equally, since, after negotiations carried through by the Ministry of Labour with employers and trades unions, some thirty or forty important trades have agreed to count time spent by a man at a technical course in the army as excusing him from a corresponding period of his apprenticeship.

Not the least remarkable illustration of the new sense of co-operation between the army and the civil

community was the conference on education opened by Sir Henry Wilson last June. This conference was called together, at the instance of the education section of the War Office, to discuss various problems that had presented themselves in connexion with the work of educating men drawn into the army from every quarter of the globe. It was attended, by 131 representatives of the Dominions, government departments, learned bodies, and most of the universities of the Empire. The opening address was delivered by Mr H. A. L. Fisher; and the four sessions were presided over by Sir Henry Wilson, Col Amery, Sir Henry Hadow, and Lord Bledisloe. The main idea of the conference was to arrive at some understanding as to the best method of continuing the co-operation in education between different parts of the Empire which army education had stimulated, and of supplying deficiencies in that co-operation revealed by recent experience. The functions of an Imperial Education Bureau, for example, were outlined as a means of keeping all universities of the Empire in touch with one another's needs; the problems of having one matriculation standard for all universities within the Empire and of giving credit for work done at one university by a student completing his course at another were also discussed. Co-ordination of education and research to meet specific technical and commercial needs of the Empire, and a system of distributing the information so acquired, were considered in the third session; the fourth was devoted to similar questions relating to the Empire's agricultural needs. The conference was hardly empowered to arrive at fixed resolutions on most of these subjects; indeed, its aim was rather to arouse attention to the difficulties experienced and suggest further serious consideration of the means to overcome them, than to put forward a programme. Accordingly its most emphatic resolution was to have the proceedings brought to the notice of all the Prime Ministers throughout the Empire, in the 'belief that there is a general desire throughout the Empire that means should be found to give practical effect to the policy, aspirations, and suggestions expressed during the four sittings of the conference.' The use made by the education section of the War Office of its unique opportunity in calling

together so representative an educational assembly to ventilate these questions is not the least of its services to education in the Empire.

The unique opportunity provided by this great army of establishing closer co-operation between the soldiers and the nation on an educational basis has been used to the full. But what of the future? At one time it appeared as if the scheme might, on the passing of the emergency, be scrapped like the army's superfluous motor-cars and tanks. But the promptitude of the army education authorities in tackling the education problem on the Rhine has helped to avert that danger. Already many soldiers of the new regular army are acquiring a taste for education; and last July 74,370 men out of a total of 225,000 were attending classes, mostly in well-equipped business and technical colleges. Such enthusiasm cannot lightly be damped down; and the Secretary of State has now definitely stated that the army education scheme is to be continued. The problem of educating a small voluntary army, engaged on a seven or nine years' term of service, will differ in some respects from that of educating an army of men anxious to prepare themselves for an immediate return to civil life. But the main objects of the original scheme : (1) to improve the men's morale, (2) to keep them in touch with the interests of the civil community, will remain the same. As to morale, many of the officers who were originally prejudiced against the scheme have since recognised that their men fight and work better if their minds are stimulated by something more intelligent than mere routine, if they can understand their work like the French soldiers who cried at Hohenlinden, 'Je ne veux pas mourir aujourd'hui, je veux voir la fin d'un si beau jour.' Again, the better class of men who will be tempted into the army by the higher rates of pay will certainly demand to be kept in closer touch with their country's affairs and to have some preparation for the civil work to which they will turn on their discharge. In another way education should help to make the army more popular and attractive by breaking down more of the barriers between non-commissioned and commissioned ranks. In principle the eligibility of

men in the ranks for commission has long been admitted, but in practice it has been difficult to make it effective, owing to the limited means of self-education available to privates and N.C.O.'s in the old regular arm. A properly graduated system of education in the army should do much to remove this obstacle.

The provision of facilities for officers under the army education scheme has been in this first year its least satisfactory feature. The difficulties are greater than in the case of the men, for officers, being scarcer, cannot so easily be brought together in classes, while mixed classes of officers and men are not always successful. The whole question of the education of officers needs careful thought; and this should be one of the chief problems to be dealt with by the education section. A good deal of sound education can no doubt be imparted to officers in the process of fitting them to educate their men. We have seen how great the difficulties have been in the past in finding enough qualified teachers for the army, and how civilian help had to be sought. In the future the army will have to rely on its own resources, The only alternatives for providing an adequate supply of instruction would seem to be either to create a corps of officers, with N.C.O.'s, whose sole business would be to teach, or to make teaching a part of every officer's (and N.C.O.'s) professional training. The first method has the great disadvantage that it would tend to distinguish education from the soldier's normal business and relegate it to a secondary position in the fighting officer's mind, and without his hearty co-operation it would stand a poor chance; whereas the other method would bring it home to all that a soldier without education is not a good soldier. If every officer might be called upon to teach his men, he should, besides his military training as a cadet, have some months' instruction in methods of handling a class and in subjects of universal interest which he could profitably teach to his men. Such a training would in itself do much to raise the officer's standard of education.

But even this widespread form of instruction is not enough in itself. The officer's education should, in our view, be radically altered from the beginning. At present it seems to us to be too exclusively military in the

narrowest sense and too much pervaded by the publicschool atmosphere. Normally the prospective officer goes from the public school to Woolwich or Sandhurst and thence for a large part of his life to the officers' mess, institutions all equally instinct with the merits and defects of the public school. The public-school spirit is excellent as a basis for a man's career, with its ideals of 'playing the game' and sinking one's individuality in the school tradition; but it needs qualifying with other freer aspects of life, since it tends to discourage originality of thought or action, excludes the outer world, and exalts 'good form' at the expense of the best attainable as an object in life. An attempt should be made to get away from this narrow publicschool view of life.

...

'What,' asks Jaurès, speaking of French officers, 'will be their worth as leaders if they cannot enter into the feelings and the innermost soul of that democracy, of which in times of danger they must be the responsible chiefs? . What will be their authority as leaders, if they have not that exalted curiosity of mind, that familiarity with great ideas and that faculty of intelligent sympathy, which, though not created by strenuous study, is thereby powerfully developed?'

His suggestion for enlarging the knowledge and sympathy of French officers is 'boldly to do away with the aristocratic and secluded life of the specialised military schools,' and to teach them their military science in the same university centres as jurists, chemists, engineers, doctors, or teachers. In such centres there are courses common to diverse special subjects; students are more and more encouraged not only to go deeply into their own speciality but also to follow up the connexion between their own particular science and all other sciences, and in fact all human activity.' 'Thus only,' he adds,' will they be brought into close touch with democracy,' and realise the vast and varied sum of human endeavour and knowledge which a great soldier must be able to weigh and make subservient to his purpose. It seems to us that the scheme of education proposed by Jaurès for French officers might well be made applicable to our own. We have already tried on a small scale the experiment of taking men direct from