grievously discouraged by the conception of learning being a passive process on the part of the pupil, and the activity belonging to the teacher alone. All ardent young schoolmasters have started work thinking that the presentation of knowledge which seems to them to be most important and most interesting, is their work; and that if it is faithfully done there is no need to expect failure, except in the case of abnormally dull pupils. But if our diagnosis is correct, it will not be necessarily the dull pupils who reject such teaching, but those whose minds are not previously furnished to receive it, or whose method of apprehension is not identical with that which has been followed by the teacher.

The service Miss Mason has rendered to education is mainly practical. She has shown how the teaching of all English subjects can be effectively given by leaving the pupils instinctively to select from what they are told according as their minds are ready for it. Information is given from books carefully selected to suit the different ages. The reading of a passage once, or a single hearing of it read aloud, is followed by the reproduction, there and then, of the subject-matter, as far as possible in the children's own language: this is done orally or in writing. And the practice is in accordance with the frequently observed fact that a young child when interested in any new knowledge normally wishes to tell some one about it. This, it should be noted, is the wholesome completion of what is called assimilation. A child who passes on the last fact that he has gained hold of does not do so because he is a budding pedagogue, but because he instinctively tries to make sure that he has firmly grasped something which to him is a living truth: living because it is vitally related to some truth previously apprehended. If the problem set before classteachers is calmly considered, it will be seen that the cause of failure is in the teacher's wrong conception of a child's mind. He imagines it to be a receptacle which it is his task to fill: instead of leaving the child to assimilate the new knowledge by his organ of apprehension, the healthy activity of which depends quite as much upon rejecting what is alien as upon imbibing what is congenial. For this wrong conception gives all the effort to the teacher and as little as possible to the

pupil; and yet the process of learning by adults as well as by children is, and must be always, a process of selfactivity; an activity that shows itself quite as often in healthily rejecting as in healthily absorbing.

There are two further ingredients in the process which should be carefully noted. Hundreds of boys are said to be unable to concentrate. Now the faculty of concentration is by our method exercised daily by the information only being given once; whereas in the traditional method it is repeated over and over again by the teacher, who has the examination looming before him. Now when it is practically certain that the form in which he has presented the matter is unsuited to three-fifths of the class, could anything be more mischievous than the ramming or cramming of it in by the hammer-and-tongs method conscientiously pursued? Secondly, and less obviously, the great defect in the traditional method is counteracted by Miss Mason's careful stimulating of the imagination. We constantly hear lamentations from patriotic people on the want of imagination in the English mind. But imagination cannot be encouraged except by being exercised. Hitherto no such exercise has been allowed in Elementary and Preparatory Schools, though the age of the pupils demands it: that is, if we check it at that age it will never be recovered. Thus, as the presentment of the information is made as economically as possible—that is, without being enriched with details-many of the children give their imagination play by adding touches to give life to the picture. If the main outline of the story is firmly seized, these pleasant little excrescences are the healthy outcome of the beautiful faculty, with which we were all of us endowed more or less, but in most cases only for a short time. It will be seen that to this end the matter given by the teacher should be stated in pure, simple English, but bare of detail, so that the children should feel that there is something for them to do; and only the tenderest criticism of unhistorical additions is allowed so long as they show a living interest in the story.

Space forbids any further elucidation of the method here recommended. It is to be found fully explained in Miss Mason's posthumous work. But to patient-minded

people its best justification will be found in the many Elementary Schools where its success is already assured. It is, moreover, a gratifying fact that the Headmasters' Conference and the Preparatory Schools' Conference will be discussing the question at their annual Christmas gatherings. The Headmasters may be trusted to walk warily. Indeed they will be obliged to. There is too much of good sense in the objection sure to be advanced against our proposal to allow of its being ignored: I mean the fear that this is an attempt to deprive school work of its disciplinary character. But no one supposes that any such result is likely to occur, nor is it to be desired. Sidney Smith, in 1825, wrote of an objection to the facilitating of progress in Latin, that the boys would be deprived of the need of effort, by saying you might just as well blame Mr Macadam for giving us good roads on the ground that the horses would all become fat. The answer is indeed even more direct. Analytical studies-Latin and French grammar and arithmetic-will continue to be taught more or less on the old lines. Young boys do not mind their mental digestion being stimulated to act provided that they are meantime being plentifully provided with appropriate food.

EDWARD LYTTELTON.

Art. 13.-THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

MR BALDWIN'S Government, and the House of Commons which supports it, enter this month their third year of life. They are at the middle of the voyage-' nel mezzo del cammin.' It is necessarily a critical moment in their career. The impressions, the influences which arise from contact with the electorate are at their weakest. The land from which they set out in October 1924 has sunk below the horizon; the new country of the next General Election to which they are bound has not yet begun to loom ahead. They have only their own instincts and principles to guide them. A year hence they will be making their land-fall; whether that be harbour or rock-bound coast will largely depend upon the course steered in this year of open sea. At the beginning of a year so momentous for the Conservative Party, it is surely wise to survey the situation and attempt an appreciation of it. The first broad question that arises in any such survey and appreciation is-What is the main political requirement of Britain? What, to-day, should be the principal objective of the party which has the responsibility of governing and guiding the nation? There can be no doubt as to the answer which the great body of sane, central, dispassionate opinion would give. What Britain needs and what public opinion demands is the continuance in power of a steady but progressive Government, neither stagnant nor fanatic, representative of and supported by the better mind of the nation, with its energies concentrated upon a broad national policy, not merely until the end of the present Parliament, but for another term of years thereafter. Below the temporary gusts of excitement and those questions which produce only the nine-days' small-talk of politicsnow, whether this dockyard or that should be closed, or, again, why 200,000l. should be given for a Civil Service Sports ground-the central need, so clearly grasped and so forcibly expressed two years ago, has not materially altered.

To provide such a Government, the only party available would seem at present to be the Conservative. The internal condition of the Labour and of the Liberal Party

forbids the belief that either of them within two or three years could face the task. That internal condition is too notorious to require elaborate analysis. Both are clearly in a sorry plight. In the Labour Party the rift between Moderates and Extremists constantly widens, and is visible among the Parliamentary leaders, in the rank and file in the House of Commons, and, as was made manifest by the recent Trades Union Congress, in the organised Labour Movement as a whole. Nothing but external pressure of the severest sort can restore the solidarity of Labour. And the Liberal Party is apparently in extremis. Through the bitter feelings existing between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the fierce vendetta of the two Liberal ex-Prime Ministers, their fundamentally different and conflicting conceptions of the strategy and tactics to be pursued, Liberalism has, it would seem, achieved what to the scientist is still denied the splitting of an atom into its component parts. The Conservative Party alone stands between the country and another period of political confusion. The first and main feature of the situation thus is that it is no mere prompting of selfish party ambition, but the predominant national duty of the Conservative Party so to order its activities and policy that the reliance of the nation upon it will not be dissipated, and that it will be entrusted for another term of years with the government of the country.

If, then, the prime need of the country is for the assured continuance of a steadily progressive Government, made powerful and stable by a wide national support; and if there seems good reason for the view that such a Government can be provided after the next election only by the Conservative Party and, by neither the Labour nor the Liberal Party, whether alone or in combination, the next question in order of importance which arises is-What is the main task before such a Government? It is the achievement of Peace in Industry.' The reconciliation of Labour and Capital is the sine qua non of national prosperity. Peace in industry is no sentimental catchword. It is the first and greatest practical need in a country so highly industrialised as Britain. If peace in industry be obtained, the human foundations of prosperity are laid;