or of precedence being given to one farm school over another, I fancy that the harmony would soon have been broken. But the war came, and after the war this combination disappeared with the full approval of the Ministry, and each County is working as before. There was at one time a great eagerness on the part of some reformers for the establishment of large provinces for Higher Education, each containing several Counties and, I suppose, County Boroughs. I have the greatest possible admiration for Chairmen, but I do not believe that Counties would readily submit to be ruled by one another's Chairman, and still less by one another's officials. A similar proposal was once I believe made of forming the smaller colleges at Cambridge into several groups. A don of one of these colleges received the suggestion with a shudder and said, 'It reminds me of the Roman punishment for parricide', in which, you may remember, the criminal was put into a sack with an ape, a dog, a cock, and a snake, and was thrown into the Tiber. I am afraid the local education authorities would not have accepted their scheme with more enthusiasm, while a proposal to have a central provincial body for Higher Education, leaving Elementary education only to each County and County Borough Authority, would have been even more distasteful. Local authorities can send representatives or individual officers to attend Advisory or Consultative Committees with excellent results in the diffusion of knowledge and in the gradual formation of policy, but the ruling powers are after all those who are legally constituted and who possess the power of the purse. They will not give up to one another nor delegate any but strictly limited expenditure to subordinate bodies. And I may add they are extremely loth to make grants over which they cease to have any control-except in the case of universities or colleges of established position and fully recognized efficiency. An authority is in fact unwilling to be regarded and treated as merely a milch cow. There is another point I should like to add. We hear a great deal at the present time of the Burnham Committees on Scales of Salaries, and both local authorities and teachers have good reasons to be grateful to their representatives on these bodies for the strenuous and valuable work they have done. But while we all recognize a need for a certain uniformity, it will be a great misfortune for education if the need for abolishing competition in salaries between local authorities leads to depriving them of any power for making those educational variations which are the soul of local administration. It will be a heavy price to pay for financial peace, if uniformity of payment and not variety of Education is to be the chief result. Of the Autonomous Areas for Part III I have no time to speak, nor of the Continuation Schools, of which as yet I know nothing, nor of Juvenile Employment and its Care Committees, nor of School Circulating Libraries, due in Counties to the liberality of the Carnegie Trustees. I have time only for a brief reference to the relation of Local Education Authorities to the University of their district. It should be clear to all of us that in every province of England there should be a Centre of Higher Education for students of eighteen and upwards, for advanced teaching in all subjects, not only for science applied to those industries which are so vital to our welfare, and without which we cannot afford to build and maintain Universities, but in pure science, and in those abstract studies of history and literature and philosophy and religion by which the mind of man transcends his material limitations, and by which alone he is able to fulfil his destiny. If the University discharges these functions with any approach to success, it will provide light and leading for the district, including the surrounding Counties: all will look to it, all will receive from it nourishment for the mind and spirit. It is still common in the darker places to hear assertions that there is no relation between Universities and elementary teachers, that secondary schools are not for the workers, and other like fallacies, due to ignorance of what has been done and what is being done. Not only should the teachers in Elementary, Secondary, and Continuation Schools be its graduates, and have aims and studies beyond the immediate requirements of their pupils, but from it should come a plentiful supply of extra-mural teaching in the closest connexion with the work of the local education authorities. And if these benefits are to be given out, the means of providing them should be found by the areas which will benefit. In return for such assistance will come increased representation and more intimate connexion. The stage of isolation and inward growth is, I hope, over, and I, for one, warmly welcome the coming of expansion and inclusion. EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION II LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION We have seen how Central and Local Education Authorities were established in England during the last century: how the form of the local control of education was settled by Parliament, how a national policy is provided and its continuity secured. We have seen how the local Education Committees carry out the laws and central regulations, how the mixture of popular election and co-option of special representatives provides the necessary blend of popular control and special knowledge for the working of a highly technical subject. We now come to the immediate administration by the officials; the work, as I prefer to regard it, of shouldering the burden of the teachers. These should be set free to educate with as few hindrances as possible, not only to give instruction, but to use their expert knowledge and their intimate acquaintance with the children so as to build up that development, moral, intellectual, and physical, which is the aim of education as a whole, intended to turn out citizens efficient, happy, wise, just, and good. Perhaps before now we should have sought a clear definition of the object of Educational Administration, |