utmost to grasp our national purpose, doing our utmost, that is, to
develop and carry out our National Plan. It is Everyman who must be the
saviour of the State in a modern community; we cannot shift our share in
the burthen; and here again, I think, is something that may well be
underlined and emphasised. At present our "secondly" is unduly
subordinated to our "firstly"; our game is better individually than
collectively; we are like a football team that passes badly, and our
need is not nearly so much to change the players as to broaden their
style. And this brings me, in a spirit entirely antagonistic, up against
Mr. Galsworthy's suggestion of an autocratic revolution in the methods
of our public schools.

But before I go on to that, let me first notice a still more
comprehensive cry that has been heard again and again in this
discussion, and that is the alleged failure of education generally.
There is never any remedial suggestion made with this particular outcry;
it is merely a gust of abuse and insult for schools, and more
particularly board schools, carrying with it a half-hearted implication
that they should be closed, and then the contribution concludes. Now
there is no outcry at the present time more unjust or--except for the
"Wanted, a Man" clamour--more foolish. No doubt our educational
resources, like most other things, fall far short of perfection, but of
all this imperfection the elementary schools are least imperfect; and I
would almost go so far as to say that, considering the badness of their
material, the huge, clumsy classes they have to deal with, the poorness
of their directive administration, their bad pay and uncertain outlook,
the elementary teachers of this country are amazingly efficient. And it
is not simply that they are good under their existing conditions, but
that this service has been made out of nothing whatever in the course of
scarcely forty years. An educational system to cover an Empire is not a