Now. 4.
CaniNer Ministers are generally supposed to be endowed with: 2 certain amount of _common sense and broadness of vision.
But there are not a few of whom it may be said that they rush in where angels fear to tread. Now serious students of history are only too well aware of the difficulties of the subject on which' they have spent so many years. They realize the judicial mind, which has to be brought to bear! upon facts presented by annals of} the past and how carefully' these! must be considered in the light of contemporary events and thought, if true deductions are to be made.
It would seem, however, that the] Ministers of Education of both' the States of Victoria and Queensland, which are ruled by Labour Cabinets, like the Roman Governor of old "are for none of these things." For each has issued a manifesto that in the schools over! which they have control _those parts of History which deal with' military operations are taboo and must on no account be studied.
They add that the pupils must not: be taught that there is any glory! whatever in war and the lives of! military and naval heroes must: not be mentioned in the hearing. of the boys and girls. Otherwise the youthful mind may be infected with the belief that there is after all a good side to war, which, according to edict issued by the Victorian Minister of Education, is always brought about by the machinations of wicked capital-
Now it is very: easy to see that these gentlemen have taken up an entirely hopeless position, History, to be understood properly, must be looked at from all les and to drop out wars would obliterate so many links in the historical chain that any attempt to present the subject in an ord ly logical fashion would _degenerate into a mere farce. The facts of history and the method of presenting them cannot be altered even at the behest of the Education Ministers of Victoria and Queensland.
No doubt these manifestoes were largely due to a desire to "soft-soap" those members of the hour unions whose motto is}
Down with the Empire and up with the Soviet," and of course it tickles the ears of labour extremists to be told that war breaks out only at the instigation of capitalists. But one wonders whether it ever occurs to these gentlemen that most of our freedom has to, be bought at the 1 of armed donilict. Again and again did our forefathers _un-sheath the sword to put down the powers of tyranny and the vast majority of those who fought in the wars for freedom were men who loved peace but who put duty first. The edicts of the above-mentioned ministers are tantamount to telling the children of those brave Anzacs who fought for King and Empire that their fathers were fools if not worse. Evidently to the ministerial intellect, the only person worth calling a hero and having his deeds recorded in history is the man who preaches Bolshevism and class-hatred from a soap-box.
But while we condemn. the orders of these Labour Cabinet members can we at the same time hold the British Empire blame-Jess for the way in which returned soldiers have been treated?
Those who have recently been in Britain and other parts of the Empire have often had reason to feel ashamed at the way in which governments, government departments' and private firms have gone back on the promises they made to their employers who joined up when the Empire was in peril. In too many cases the war-weary men were given the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.