It may well be wondered_how Germany will fare with a Chancellor of no particular political hue, but coming to office principally on his record as a business man. Britain tried the experiment, but the results were not particularly satisfactory. The business man introduced his own notion of efficiency, especially with the idea of upsetting bureaucratic complacency, but on the whole the permanent officials won. At the heads of departments were the old permanent officials, men who knew their jobs thoroughly, and they had had to work so hard and on comparatively smal] salaries before the war, that they were probably; efficient. The man introduced under the stress of the war was doubtless the great offender, for ds often as not his main desire was to secure a permanent billet for himself. At all events, it is notable that to-day Britain is perfectly content with a Government of politicians, and the business experts, without experience of the ways of office, have practically al] disappeared. Herr Albert is not altogether a typical business man, having had some useful experience 1n office previously, but it is on his business capabilities that he has been given the post. It is ay daring experiment for Germany, more especially as the country has for so many years been attuned to the decrees of officialdom.
What is Education?
Interesting views were recently expressed in a Home contemporary as to what constitutes an educated man. Probably the most satisfactory definition was that given by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, who considerered the five chief marks of an educated man to-be "Correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue, refined and gentle manners {as the result of fixed habits of thought and action), sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth and character built on those standards, the power and habit of reflexion and efficiency or the power to do"? This is interesting as coming from a man of great scholarly attainments inasmuch as it obviously excludes the conception of mere academic training which most people regard as the hallmark of education. It is, indeed, standard rarely met with in these days and the educated man must therefore be considered a rara avis. Certainly it could not have been individuals of this type which Mr. Bernard Snaw had in mind when he wrote that "the only remedy yet discovered is the destruction of: civilization by the action of educated men. This involves incident-* ally the destruction of educational institutions and the consequent escape of mankind from education to the com: parative sanity and mental competence of savagery.
Mr, Shaw's remarks are satirical, nevertheless they contain a germ of real truth, for the fundament-all mark of the educated man is his sense of reality. It is contact with the rough and tumble world of affairs, with human beings' in every walk of life, which constitute the finishing process in the training of-the educated man and it is his reaction to the same world which enables us to distinguish him from those of commoner clay. That is why no man can be called truly educated who not travelled beyond the boundaries of his own country. Prodigious stores of learning and aptitude for acquiring mere book knowledge of a specialized kind will never suffice to make the educated man. This, however, has unfortunately been a fallacy generally accepted and for that reason justifies in large measure the caustic remarks of Mr. Bernard Shaw.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.