LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 201 
a high tableland with moderate elevations and some 
picturesque features would perhaps present the 
fairest educational landscape. Its construction is a 
problem of central administration. It is true that 
the Central Authority will usually be supported in 
its endeavours to level up the valleys and bring the 
standard of backward Authorities nearer to that of 
progressive Authorities and so render co-operation 
between them easier and more effective. Progressive 
Local Authorities do not want unprogressive neigh- 
bours, and they would generally support greater 
differentiation in the central system of finance 
between rich and poor areas, and such greater com- 
pensation for poverty as would enable the denizens 
of the valleys to fill them up. But if it is a matter of 
checking the erection of new peaks or the further 
elevation of existing peaks, conflict at once arises. 
It is not easy to balance the considerations 
relevant to this problem, which both through the 
emphasis laid by the Act of 1918 on the national 
aspect of the service of education and by the em- 
barrassments of the post-war period, has become 
more insistent. It is indeed a new problem inci- 
dental to the increasing nationalisation of local 
services, and it is not confined to the service of 
education alone. Its emergence is certainly not 
agreeable to the central administrator. He naturally 
likes to see the service with which he is connected 
moving on, and it cces against the grain with him 
to stand in the vw oz 2p tind of progress which 
s not obvious’ ogant. Indeed, he is himself 
often charged wv... extravagance for not stopping 
advance. He, however, is in a position to realise