48 THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

investigation of this subject, and manufacturers of coal
gas should have been encouraged to develop their plant
and conditions upon lines which would produce what
has been proved in very fact to be the life-blood of
this country. Of course nothing was done, and we cannot
wonder at it seeing that the scheme of public school
education has been such as to entirely eliminate science
from the curriculum of those who are destined to become
placed in positions of authority.
(¢) Take again the question of aviation which is
essentially scientific, mechanical, and mathematical.
Could we expect our classically trained rulers to appreciate
 its necessities and possibilities in a European conflict ?
What are the facts? We have it on the authority of
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu that the year before the war
Germany spent £7,000,000 on aviation, whilst during the
same year we bad difficulty in getting £500,000 for
the same purpose. Such criminal neglect has resulted
in a loss of two years in gaining aerial supremacy, and
we have gained it eventually on the Western front, not
through the efforts of our rulers, but mainly by the
intrepid and noble character of the officers and men of
the Royal Flying Corps.
(f) Again, the horrible delay in providing our men at
the front with suitable steel shrapnel-proof helmets is
a scandal which is in the minds of all. Since our ministers
 knew nothing whatever about the properties of
steel one might have imagined that the production of
such helmets would have been left by them to a committee
 of experts. Instead of that it was put into incompetent
 hands, and the fact that every day’s delay
meant a corresponding loss of hundreds of lives seemed
to be entirely ignored.
To multiply instances is redundant: the moral to be
drawn is, not that all Government officials should be
experts, but that our general system of education should