Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

geometry, with its power, its beauty, its truth, and above all its need for the exercise of imagination?

So I would plead for a reconsideration of the school syllabus, as a step towards the drastic reduction of subjects so imperatively needed and as a recognition of the conditions of human minds. I would try to teach to all boys and girls arithmetic, some geometrical drawing, the use of a ruler, a pair of compasses, a protractor with which to measure angles, a little algebra up to the solution of simple equations, to establish familiarity with generalised numbers, and also a little numerical trigonometry of a simple practical kind—the suggested limitation in algebra would be quite enough for it. Beyond these limits I would not go except in the case of the specialists, and they would do better, find more interest and stimulus in their work, because they had not to travel along the same road and at the same pace as their slower and weaker schoolfellows, who stumble at every difficulty and look for help at every fall.

The carrying out of this suggestion would free many hours for other work, our own splendid literature, art, workshop, music-so that boys and girls might thus leave school with some interest which they had made their own, and would take pleasure in pursuing when school days were over. As it is they are all, or nearly all, kept at mathematical drill long after it has served any educational purpose.

But is it really necessary to cater for so many hours at all? Are not many boys and girls, perhaps most, being kept at school longer than is desirable? Are they kept there solely to keep them out of mischief— as so many letters in the Times' about the length of holidays would lead one to suppose? Are they not only having pumped into them smatterings of knowledge forgotten as soon as they have been poured into the sink of an examination ?

Confessedly examinations are the bane of all educational ideals, but democracy will never return to the system of nomination in vogue some seventy and eighty and more years ago, its various classes are too suspicious of each other to make this possible, though probably it fitted men to their posts in the public service better than does a series of written answers to many examination

questions. It has never been proved that because at a certain period of time a boy or a girl, a young man or a young woman, can translate a piece of Latin or Greek or solve a difficult problem more satisfactorily than his or her competitors, he or she will make a better public servant, a better leader in any position, or even a better worker in the trivial round and daily task; examina tions do not and cannot take into account so many of the factors necessary to the carrying on the organisa tions of our complex society; the system has many drawbacks, though on the whole it seems to work with. out as many disasters as might a priori be expected, and will continue because the frailty of man cannot at present evolve anything better, but that is no reason why it should dominate the work of schools, or necessitate the teaching of subjects which are of no educational value to the great majority of pupils; and so much mathematics, even of the new mathematics, as a matter of course to every boy and girl is a gross waste of time, a refusal to recognise the facts of life, and a great injustice to very many individuals.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Jung

Art. 6.-THE PROBLEM OF DISARMAMENT. DISARMAMENT has long been regarded as the first postulate for the maintenance of peace, and most of the schemes for averting war have been based on some form of reduction of armaments. Of the attempts made before the World War it is unnecessary to speak, as the fact that the war occurred proves them to have been failures. It was not, indeed, until after the war that any systematic plan was evolved to achieve some practical measure of disarmament. This was one of the main objects which the League of Nations was expected to attain, although plans for reducing armaments were also discussed independently of the League.

The steady increase of armaments during the years preceding the World War was, and is still, believed in many quarters to be one of the main causes of the conflagration, and large sections of public opinion, comprising not only professed pacificists, but also numbers of men who had done their duty in the war and some who had played a distinguished part in it, were strongly in favour of such international agreements as would effectively reduce armaments, and consequently, they believed, make war more difficult if not impossible in the future. This feeling found expression in Art. 8 of the Covenant, which provides for the reduction of armaments, and is perhaps the most definite and imperative clause in the whole instrument, proclaiming as it does that disarmament is an essential condition of peace. The Members of the League,' it states, 'recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations.'

The arguments in favour of a reduction of armaments are, of course, fairly obvious. In the first place, the maintenance of large armed forces places a heavy strain on the budgets even of the wealthiest nations; and if this burden was serious before the war it is felt far more acutely to-day when every effort is required to make good the losses suffered and when, in view of the experience acquired during the late war and of the general rise in prices, armaments would necessarily be

far more expensive and a future war far more terrible than anything dreamed of in the past. Moreover, the withdrawal of a large part of the able-bodied male population from productive work causes further indirect loss. It was, therefore, natural that an organisation for the maintenance of peace such as the League of Nations should deal with the reduction of armaments.

A scheme having this object in view is outlined in paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 of Art. 8 of the Covenant, while Art. 9 provides the machinery for the purpose.

ARTICLE 8.-Par. 2. The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such reduction (of armaments) for the consideration and action of the several Governments.

Par. 3. Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years.

Par. 4. After the plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments, the limits of armaments therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council.

ARTICLE 9.-A permanent Commission shall be constituted to advise the Council on the execution of the provisions of Articles 1 and 8, and on military, naval, and air questions generally.

The League, however, had hardly begun to operate when it was discovered how many serious obstacles impeded the practical realisation of these ideals and how inadequate were the measures devised for achieving an end regarded by all as desirable in the abstract. The Commission provided for in Art. 9, known as the Permanent Advisory Commission, was composed of military, naval, and air officers of various countries; but its activi ties were at first absorbed by certain special duties entrusted to the League rather than to the reduction of armaments. A scheme which appealed to certain League advocates at this time was the creation of a League of Nations staff and even of a League army to enforce on recalcitrant States the League's decisions, and in time perhaps to be a substitute for national armies altogether. In France this plan found an ardent and sincere supporter in M. Léon Bourgeois, while some Frenchmen, for reasons different from those which inspired the distinguished President of the Senate, actually suggested that, if other

[ocr errors]

countries were not prepared to constitute this international force, a portion of the French Army, then, as now, the most powerful in the world, should be set aside to act as the Army of the League. It is hardly surprising that this proposal should not have met with enthusiastic response outside France, either among ardent League zealots or among believers in Realpolitik. The only attempt at creating a League army was the proposal for an international force to occupy Vilna, while the Council of the League was deciding the fate of that district. Practical difficulties stood in the way, and Poland solved the problem herself by seizing and annexing Vilna.

The economic sanctions to be applied to States resorting to war in disregard of Articles 12, 13 and 15 of the Covenant, provided for under Article 16, although not exactly coming under the heading of disarmament, may be regarded as an attempt to carry out the League's decisions by force and to restrain States from going to war. The plan in theory has much to recommend it, and the threat of economic sanctions may and, indeed, has on several occasions proved efficacious in the case of minor States; but the mere idea of applying them to such States as, say, the British Empire, the United States, or Russia has but to be enunciated for the impossibility of carrying them out to be realised. Were an attempt made to apply the system generally, another form of international inequality would be created, as States would come to be divided into those to whom these measures are practically applicable and those to whom they are not. On the other hand, they would in many cases prove disastrous to the States attempting to apply them as they would involve the loss of markets. In other cases they could be applied by means of a naval blockade, which is a war measure to which non-member States would never agree in peace time.

[ocr errors]

At the first meeting of the Assembly (November 1920), the more ardent pacificists among the delegates demanded that a stronger' effort at disarmament be made and entrusted to a body not consisting exclusively of military men who could not, they maintained, be relied upon to work with enthusiasm at a scheme designed to make themselves unnecessary. A new organ was created, the Temporary Mixed Commission for the Reduction of

« VorigeDoorgaan »