I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

When I said to the House that we proposed to introduce this Bill before the Adjournment I made it clear that that must not be taken as indicating that we intend to issue a Loan during the Recess. I think, however, it is desirable that both the House and the country should have as clear an indication as it is possible to give as to what we intend to do. We have no present intention of issuing a Loan during the Recess, and, indeed, unless something quite unforeseen happens, that course will not be adopted. The House will readily understand that the time of issue of a Loan is one of the most important factors in its success. I am sure they would not think it desirable that I should attempt to give the special considerations which are influencing me now in regard to this subject, but they may be assured that I shall do what was done by my predecessor and what would be done by anyone in my position, I shall carefully consult the experts on the finance and the trade of the country in regard to this matter. Although, however, we have no intention of issuing a Loan, I am sure the House will agree that it would not be right that the Adjournment should take place without our having the power to do it. The unexpected, we are told, always happens, and circumstances might arise which would make it desirable to issue a Loan. Apart from that, however, there is another reason which of itself would have made this Bill necessary at this time. As the House knows, we have received already a considerable amount of financial assistance from the Government of the United States of America, and I would like to take this opportunity of again stating publicly how much we appreciate and, indeed, how strong is the gratitude we feel for the assistance which has already been given not only to us but to the other Allied Powers, and, I might add, for the helpful spirit with which Mr. McAdoo, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, has considered all these questions as regards advances. Probably the House knows that under statute the Treasury has the power to raise any amount, that is to say, any amount voted by this House on short term loans not exceeding five years duration, but we have no power to issue any loans beyond that period except by a special Bill. Up till now the advances which have been made by the Government of the United States to us have been on short term loans, but it is quite possible that they may prefer long date securities, and in this matter we shall do exactly what they wish. We must have the necessary power to give those securities, but without a Loan Bill we should not have that power. I think that is all that is necessary to say as regards the general principle which makes it necessary to introduce this Bill.

As regards the form of the Bill it conforms precisely, except for the alteration in the date, with the precedent of previous Loans. On the Report stage of the financial Resolution there was a short discussion about the words in the first Clause of the Bill— form of words. If we were to put in words giving us the power of raising the Loan before or after the end of the financial year, that would secure the same effect, but that would give us unlimited power of raising any amount after the financial year, instead of limiting it to the £250,000,000 as it appears in the Bill. For that particular reason it would not be necessary to have these words now had it been our intention to raise the Loan immediately; but, as I pointed out to the House, that is not our intention. I cannot say now at what time the Loan will be issued. Apart from the reason I have given, which is in itself sufficient, there is another reason. It might easily happen immediately after the close of the financial year, and before the new Loan has been passed, that we should be required to give long-term Loans for the advances we have received from the United States. Without some such power as this we would not be able to do that. I hope the House will consider that this explanation not only accounts for the Bill, but shows that it is absolutely necessary to have words of this kind in the Bill. I do not think it is necessary to say more. Although I do not want to limit discussion, I hope it will not be long before the House is ready to grant us a Second Beading of this Bill.

I think the explanation given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to the £250,000,000 is to a certain extent satisfactory. I raised that question on the Report of the Financial Resolution, because it did seem to me, as I think the right hon. Gentleman has admitted, that on the face of it it was rather unnecessary, especially if the Loan was going to be raised at once. If the Loan is going to be put off until the end of the financial year that is another matter. There is the question of the instalments coming in, and there is also the question of what may take place in regard to the Loans from America. I want to raise the matter, which, to my mind, is extremely important. It is perfectly evident that under this Bill, as the Government will have to appeal to the moneyed classes for the money that is necessary, that they should give to those classes absolute confidence not only in the integrity of the Government, but confidence that the Government will carry out their express intention, not according to the legal point, but according to the spirit of those intentions. Otherwise the confi- dence of the investing classes will be shaken, and nothing is more fatal to the successful issue of a Loan which we all have at heart than to shake the confidence of the investing classes to whom you have to appeal. There have been some very extraordinary episodes during the last four or five months. The American Dollar Securities Committee has done, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a considerable number of people who have financial experience, a great deal to shake the confidence of the investing classes in the desire of the Government to maintain the promise which they have given, and in their belief that the Government desires to act fairly towards them. In July, 1916, a Clause was put in the Finance Act sanctioning an additional Income Tax on securities which the Treasury were willing to purchase, and that additional Income Tax was 2s. in the £. Clause 24, Subsection (1), says:

"The income to which this Section applies is the income derived from securities which are for the time being included in the Treasury special list as defined by this Section, while those securities are so included."

That is to say, the Treasury at that time had power to purchase certain securities from people if they were willing to sell them to be used for the purpose of exchange between this country and America. They also offered to borrow from the holders their security and to give them ½ per cent., or whatever the sum was, extra income for the use of the securities, and they also gave an undertaking to return the securities to the holders either at the end of the War or after the War, according to a special scheme, reserving to themselves the right to purchase those securities at a certain price, supposing the necessity arose. When that Clause was moved in the Committee stage of the Finance Act, and also on the Second Reading, I asked the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. McKenna) a question, and I may say that I have since seen the late Chancellor of the Exchequer and he says that my statements are accurate. I told him I was going to make these statements publicly in the House. I asked him in the House and privately whether he could not arrange that where securities were borrowed those securities should under any circumstances be eventually returned to the holder. I said I failed to see why the people who lent their securities to the Government should eventually have these securities taken from them and thought it extremely hard and extremely unnecessary. The right hon. Gentleman assured me—he had conversations privately with me in the presence of the Secretary of State for India—and both these right hon. Gentlemen assured me, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer publicly, and he and the present Secretary of State for India privately, in the room behind your Chair, that though they would like to accede to my request they thought there were certain eventualities which might result, though they did not think they would, in their being obliged to take over these securities. I pointed out to these right hon. Gentlemen that they could replace these securities if the necessity arose. They said that they preferred not to do so, but they gave the assurance that the security would only be requisitioned in the case of the direst necessity. That was done only thirteen months ago. I had some conversation with my right hon. Friend on this point also. I forget at the moment what conclusion he arrived at, but I pointed out to him that, in my opinion, the holders would be very glad to forego their ½ per cent. additional income if they were sure that the securities would be returned. I am not quite certain—I am afraid that my memory is not always good as it ought to be—what my right hon. Friend said. But I am inclined to think that he again said that the securities would be requisitioned only in various cases.

On the 19th December last the American Issues Committee issued a sixth list of securities. I understand that they only published these lists once in the papers, and it is evident that private individuals cannot make themselves acquainted instantly with all the lists which have been published during the last two years and that they must rely on their bankers or brokers for any information which is necessary. Following the publication of the list on the 19th December a notice was published on the 25th January that those people who did not deposit their securities before that date might have them requisitioned. This is quite a new thing. I take considerable interest in this matter and I see an hon. Friend of mine (Mr. J. Henderson) opposite who has also taken great interest in the matter, and I was surprised, when in January of this year, the Treasury suddenly reversed all the procedure, which we thought, under the Finance Act of 1916, had been authorsied by this House and had begun to requisition securities which had never been deposited. On the 19th February the holder of certain securities received notice from her bankers that the Treasury had put her securities on the list. She had deposited all her securities on previous occasions with the Government on loan, and the moment she heard from her bankers that these securities had appeared in the list she wrote back within four days —there was a Sunday in between—requesting them to deposit her securities. On the 20th of February those securities were deposited—not a word was said by the American Dollar Securities Committee that those securities were too late—and the price then fixed was 37. I asked a question on this in the House of Commons. I have received these letters (indicates) and many others on this matter. Among them is a letter from a gentleman who did the same thing. He says that the price of his securities fixed by the American Dollars Committee was 37, though under the regulations they ought to have fixed the previous day's price which was 41¾.

The lady's securities were also taken at the price of 37. Nothing happened. No notice was given that she might have those securities requisitioned. In May she received a notice that her securities had been taken at 32. She applied through her bankers to the American Dollar Securities Committee and pointed out that she had deposited all her securities. The moment she was informed by her bankers that the list had been issued in which they were included she gave instructions to deposit them. She was making a considerable loss on this transaction, and she thought that at least she ought to have been told when she had deposited them, that if she did deposit them she was liable to have them requisitioned, not at the price at which they were deposited, which ought not to be 37 but 41¾, but at 32. The American Dollar Securities Committee issued the usual official answer that they had given notice, and that was the end of it. Here is a letter on the subject, written by a gentleman, who says:

Talk about profiteering! Here is a case of undoubted profiteering committed by the Government themselves. I will not trouble the House with any further extracts. I am sorry to have detained the House so long, but I do think it is a very important point—leaving out the question of whether it is right or wrong—that the Government, after what it has done to these unfortunate people, should ask them to lend money under this Bill. These people have been so badly treated by the Government that they cannot place any reliance on the Government assurances in future. To sum up. I am certain that a number of Members in this House were, as I have been, always opposed to the taking of these securities. I said that it was absolutely unnecessary, and I think it is now. I cannot conceive how this Government can say to an American firm, "Our Treasury Bills are not good enough, and we deposit collateral securities." Such a thing has never been done by any Government before, except perhaps like that of Honduras or of Greece, or some similar Government. The Americans were making a good profit out of us, and the idea that they would not receive Treasury Bills is absolutely absurd. We could have said to them that if they wanted our orders they would have to accept them, and all this about securities would have been unnecessary. I submit that the Government were bound by the statement made by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer that no securities would be requisitioned excepting under direst necessity. I say that the direst necessity has not arisen, and I sincerely trust that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give orders that the requisitioning of these securities is to be stopped, and that the people concerned are to be put into the position in which they were at the beginning—namely, that they knew their securities were returnable and that they would be returned to them at the date fixed.

I agree with much my right hon. Friend (Sir F. Ban-bury) has said, and I would appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury to meet this question in a fair and reasonable way. In the first place, it was a hardship upon a certain section of the community, who happened to have their money invested in these things, that they should be deprived of their securities at such a price as could be got at the time. The first effect of the Government's selling the securities in large blocks, or parting with many of those securities in large blocks, was to reduce the value of these securities. The man who had bought them was content to receive his dividends and wait until such time as the stock reached the price at which he had bought, and then when he sold he suffered no capital loss. But he is forced to sell his securities, and if he buys them back he is entirely precluded from replacing the securities at the low price at which he had bought them. As my right hon. Friend says, the first list which came out was one of first-class securities, but there have been four requisition lists and eight lists under Scheme E, all being long lists, and as they have gone on the nature of the securities has become lower and lower until in the recent ones they have been taking securities which nobody ever dreamed they would be likely to take at all.

What is the result? If you do not see those lists, and if you are a few days late, although the stock may have risen in the market by some manipulation or other, or some dividend, they not only do not give the price they fix themselves at the time of the notice, but they penalise you to the extent of 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. I cannot find anything in the Act to enable them to penalise beyond the 2s. extra Income Tax which was to be imposed. Why should that be? Why should the Treasury, although I am not sure that it is the Treasury, I think it is the Dollars Security Committee, do so. I have had a client of mine penalised to the extent of £20, on account of not seeing the list, on shares which he was forced to sell. The right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary, we are told never reads the newspapers, and a great many other people do not read them. I never read the advertisements in the newspapers, and I am certain I would not take the trouble to pore over these long lists published in small print in the newspapers. Over and over again there are cases of people who have lent their other securities and do not know of a particular security being included. The banks do not inform them, and no duty lies on the bank so to do; nor do their brokers. You are bound, if you hold any American securities, to pore over every paper published to see whether or not they are included. It is a very severe additional penalty to put upon those people who had to give up their securities against their will simply because they had invested some of their fortune in that particular security. The Government seize upon it, I do not blame them one way or the other, but I have always advocated and strongly urge the Government to undertake to replace the securities at the end of the War. That did not commend itself to the Government, and there it is.

I appeal to the Government to have these cases reheard. I am quite sure they have no desire to penalise a great many people who cannot afford to have ten, or twenty, or thirty, or forty, or fifty pounds knocked off and taken away from them, in addition to the fact that you have taken away the securities which they would otherwise have held to recoup themselves in the long run. There is another reason why you should treat these people leniently and rehear their cases. You are going to issue a big Loan. There is one thing I do not see in this Bill, and that is any power for a compulsory Loan. I am as sure as I stand here that if the Loan is to be anything like £1,000,000,000 or £1,200,000,000, you will require to have some drastic means of getting that money. You are not likely to get it more easily because you have offended a great many people whom you otherwise penalised in taking their securities by force. In the 3½ per cent. and 4½ per cent. Loans the banks put up a good deal of the money, and, in my opinion, as large a portion of their deposits as right and proper banking allowed them to do. When it came to the last Loan they did. not subscribe themselves to any great extent, but they took the device of allowing their depositors to take the Loan themselves and they advanced money to them for that purpose. The banks are exhausted. I say distinctly that if the banks are to hold the Loans they took up they are not justified in taking more on depositors' money, and in taking any further Loan that is going to be issued. The insurance companies have invested very largely, while we must remember they have acted most generously in the matter of premiums and the claims upon them have been very great indeed. You have, therefore, to rely on the general public. You know what you did last time. You used every device, advertisement, war saving, in order to raise £1,000,000,000. When you raised it the bulk of it went to pay your Treasury notes, which amounted to the same figure. Your Treasury notes are to-day £800,000,000, and that has to be paid off. I can see no escape for my right hon. Friend having to come to the House again to get power for some form of forced Loan, if the Loan is going to be anything like what it must be, £1,000,000,000 or £1,200,000,000. That is a serious thing to consider.

There is another point which will militate against the right hon. Gentleman succeeding in his Loan and that is the universal feeling that has been formed throughout the country with very good grounds, that there has been during the last two years fearful waste and squandering of money. There can be no doubt about that. We see it at every turn. What happens? Control is established, and the controller has to get certain premises. He selects premises to suit himself, or asks the Office of Works to get a place which is perhaps £10,000, or £15,000, or £20,000 per year.

That has nothing to do with this Bill. The hon. Member is mixing up two things—borrowing and expenditure. We are not now discussing expenditure, we are discussing the means of borrowing.

On the point of Order. I only want to show the difficulty there will be in borrowing. I feel sure that the finding of the money will be greatly hindered if the people have a strong feeling that in all directions the money which they are subscribing has been and is being wasted. I should like to call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Clause 1, Sub-section (3) of the Bill, which says:

"(3) There shall be paid to the Banks of England and Ireland respectively out of the Consolidated Fund or the growing produce thereof, for the management in every financial year of any securities issued under this Act, such sums as may be agreed upon between the Treasury and those banks respectively."

Of course, I do not go into the amount formerly paid to the Bank of England. That is fixed by two Acts of Parliament. When a large Loan comes along, however, special arrangements have been made, as in the last Loan. I would urge upon my right hon. Friend to strike a better bargain than has been done. There is an immense amount of money paid to the Bank of England. That bargain which is embodied in the Bill ought to be a very strict one, and I think my right hon. Friend ought to do this—call for the profit and loss account of the Bank of England. The public has never seen that. The Bank of England is a law unto itself on the question of assessment. Until the right hon. Gentleman sees the profits which the Bank makes he will not be able to tell exactly what fee should be paid to them. They do not publish a profit and loss account. They have a rest account, which, if you look through their accounts for some time past, amounts to £3,250,000 sterling. It is out of that that the dividend is paid. They are not like other companies. They do not publish a profit and loss account so that you may see the profits they are making. That is one matter in which I think my right hon. Friend might achieve a certain amount of economy; in fact, I feel quite sure he would. At any rate, I should like him to do his utmost to recover for the Treasury that control of expenditure which the Treasury has absolutely lost.

I would again remind the hon. Gentleman that the question of expenditure, does not arise upon this account.

I beg your pardon, Sir.

It can be raised upon a Vote of Credit.

I thought we were, in discussing the Second Reading of this Bill, raising money. I did not know that it was irrelevant to discuss the outgoing of that money when it was obtained. I did not know that I should have—

The hon. Member has got at the wrong point. The point he wishes to get at is before the money is voted, and, necessarily, before the Gov- ernment is allowed to spend it. That is his point. That point is not dealt with at all under this Bill

I was only discussing that aspect of the case, Mr. Speaker, in so far as it affected the Government's ability to borrow under this Bill. That is all. I did not want to carry it any further. I was not challenging it. I was only advising the Government, in a humble way, that there are certain things which, in my judgment, will facilitate the operation of this Loan Act, if they get it. But I may have some other opportunity of going into these questions which are under discussion at the present time. This question, in particular, in regard to the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland is what I would call the special attention of my right hon. Friend to for I think economy might be effected there.

I trunk it might be for the convenience of the House if at this stage of the proceedings I should say something in answer to the case which has been made by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury). Before, however, passing to him I should like to say just one or two words upon the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Aberdeenshire (Mr. J. Henderson). I approach this whole problem from a slightly different angle of view to him. I cannot understand the hon. Member at a time like this, dwelling, as he did, on what he called the penalisation of the holders of a certain class of shares. After all, who are the people who hold American securities? They are people who, for reasons quite good in themselves and perfectly legitimate, have preferred, to investing their money in the industries of this country, to put it out in a foreign country, not because of affection for that country, but because they could do better for themselves. At a time like this, when their country needed their help, by far the greater number of them, I think, only too pleased to think that in this way, if in no other, they could help their country. Did they offer all the assistance they could give, either by loan or by the sale of these American securities, out of which they have done so well for so many years? I may admit at once—there is no doubt of it—that there are a certain number of people who feel themselves aggrieved whenever any compulsory powers of any kind are taken for any purpose whatsoever. I think, however, I can assure the House that, speaking generally, the people who are most aggrieved by the proceedings of the American Dollars Securities Committee are those who have failed to exercise a reasonable amount of forethought. The matter of the American securities came up in this House in the late autumn of 1915. My right hon. Friend, as he truly says, always opposed the policy of dealing with them as they were dealt with, both by the last and the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. I read his arguments only yesterday; the arguments of the speech he made in November or December, 1916. I may tell him, though I do not know whether or not he will agree, that we know that if we had not been in a position to purchase these securities that we could not by any possibility have held the American exchange at all. In December, 1915, there was issued a notice by the Treasury which was published pretty generally in the Press of this country, and, if I think aright, the terms of which must be familiar to most people in this House, and certainly to people in the City of London. It explained the difficulty of maintaining the exchanges between the United States and the United Kingdom. It continued that in order to facilitate the maintenance of these exchanges the Government wished to receive securities on deposit or to purchase them in this country. The owners of such securities were invited to place them at the disposal of the Treasury. It was also stated that holders of American securities were requested to remember that although they were invited primarily to submit suitable securities to the Government, under the scheme they could still contribute materially towards the achievement of the objects aimed at by selling their securities in the open market and reinvesting the proceeds in British Government securities. At that point I think most prudent people, people who were anxious to help their country, would not have waited longer before offering their securities to the Government—whether they were taken or not—or, if they preferred, selling them and investing the proceeds as desired in that circular.

Following on this, in the spring of 1916, a scheme was instituted—I need not go into details, because they are immaterial— but a scheme was introduced which was called Scheme A, and later on a still better scheme, which still holds the field, called Scheme B, came into being last August, and it was only in the January of this year, when matters with regard to our finances with America were in a very grave condition, that a further alteration of policy was made, and the requisitioning Order of which we have heard to-day was issued. With regard to the specific case which my right hon. Friend raised, the facts—about which there is, I think, no doubt—are these, and I think in dealing with the facts we should bear in mind the few remarks I have made up to this point. This came out in December, and in this the security held by the lady was included. A month after that the Defence of the Realm Order was issued which gave powers to requisition securities, and which had this effect, that no securities deposited after that date would be free from requisition. I should like to point out here that although the securities had been deposited up to that date, and were contained in either the A list or the B list, they were not, as a matter of fact, requisitioned. There is power under this Defence of the Realm Regulation, in case of need, to requisition them. All securities stand on the same footing in that they are liable to requisition, the difference being that those which were deposited under Scheme B before the Defence of the Realm Regulation get the benefit of Scheme B terms. The lady deposited her shares too late to be included in Scheme B and enjoy the original Scheme B terms. Consequently, when her shares came to be requisitioned in May, they were, by the terms of the Order, requisitionable at the price then ruling. Now I want to point out to my right hon. Friend that if she had at any time definitely tendered those shares to the Treasury, even if the Treasury had said at that time they would not take them, she would have been exempt from requisition terms, but if her shares were requisitioned she would have had the same advantage as if she had lodged them under Scheme B in time.

I have been told—I have not got the letter with me, but I think I can find it—that people who had offered those shares and had them declined and had loaned them later have had their shares requisitioned—

There is a second point I should like my right hon. Friend to bear in mind. This seems to be a simple business precaution. If any person, knowing what was being done, and recognising the necessity for what was being done, in the early days of this scheme had given specific and written instructions to bankers, or whoever were the custodians of those securities, and had said to them, "Whenever any of my securities appear on any list, you are to deposit them at once," in a case like that, owing to pressure of work—such pressure as, I freely admit, existed in the banks last January—and the bank had been late in depositing those securities, they could have put the case before the Government Securities Committee and shown them that they had specific written instructions, it would have been held that they had complied with those instructions, and securities lodged in that manner would then have had the same benefit as if they had been lodged in time. I cannot see in this particular case that there is one iota of hardship. It was known ever since December, 1915, what the value of these securities was to the country. No step was taken at all in this particular case, as I am advised, to meet the desire of the Treasury, or to fall in in any way with the terms of the circular which I have read to the House. The delay that took place in depositing the shares seems to me unreasonable. It was too long, and evidently no specific instructions had been given to the bank in the way that I have described, or else the lady would have had the benefit. The only complaint she seems to have is that the Loan price was 37 and the realised price was 32. The reason for that is that securities which were deposited before Schedule B scheme, although they came in too late to avoid requisition, were put in at the price at which the stocks stood on 11th August last year. That is called their deposit price, and that is one of the factors in calculating the price when the terms of the scheme have been complied with. That was the price-last August of this particular security, which has fluctuated a good deal, and the fluctuations of which could not possibly be of any interest to the House to go into now. The price at the time the shares were requisitioned was 32¼, which was. practically the price on the day that the shares were offered for deposit, although immediately before that they had been some points higher, and, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out, they have risen again since then. Fluctuations on this particular stock have reacted, unfortunately, but that there has been any hardship in this particular case I entirely deny.

I admit freely that in some cases out of many that have been dealt with there may have been individual cases of hardship, and I agree entirely with what my right hon. Friend said to me—if I may quote it— in private conversation the other day: had he and I been private individuals we might here and there have eased matters in cases of hardship. I am sure he would have, and I dare say I should have, but it is a very different matter, acting as a private individual, whereby in making a concession you commit no one but yourself, and when you are acting as trustee for your country, exactly as a trustee in private life, in which case you can give away nothing and are bound to be confined by arbitrary rules. I can only say this in conclusion. The work which this Committee has had to do since these schemes for the management of American securities have come in has been enormous, and they have grappled with it with admirable energy and skill. I am afraid it would not be to the public advantage that I should give statistics as to the sums involved, but I do not think I am committing an error of judgment in saying that we have had upwards of 150,000 individual bargains to deal with, and the number of complaints that has reached the Committee has been an infinitesimal proportion of the vast numbers that have been dealt with.

Like the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, I am very adverse to standing between the House and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Fisher), but this matter is most important, and I should like to make a few observations upon the Bill before us. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) said he had always opposed this mobilisation of American securities. I entirely agree with him in that opposition, but once having adopted the system of lending securities to the Government, I do think if that scheme is adopted and securities are lent that you must be prepared to take the risk of the Government using those securities, as they do, to establish credit on the other side and obtain loans against them. The person who advances the loan must have a lien on the securities. The Government cannot borrow securities to raise credit without having the power of foreclosing or requisitioning if they find it necessary to do so. At the same time, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman opposite in opposing, as I did, that scheme, because I regarded it as unsound, and it did not carry out what it was intended to do. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat own (Mr. Baldwin) said there was no other method except giving up these securities, but I entirely dispute that, for there are many other methods.

I said it was the one method open to them. I did not say it was the only method.

I do not agree with the hon. Member. The holders of these securities could not help their country except by giving them up, whereas they could help by being willing to pay heavy taxation. There are many other methods by which they could much better help the country and help the Treasury. Of course I do not again propose to go over the ground which has been so often traversed, but I would like to refer briefly to this point: The hon. Member said the taking of these American securities was for the purpose of holding up the American exchange, and I agree. That was the reason why many of us opposed the system of mobilising American securities. If you had allowed the American exchange to correct itself, the other disadvantages which have accrued from this system would not have ensued. What are those disadvantages? One of the principal disadvantages of this artificial supporting of the exchange in America has been to stimulate to an abnormal degree the export of American commodities to this country, and the Government have not been able to correct the American exchange, and they are now in a position because of borrowing—and this Loan is only another addition to that policy—of greater embarrassment in regard to the American exchange than before this drastic method of taking the securities from the holders was adopted.

Before I develop that argument I should like to refer to some Clauses of the Bill itself. In common with many others who objected to the Financial Resolution when it was before the House, I regret giving such powers as are contained in this Bill. The granting of Supply up till the 31st March next year seems to me much too premature and far too wide. We might have reduced the time, and the Government might have come later in the autumn for further powers. These powers seem far too wide, as they are calculated to lead to extravagance. It is well known that there is only one method by which you can enforce some economy in war-time, and that is by keeping a tight hold of the purse-strings of the nation and not granting powers to enlarge Votes of Credit or borrowing powers. I would like to say that it is very disappointing, now we are about to adjourn, that the Government should come forward asking for such wide borrowing powers without making any proposal with regard to increased taxation. Now we have a National Debt of over £5,000,000,000 and a floating debt of about £700,000,000 or £800,000,000, and yet we have no intimation from the Government that they are going to come before us asking for increased powers of taxation. We ought to have another Budget, and the Government ought to state now, or when we meet again in October, that very drastic proposals will be brought before the House dealing with taxation.

The Government will talk about expenditure and economy, but if you pursue this rate of continuous borrowing it is useless for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that he does not propose to bring out a Loan during the Recess. Why, he is bringing out a Loan every day. He has a tap turned on at the Treasury, and he is continuously borrowing. Not only does the right hon. Gentleman wish to continue that increase of Treasury Bills and floating debt, but he wishes to have power to issue a Loan to the American bankers and others who are willing to lend money. The right hon. Gentleman rejoices that the Americans are still willing to lend to us, but we have not to consider the number of bankers who are willing to lend; we have to consider our enormous indebtedness. One would think it was something to be proud of that we are still able to borrow, but it would be serious if we could not borrow. It seems to me that in pursuing this policy of drift with regard to the War and finance we shall simply go on until we have borrowed the last shilling—and then come down to this House and say, "we are at the end of our tether, we have no means of raising money, we present you with a bankrupt Treasury, and a helpless State." That is not statesmanship, it is lunacy, and while this country is willing to make sacrifices it expects from its statesmen and Government some ideas of solvency, of a wish to maintain solvency. I say that this backhand method of giving people a cheap loaf by borrowing, as it were, in another direction is perfectly unsound. You think you are giving a cheap loaf because you know the working classes—

The hon. Gentleman is wandering over a very wide field, and I must ask him to confine his remarks within the limits of the Bill.

I am sorry if my zeal to make a case which I think you will perhaps admit is relevant to the discussion in a sense, Mr. Speaker, should have led me from the proper limits of discussion on this Bill. If we pursue the borrowing method for which this Bill provides it leads to those other things to which I have alluded. I submit that this particular system of borrowing, of which this is, of course, a part, is leading to enormous inflation. We have heard considerable discussion about inflation, for when the Vote of Credit was before us there was some reference to it then, and it may be asked how this particular Bill, which is to give the Government powers still further to go to the market and increase our loan indebtedness, brings about inflation. May I just try to explain how that is brought about? It must be evident, of course, that if you have inflation either by borrowing on Treasury currency notes or by the Treasury issuing Treasury bills to the banks, and then the money being spent, and that going to increase the deposits of the banks, and enabling the banks by their increased deposits to go to the Treasury and get increased currency notes, you will have inflation, because the amount of currency notes is based on the amount of deposits the banks have, and as their deposits go up their power to go to the Treasury for currency notes increases. That can be seen when it is observed that the currency notes amount to £168,000,000. That is the result of the granting of these powers for increased borrowing. Another result which comes from increased borrowing is inflation of prices. If you have currency notes issued at the present rate per week, the currency dilated at the base, you have an enormous addition to your debt, which amounts to £5,100,000,000, and you are bound, by the power you give to the Government to continue that, to raise the prices of the very things you desire for the carrying on of the War. I submit that while I do not suggest that you can get on with and finance the War without a certain amount of debt we have far too small a proportion of direct taxation as against Loans, and I regret, as I say, that the Government have not seen their way to go forward with some proposals on those lines. I think the evidence is accumulating on all sides that inflation brought about by borrowing has increased cue cost of living enormously, has accentuated discontent in the country, and may be sowing the seeds of serious unrest, and perhaps revolution later on.

I noticed the other day that some mass meetings were held in Scotland of miners and others at which it was said that unless something was done to stop what they called profiteering and inflation by the food robbers and so on they would use measures to enforce it those are very significant meetings. The working classes have among them many highly intelligent men, but they probably have not the training to enable them to distinguish between loan payment, the basis of currency, and the rise in the price of commodities, and they attribute it to some intermediary, to someone who is getting this enormous difference between the prices prior to the War and the prices to-day. It is quite true that capitalists and large people engaged in industrial undertakings take advantage of conditions, but I say they do not create those conditions. While the Government cannot control all the various shipping and other interests engaged in the trade they can undoubtedly by a proper system of finance, by a greater proportion of finance being raised by taxation rather than by Loans, lessen this disastrous state of affairs rather than accentuate it. Some remarks were made earlier in the Debate on the effect the Government's Loan policy has upon our international position, and I said in conjunction with the right hon. Baronet the member for the City and others when we opposed this system of mobilising American securities for borrowing that that would not remedy our exchange position with America. I say again there is proof that the policy embodied in this Bill, which the Government evidently still intend to pursue, has accentuated opposition, and that proof is given by the figures themselves. What are those figures? If we take the Board of Trade returns for the last six months we find that the argument we have submitted that this policy of borrowing accentuates that position is true. I find that in the trade returns for the month of June they are not altogether satisfactory. It is stated that a comparison with preceding months shows imports down by half a million, while exports of home produce rose by nearly a quarter of a million. The revealed balance of trade, the excess of imports over exports, leaving out of account the movements of bullion and coin, and allowing for re-exports, was, for June £36,000,000 as against £31,000,000 in June, 1916. It was £37,750,000 in May, 1917, and for the six months £203,000,000, as compared with £178,000,000 in the corresponding period of 1916. We might say roughly double that for the year, and you find then an excess of imports this year facing us of over £400,000,000, excluding what we may have to pay to America for munitions and other Government purposes. I have no means of knowing what that exactly is, but I think I should be within the mark when I estimate it at £150,000,000 to £200,000,000. That would give an adverse excess of imports over exports of some £600,000,000 in this year. How are you going to finance that?

That is the position which is accentuated year by year by this method of raising continuous Loans, which merely postpones your settlement and is like a man extending his bills and never meeting them. We have never met our indebtedness to America, and by enabling the Government still further to inflate the currency, raise the floating debt, and make more Loans we increase our embarrassment and make still graver the position in which we find ourselves to-day. I for one have incurred a considerable amount of obloquy in my endeavour not to give way on the main purpose of the War, but to endeavour to bring about an honourable peace because I believe that unless we get a speedy and honourable peace, without giving way on the main object of the War, we shall have a bad peace, embarrassed finances, an approach to national bankruptcy, and suffering untold for the working classes of this country. I desire, in my humble way to emphasise the gravity of our financial position, and while no one in this House by a wave of the magician's wand or any other method can alter the position we can do something to lessen the gravity of the position. If we are, as I believe we are, in a position of supreme gravity in our finances let us face it by doubling or adding another third to our Income Tax; let us bring home to our people the gravity of our position, and by increasing taxation compel people, by the only method known, to reduce their expenditure. Academic lectures will not bring about economy. The working classes, who are in receipt of larger wages than they have ever received before, will, I think, spend that money, and you will never get economy until you bring it about by enforced taxation.

The hon. Member below me (Mr. J. Henderson), who was in favour of a forced Loan, said he regretted that this Bill did not contain a provision for a forced Loan. I am sorry I find myself unable to agree with him. I have given my reasons for objecting to giving powers continually for Loans rather than for increased taxation. Why I object to a forced Loan is that if you are going to the market to borrow and try to force people to lend you will cripple and hurt your credit. You carry on the War by credit, and you do not, by forcing people to lend, thereby increase your credit. A loan is a matter of credit, a matter of mutual confidence. If I am going to lend it is because I have confidence in the person to whom I am going to lend. But if any attempt is made to force me to lend my tendency is more and more to button up my pockets and refuse to lend. If the Government were to put in proposals for trying to force capitalists to lend, outside capitalists, like Americans and others, would say what a very serious position it was for Great Britain, and that would reduce and contract our credit and therefore would not advance the cause m which my hon. Friend had at heart of easing the financial position. A heavy levy of taxation is necessary, and I would support it because it brings home to people the gravity of the position in which we find ourselves. I do not think it would advance the case or be advantageous to our interests to have anything in the way of a forced Loan. I thank the House for giving me this courtesy and listening to these observations. I know we are very anxious to proceed to the next business, and I regret it if I have in any way stood between the House and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Fisher). But I do say, in conclusion, that it is a very, very serious business that we are engaged in. I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for education, but education and everything which is going to benefit this country—

We have not reached that yet. We are on the Loan Bill now.

I can only say that even education depends on finance. To secure sound finance we must impress me Government with the gravity of the position and induce them not to some forward for fresh powers for Loans, but to some forward and tell us frankly and freely the position in which we find ourselves, and take the country into their confidence, with a view to sharing the burdens. I appeal to them, in conclusion, that they should between now and the time we meet again be prepared, if the War continues, to come forward with some drastic scheme of taxation to increase the proportion of taxation as against Loans.

2.0 P.M.

I do not think the hon. Member who has just sat down need have apologised for calling attention to the gravity of this issue. At the present moment we have, I think, to look a little further afield and we shall see the condition to which the use of the printing press in the financing of the War has brought one of our great Allies, to our own detriment. At the bottom of the troubles which led to the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, undoubtedly, was the method of finance adopted—of resorting entirely to loans and the use of paper—which resulted in the raising of prices and the hostility of the people, who had not sufficient to keep them alive. What I particularly want to do is to ask for an assurance that in the issue of this Loan certain tactics which were adopted in the issue of the last Loan shall not be resorted to. On the last occasion the Government knew that the prospects as to the duration of the War would be a determining factor in the price at which they could get money, and the amount they could raise, and they called it a Victory Loan, and embarked on a great advertising campaign to give people the assurance that that Loan would be the last Loan required. The Government, having got the people's money on those considerations, on the terms which that consideration would result in, the War Office, I think on the day on which the list closed, or within a day or two from that date, issued instrustions to the Press that they were no longer to talk of victory in 1917, but they were to talk of victory in 1918. They gave them information, denied to this House, of the number of fresh German divisions brought into the field on the Western front, and gave them all the facts with which to destroy the arguments the Government had used in its advertisements for getting the money from the people. I believe that if a private individual used these methods in borrowing he would find himself in the dock. It would be getting money virtually under false representations, and I wish to get ah assurance from the Government that such methods will not be adopted this time.

It seems to me that the Government will have to take some action in this matter, because of the action and the speeches being made by their official representative, Ambassador and Plenipotentiary in America. There is nothing that has happened which will so embarrass the Chancellor of the Exchequer in getting his Loan as the speeches which are being made in America at the present time, or have been made recently, by Lord Northcliffe, for he has told the people of America that we are only at the beginning of the War. If our National Debt to-day stands at £3,000,000,000 or £4,000,000,000, or £5,000,000 000, or whatever it may be, and that is only the beginning of our National Debt, if it is going to amount to £8,000,000,000 or £10,000,000,000, then we shall not have that security which the Government ought to be able to offer the borrower. That security most certainly will not exist, because you can raise the amount of your debt to such a point that after yon have paid those who have created the nation's wealth, after having met that first essential obligation, the wealth of the country will not be sufficient to provide for the charges and interest of the debt. When that point is reached it makes inevitable repudiation in one form or another. I know repudiation is a nasty word to use, but you can repudiate in a very legal fashion by way of taxation. All I am asking is that the Government, when it issues this Loan, shall make a truthful statement to the lenders as to the prospects, as determined by the military position and the diplomatic situation. I do not want to see them, as they did last time, issue statements which they themselves later on prove in their secret communications to the Press to be absolutely false. If we are only at the beginning of the War, as the Government's official representative in America states, we should not be borrowing to-day; we should be taxing. We should be taxing the last penny out of the pockets of the rich and the profiteers; we should be taxing the last penny on the land values of this country. We should not be borrowing, I say, because if that is the position, that we are only at the beginning of the War, if we go on borrowing we are going the way which must end in bankruptcy and the repudiation of the debt — at least in part. I hope this time that we shall have fair dealing with the public when an appeal is made to them for money. I should like to make one suggestion to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As the view of the public will largely be determined by the prospect of the duration of the War, which is largely a matter of diplomacy, I think he would secure increased confidence if he would demand the security that the conduct of foreign affairs should be kept in the hands of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and should be taken out of the hands of Lord Northcliffe or even of the Prime Minister himself.

I had intended to bring before the House two points of view which have not received any attention at all, but, as a number of hon. Members have come here looking forward to an Education Debate, I shall defer my remarks to the Third Reading.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next.—[ Mr. Baldwin. ]

Am I in order in inquiring whether the further Orders will be proceeded with, or is it intended now to adjourn?

Certainly the further Orders will be proceeded with, and the Education Bill will be presented by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Herbert Fisher), but he was under the impression that my hon. Friend (Mr. King) would make a speech of some length.

I must protest. I do not know what right the right hon. Gentleman has to say that I was going to make a speech of some length, when I told the Chief Whip when he came to me that I would not speak two minutes. It is most irregular to be charged in this way.

Order, order! There is no Question before the House.

Accept my apologies.

I beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a bill to make further provision with respect to education in England and Wales, and for purposes connected therewith."

When a measure of far-reaching social importance is introduced by a Coalition Government in the height of a great European war and at a late stage of a busy and anxious Session, I feel that the House is entitled to assurances upon three points. It is entitled to be assured, firstly, that adequate provision will be given for the discussion of the measure; then that the Bill is urgently demanded and connected with the circumstances of the War; and, lastly, that at a time when the preservation of national unity is a grave and dominant consideration, there is nothing in the Government proposals calculated to revive ancient party recriminations and controversies.

There will be!

It is because the Government feel that in this sphere of administrative action, so decisive and fundamental in its consequences, there should be no suspicion on the part of hon. Members that we are anxious to force the pace or to preclude a full and dispassionate criticism of our proposals, that I am standing at this Box this afternoon. We are aware that under the pressure of Parliamentary business it may not be possible for us to proceed very far with this measure during the current Session, but we are nevertheless desirous of taking this opportunity, while the Summer Recess is still in the future, of presenting our Bill for the consideration of the House and of the country. As to the second point, I admit that this Bill will not enable us to beat the Germans in 1918. Indeed, even if it were passed before Christmas many years must elapse before its provisions could yield their full fruit. But the measure is not obscurely connected with the circumstances of the War. It is prompted by deficiencies which have been revealed by the War; it is framed to repair the intel- lectual wastage which has been caused by the War; and should it pass into law before peace is struck it will put a prompt end to an evil which has grown to alarming proportions during the past three years—I allude to the industrial pressure upon the child life of this country—and it will greatly facilitate the solution of many problems of juvenile employment, which will certainly be affected by the transition of the country from a basis of war to a basis of peace:

I now pass to the third point. Is the measure controversial? I am a very raw Parliamentary hand, but I have noticed that there are members in this House who are not inexpert in discovering matters of controversy even in places where, to the eye of innocence, the fate of Empire is not conspicuously involved. I will not therefore prophecy, but I do sincerely hope that any controversies that may be excited with respect to the proposals which I am now about to lay before the House will not centre round the old question which in times past has excited so much warm debate in this House and in the country at large. I do not wish at this stage to raise what is known as the denominational question in any shape or form. I am not proposing to supersede or to revolutionise the educational settlement of 1902. That settlement was not perhaps exactly what my right hon. Friend would have made it if he had had a free hand, and many of us, from one point of view or another, would have wished it other than it is. I am aware that grievances under that settlement are still felt, that some of its principles are sharply contested in many quarters, and that attempts to adjust conflicting views have so far been unhappily frustrated, but I think I am representing the general feeling of this House and of the country when I say that at this particular moment it is especially to be desired that the members of the old religious controversy should not be fanned into flame, and that the question of education should be considered in the light of educational needs and of these alone.

At the same time, I would not desire the impression to go abroad that the Government ignore the spiritual aspects of education, or are indifferent to the strongly held views of those who, from one point of view or another, find fault with this or that feature of our existing system. I am not afraid of the denominational question. I hope and believe that, in the general improvement in the atmosphere which has been created by the War, parties may be brought closer together and that a settlement of the outstanding issues may be reached; but, quite apart from these issues, many of which may be solved without resort to legislation, there is a great and urgent need for development in our educational system, and I believe that this development will be more usefully and fruitfully considered if we can resolve to defer for future and separate discussion what is known as the denominational issue.

The Bill which I invite the House to consider assumes the administrative structure which was erected by the Act of 1902. It assumes that the business of carrying on the educational work of this country will continue to be entrusted to the authorities upon whom it was devolved by that Act. We do not even propose, except with special Parliamentary sanction, to merge the non-county boroughs and urban districts into the county. We feel that these smaller authorities have, in many cases, done their work well and that their continued existence is not incompatible with the formation of general and progressive schemes of education in the country as a whole. Nor do we propose to enlarge the powers of the boroughs and urban districts in the sense of making those authorities responsible for the provision of higher education. I am quits alive to the inconvenience and even embarrassment which has arisen, and still arises, in some places and at some times owing to the distinction between Part II. and Part III. of the Act of 1902, and I hope that some of the provisions of the Bill will operate to mitigate, if not entirely to remove, that inconvenience. But everybody knows that the reconstitution of public authorities and the consequent alteration in type of areas is a difficult and controversial business, and, unless it is essential for the proper development of education, I do not think that that work should be undertaken. In general, then, we adhere to the administrative groundwork of 1902, because experience has shown that it has enabled a large educational advance to be accomplished and that it has been the means of enlisting a not inconsiderable army of persons who take an interest in education and who have by this time acquired a good deal of valuable experience in the management of schools.

The Bill which I am proposing to the House does not involve any radical alteration in machinery, though I should be greatly disappointed if it does not considerably modify the method of using that machinery and greatly increases its efficiency. Its object is to provide, under the better operation of the existing machinery—amended, it may be, in some directions, and extended in others— enlarged and enriched opportunities of education to the children of the poor. Let me add that, although the measure touches public education at many points, it does not profess to cover the whole field of educational reform. For instance, it does not affect the government of the universities, or of those institutions of secondary, technical, and other higher education which are not maintained or aided by local education authorities. I am not proposing here to deal with the scholarship system, the training colleges, or libraries; and the establishment of a satisfactory pension scheme for teachers in secondary, technical, and other schools, at present outside the State scheme of pensions, must be left to a separate measure.

There is another educational problem of great urgency which, after much anxious consideration, I have decided to exclude from the operation of the Bill. I have already made a passing allusion to it. In the three years of war some 600,000 children have been withdrawn prematurely from school and become immersed in industry. They are working on munitions, in the fields, and in the mines. In a thousand different ways these children are contributing to our success in the War. Though they are earning wages, and in some cases high wages, let us make no mistake about it, these children are incurring a real sacrifice, the effects of which, in many cases, will be felt to the end of their lives. I ask the House to consider whether the nation has not incurred a special responsibility towards these children who have been brought in to help in the War, often in circumstances most adverse to the formation of stable character. There can be only one answer— that some special means must be found, either by administrative action or otherwise, whereby this responsibility may be adequately discharged.

Before I proceed to outline the leading features of the Bill, I would like very briefly to describe some aspects of the movements of opinion which, in the minds of the Government, have made a considerable measure of advance in education an absolute necessity. In the first place, attention has been increasingly directed to the close connection between educational and physical efficiency. One of the great dates in our social history is the establishment of the school medical service in 1907. We now know, what we should not otherwise have known, how greatly the value of our educational system is impaired by the low physical conditions of a vast number of the children, and how imperative is the necessity of raising the general standard of physical health among the children of the poor, if a great part of the money spent on our educational system is not to be wasted. That is one element in the movement of opinion. Another element is the growing consciousness that there is a lack of scientific correlation between the different parts of our educational machinery. We find an important and populous centre without a secondary school in any shape or form. We find an older and less important centre with four secondary schools. We discover that even where there is an adequate provision of secondary schools in an area there may be no provision of boarding scholarships such as may enable the abler children of the villages to take advantage of the schools in their neighbourhood, no provision of advanced teaching for the older pupils, and no provision of scholarships to the universities. Everyone realises the elementary fact that some children, if they are only given opportunity, will profit most through modern languages and history, others by a scientific and technical education, and others again are destined by their natural turn of mind to profit most from an education based largely on the study of classical antiquity. But under our existing system we have no security that in any area of accessibility, to adopt a vague but convenient term, these various needs and aptitudes will be provided for. There is not even a reasonable probability that the child will get the higher education best adapted to his or her needs. The Act of 1902 no doubt contemplated area schemes for higher education, but the duty of considering the whole need of an area was left hanging in the air.

A third feature in the movement of opinion is the increased feeling of social solidarity which has been created by the War. When you get Conscription, when you get a state of affairs under which the poor are asked to pour out their blood and to be mulcted in the high cost of living for large international policies, then every just mind begins to realise that the boundaries of citizenship are not determined by wealth, and that the same logic which leads us to desire an extension of the franchise points also to an extension of education. There is a growing sense, not only in England but through Europe, and I may say especially in France, that the industrial workers of the country are entitled to be considered primarily as citizens and as fit subjects for any form of education from which they are capable of profiting. I notice also that a new way of thinking about education has sprung up among many of the more reflecting members of our industrial army. They do not want education in order that they may become better technical workmen and earn higher wages. They do not want it in order that they may rise out of their own class, always a vulgar ambition, they want it because they know that in the treasures of the mind they can find an aid to good citizenship, a source of pure enjoyment and a refuge from the necessary hardships of a life spent in the midst of clanging machinery in our hideous cities of toil. I ask whether there is a single struggling young student in this country to whom a library of good books has not made an elemental democratic appeal. the elementary school Grants and, sixthly, we wish to make an effective survey of the whole educational provision in the country and to bring private educational institutions into closer and more convenient relations to the national system. I will first, then, deal with our proposals as affecting the general framework of educational administration. We impose a duty upon the council of every county and county borough to provide for the progressive development and comprehensive organisation of education in their respective areas and to submit schemes to the Board, and in order that this function may adequately be discharged we propose to remove the two-penny limit on the amount to be raised for higher forms of education which was imposed by the Act of 1902. The council of a county or county borough will, in other words, plan out an educational policy for its area. Before submitting its scheme to the Board the council will be required to consult the authorities having power in the county under Part 3 of the Act of 1902 with reference to the mode in which, and the extent to which, any such authority will cooperate with the council, and the Board will be informed as to the co-operation to be anticipated from any such authority. There will, we trust, be little difficulty in securing the degree of cooperation between the authorities within the county area which may be requisite for the representation of a combined and intelligent plan of educational organisation from bottom to top. This, then, is the first point we desire to secure. We impose a duty on each complete authority to submit an area scheme, not for elementary education only, but for all forms of education. We impose a duty on the county authorities to consult the Part 3 authorities in their area. We impose duty on the Part 3 authority to co-operate with the Part 2 authority—that is to say, the authority for higher education—and, if required, to submit a scheme for the performance of its own duties and for co-operation with the Part 2 authorities. Finally, we liberate the county authority from the limitation of the two-penny rate.

But there are some educational problems which can be more conveniently considered in relation to areas larger than a county or county borough area and by bodies representing a wider constituency. The supply and preliminary education of teachers, for instance, could be best dealt with in relation to a large area. So probably could a scheme for scholarships to be held at the secondary schools or the universities. Or, again, the provision and utilisation of secondary schools might be more scientifically planned out and with less fear of overlapping in a large area than in a small area. It is, of course, possible under the existing law for authorities to combine together for any one or all of such purposes, but it seems to me desirable that distinct statutory authority should be given for the formation of bodies which we may call provincial associations.

Now assuming that for some purposes it may be convenient to have larger areas than a county or county borough, one of two ways might be taken to effect this object. The country might be mapped out into eight or nine provincial areas, each provided with a council representing the local education authority of the area, together with representatives of the university and other interests; and wide powers, including the power to levy a rate, might be assigned to each of these councils. That, I understand, is the scheme advocated by Lord Haldane, who, of course, speaks on all educational questions with great authority. Or the Board might be empowered by Statute to provide for the establishment of provincial associations after consultation with the authorities concerned the local educational authorities being empowered to delegate administrative and educational functions to these associations, and conversely the associations being empowered to exercise any functions so delegated. The Bill follows the second of these paths. We think that it would be premature to carve up England into provincial areas or to embark at once on such a very large scheme of devolution as the advocates of the former plan contemplate. We certainly cannot assume that the local education authorities would be willing to come into such a plan, so we think it wiser to look for our larger authority to a gradual process of coalescence fostered by the State, probably in the first instance with a view to some specific purpose or group of purposes, to which other purposes might in time be added.

We have, then, county and county borough authorities obliged to submit comprehensive schemes of education for their respective areas, and these may be gradually supplemented by provincial associations for those educational purposes which are most conveniently dealt with in relation to areas larger than those of county and comity boroughs. But what do we mean by comprehensive schemes? First, we want to make it plain that the education given in our public elementary schools is not to be considered an end in itself, but as a stage in the child's education destined to lead to a further stage. Secondly, we propose to require local educational authorities under Part III. of the Education Act of 1902 to make adequate provision, either by special classes or by means of central schools, for what may be termed higher elementary education. We desire to meet the objection which is commonly, and not without justice, advanced against so much of the work done in our public elementary schools during the last two years—that the children are marking time, that their education is not bringing them on, and that it does not fit them for their future calling. We desire to change all that, and our Bill provides not only for the introduction of practical instruction at appropriate stages, but for the preparation of children for further education in schools other than elementary, and for their transference at suitable ages to such schools.

I pass now to a series of proposals which are designed to improve and to strengthen our existing fabric of elementary education so as to secure for every child in the Kingdom a sound physique and a solid groundwork of knowledge before the period when the part-time system begins. We propose to encourage the establishment of nursery schools for children under five years, and we empower the local education authorities to raise the age at which normal instruction in the elementary schools begins to six, as soon as there is an adequate supply of nursery schools for the younger children in the area. We propose to amend the law of school attendance so as to abolish all exemptions between the ages of five and fourteen, and we propose to place further restrictions upon the employment of children during the elementary school period. The first of these proposals rests upon the belief that children are introduced to the normal instruction of public elementary schools at too tender an age. At four or five years sleep and play are far more important than letters, and we feel that wherever the home is good the child should be encouraged to stay with his or her mother.

What if the home is not good?

We do not desire to compel the provision of nursery schools, but we propose to enable such schools, attendance at which must be voluntary, to be aided from the rates, and we believe that to the development of these schools, which will, I trust, often be open-air schools, we may reasonably look for a real improvement in the health of young children. The second proposal involves as its consequence the abolition of what is known as the half-time system. This is a system which at the present moment mainly flourishes in certain parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where some 30,000 children between the ages of twelve and fourteen are permitted to divide their working day between the factory and the school. Originally the half-time system represented a concession to the claims of education. Boys and girls in Lancashire were released from the factory for a half-day's schooling at a time when, in other parts of the country, they were still deprived of all educational opportunities. Now the situation is reversed, and the child population in the half-time regions of the North suffers under peculiar and exceptional disabilities. The system, of course, has its defenders, as any system long continued, and become a habit must. The wages; earned by the children are acceptable to the parents. The labour supplied by the children is acceptable to the employers, but it is very difficult to see any grounds, apart from the convenience of cheap labour, upon which the continuance of this exceptional system can be defended. It is no argument to plead that the regions in which this system is practised are conspicuous for energy and intelligence. If such a statement be true, as I think it is, it only proves once more how native vigour may triumph over serious obstacles. I do not wish to be understood to be bringing any form of accusation against the employers of half-time labour, many of whom are most considerate to the claims of their workpeople.

But the system has been condemned by every educationist and every social reformer. It is bad for the physique of the children. It is injurious to the intellectual prospects of the half-timer. It has been shown that the work upon which the children are engaged is not such as to develop the higher forms of industrial activity, and it has been shown that when the half-time system is once admitted in the textile system it spreads to other forms of employment as well. We consider, then, that the time has come when in the general interests of the country and in the special interest of the children concerned notice should be given that this system should, after a convenient interval, come to an end, and we consider that the termination of the War, when a large mass of new labour will be thrown on the market, will be a convenient period at which to terminate this undesirable custom.

The third measure for improving our elementary school education is the further regulation of the employment of children during the period of daily elementary school life. We desire a full period of school life, unimpaired by the competing claims of employment, for all children of the working population. At the present moment the value of our elementary school education is gravely harmed by the work which is imposed upon children out of school hours. They are liable to be employed for three hours before the school opens and for some hours after the school closes, and the general opinion of my inspectors is that of all reforms affecting elementary education there is none more vital than the enforcement of strict limitation of the employment of children in their school-going days. This is not merely a question of scholastic efficiency. It affects the physical welfare of the race. We have now an overwhelming mass of evidence to the effect that the health of our children suffers from premature or excessive employment. You may trace the evil effects in diminished height and weight, in curvature of the spine, in cardiac affections, and in deficiency of the senses, especially the sense of vision, and in the bad dentition of our working classes. The reports of our school medical service are full of them.

Accordingly we propose that no child under twelve shall be employed for profit. and here we have already been anticipating by by-laws passed in some of our large municipalities, and we further provide that no child under fourteen shall be employed on any day on which he is required to attend school before the close of school hours or after eight p.m. on that day, or on other days before six a.m. or after eight p.m. The House will observe that under this provision a child between twelve and fourteen may be em- ployed between six am and eight p.m. on Saturdays and during school holidays, and, though we have come to the conclusion that there is something to be said for a little employment on days on which the school provides no regular work, we are fully sensible that this liberty may be abused in the future, as it has been in the past, and the Bill accordingly provides that the local education authority, if they are satisfied, on the report of the school medical officer or otherwise, that the child is being employed in such a way as to be prejudicial to health or education, may forbid or regulate that employment. We have also come to the conclusion that if the local education authority should decide that it would be wise to continue the elementary education either of the boys or the girls in their area, or of boys or girls following particular occupations in that area, up to the age of fifteen, they shall be empowered to do so.

In the elementary schools?

Yes. I now come to the most novel if not the most important provision in the Bill. We propose that, with certain exceptions defined in the Bill, every young person no longer under any obligation to attend a public elementary school shall attend such continuation school as the local education authority of the area in which he resides may require for a period of 320 hours in the year, or the equivalent of eight hours a week for forty weeks. The main exceptions are the following: Attendance at such schools will not be required in the case of a young person who has received, to the satisfaction of the Board, suitable full-time instruction up to the age of sixteen, or has passed the matriculation examination of a university of the United Kingdom or an examination recognised as an equivalent to that, or is shown to be under suitable and efficient part-time instruction. In other words, we provide that every young person in the kingdom who has not received a full-time education up to the age of sixteen should receive a part-time education up to the age of eighteen, either in schools provided by the local education authority or in schools under their direction, such as the schools established by manufacturers in their works, or in schools providing satisfactory alternative instruction. We do not desire to discourage voluntary effort. On the con- trary, we believe that very great benefit accrues from the recognition on the part of employers of their educational responsibilities towards their employés, and we believe that a great many more employers may be induced to start part-time schools connected with their own concerns, in view of the general obligations created under this Bill for some form of continued education throughout the period of adolescence.

There is another matter of great importance in reference to this proposal. The Bill provides that part-time instruction shall be given by day. It must be taken out of the employer's time, and provision is made to ensure that the young person who is required to attend continuation classes shall not be worked unduly long hours during the days on which the classes are held, and that he or she shall be given a reasonable interval for food, rest, and washing between work and school. The classes then are to be held by day, and the pupils are to come to the schools in a fit condition to benefit by the instruction. It is further provided that the classes are not to be held on Sunday or any holiday or half-holiday which a young person is accustomed to enjoy. The proposal comes to this, that in general young persons who are not undergoing full-time instruction will be liberated from industrial toil for the equivalent of three half-days a week during forty weeks —two half-days to be spent in school, while one will be a half-holiday. I will now briefly explain how these continuation schools are to be set up and what are the governing ideas as to their educational purpose. The Bill devolves upon the local education authority, under Part II. of the Education Act, 1902, either separately or in conjunction with other local education authorities, the duty of submitting schemes for a system of continuation schools. The schemes must be submitted before an appointed day. Whatever the date may be, a liberal allowance of time must be granted to the local education authorities in which to think out a system appropriate to the special needs of the locality. No doubt the local education authority will consult, indeed, under the terms of the Bill they are compelled to consult, industrial and other interests, and it is contemplated that there may be a considerable variety of type in these schools.

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The schools for the rural populations will no doubt be mainly held in the winter months, and one advantage of our local system of administration is that it enables these new schools to fit in with the varying industrial requirements of different regions. The character of the instruction will be partly physical. We feel that it is important to secure a physical minimum in the nation, and that this is just as important for girls as for boys. It will not be solely physical. We shall hope to continue the general education, the foundations of which have been laid in the public elementary school, and to give in addition vocational bias, the force of which will be graduated according to the age and occupation of the pupil. The details of the courses will, as I have already indicated, vary from locality to locality. The courses given in the rural districts will not be identical with those given in the towns, but the governing conception of the scheme will be identical over the whole country—the production of good citizens, able to make the most of themselves, and of the environment in which they are placed. And here I may be asked whether the spell of eight hours a week, or 320 hours a year, is, in reality, sufficient to accomplish any substantial educational purpose, and why, the principle once admitted, a longer period has not been suggested. I need not say that on purely educational ground I should have preferred a larger amount of instruction, even if that amount had been confined to the age between fourteen and sixteen, but, after careful consideration. I came to the conclusion that the practical obstacles were too great, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to provide, in a reasonable length of time, the requisite supply of teachers of ability, that the scheme, if it is to be made accessible to the working people, would have to be supplemented by a very large expenditure in maintenance allowances and buildings, and that it would involve too great a disturbance of the juvenile labour market. At the same time, I should not like it to go abroad that I regard the period of eight hours a week either as ideal or as the necessary limit. I feel to the full the strength of the contention that young people, whatever may be their station? in life, should primarily be regarded as subjects for education and not as parts of the industrial machine, and it may be that after the lapse of a few years it will become practicable, with the approval of Parliament, to extend the period of schooling in particular areas, or perhaps even for the whole juvenile population. The Bill makes provision for such a contingency. Meanwhile I trust that many of the students in our continuation schools will not be content with the statutory courses only. We also believe that many of them, once brought under this beneficial influence, will be more ready to join boys' and girls' clubs, boy scouts, girl guides, and other such wholesome associations, carrying with them intellectual and social advantages. We expressly empower, under this measure, local education authorities to provide school camps and social training with a view to the needs of this class of student. I confess I am a great believer in the value of school camps for boys between fourteen and sixteen, and I trust that this Bill may pass into law in sufficient time to justify the acquisition by the local education authorities for some of the material equipment for camp life which the War Office has so plentifully provided us.

Do you mean military camps?

No, Sir; school camps. In asking the employers of this country to assent to these changes, the establishment of day continuation classes, the abolition of half time in those regions where it still continues to exist, and the further regulation of employment during the period of elementary school life, I am conscious that I am asking them to submit to readjustments in the organisation of their industries which, in some cases, will be troublesome to effect, but I rest my appeal upon the broad ground of national advantage. We have reached a point in our history when we must take long views. We are a comparatively small country, we have incurred the hostility of a nation with a larger population and with a greater extent of concentrated territory and with a more powerful organisation of its resources. We cannot flatter ourselves with the comfortable notion, I wish we could, that after this War the fierce rivalry of Germany will disappear and hostile feeling altogether die down. That in itself constitutes a reason for giving the youth of our country the best preparation which ingenuity can suggest. And there is another reason. We are extending the franchise, we are making a greater demand than ever before upon the civic spirit of the ordinary man and woman at a time when the problems of national life and of world policy upon which this House will be called upon to decide have become exceedingly complex and difficult, and how can we expect an intelligent response to the demands which the community propose to make upon the instructed judgment of its men and women unless we are prepared to make some further sacrifices in order to form and fashion the minds of the young?

I have the privilege of knowing many manufacturers in this country, and I have never found them reluctant to adopt a course in which their judgment discerned a balance of advantage to the nation. In many lands there is a permanent system of military conscription. The greater part of the young men of the nation is withdrawn from industrial work for the purely unproductive purpose of military exercises. We are proposing not a form of military conscription but a form of educational investment which will involve far less dislocation of industry, far less withdrawal of labour, and will be open to none of those powerful objections to which any system of military conscription is necessarily exposed. Even if we describe continued education as a tax upon industry it will be a comparatively small tax. In reality the word "tax" is a misnomer. We cannot describe anything as a tax which has for its necessary effect an addition to the capital upon which the tax has been imposed. It is our contention that this will be precisely the effect of continuation classes, that what the nation spends with one hand it will get back with the other, and that our people will be stronger, more intelligent, and better disciplined through some measure of educational control continued through the whole period of adolescence. And I would ask employers of this country who may be disposed to question the wisdom of this measure to reflect how greatly the success of industry depends on the character of their employés. A factory is like a ship, one bad hand rots the whole company. There is notoriously no gift more prized in a good firm than the capacity to pick out character. The employers of this country have a supreme interest in the formation of industrial character, and we believe that the measures which we propose will be calculated not only to arrest that process of degradation which is too often apparent after the close of the elementary school period, but to give to the industrial character of our people just that additional measure of stability which it so preeminently lacks. The system will be good for boys, but even better for girls.

I have now enumerated the main provisions of the Bill. To these are added certain Clauses extending the powers and duties of the local education authorities. As I have already explained, the Government is desirous of taking this opportunity of assisting the physical education of the people in every possible way. Physical training is already an element, perhaps not a sufficient element, in our elementary school curriculum, and grants have recently been sanctioned for organisers of physical training in our public elementary schools. The present Bill gives to physical training a place in our continuation schools. Every boy and girl in those schools will receive physical training. It even goes further. It empowers the local education authority to establish nursery schools for young children, to maintain playing fields, school baths, holiday or school camps, and centres and equipment for physical training, and it extends the powers and duties with respect to medical inspection and treatment now enjoyed or exercised by the local education authorities in the case of elementary schools to secondary schools provided by them and to continuation schools under their direction and control. Let us consider what that means Let us consider what it means to a girl drawn from a slum in one of our great manufacturing towns. She will be under the continual inspection and supervision of the school medical service. From the age at which she enters school, and during the whole period of childhood and adolescence, she will have the advantage of physical exercise and remedial training as well as the practical training, which will be part of the work of the continuation schools. I pass to the administrative provisions.

Is physical training provided for boys in the continuation schools?

Certainly. Among the administrative provisions I would select three for special comment. The first relates to the inspection of schools and other educational institutions not otherwise liable to inspection by Government Departments. Those are the public schools and the preparatory schools. Many of those schools are notoriously among the best in England, but they depend upon private endowments or fees and are not liable to inspection. We do not propose to compel these schools to submit to the inspection by the Board, but we do propose to empower the Board to inspect such schools upon request free of charge. It is true that we already have this power in the case of a large number of schools falling within this category. The public schools, and many private schools, which obviously reach or nearly approach the standard required by the Board for recognition as efficient secondary schools have been able for the last ten years to obtain free inspection, and the names of well-known schools of both classes are to be found on our published list. But this is not enough. Unless a school does appear to be likely to reach that standard, free inspection is denied to them But it is certain that a very large number of schools at present do not fulfil this condition. It is clearly in the interest of the parents and of the community that those schools should benefit by such experience and guidance as the Board can put at their disposal. Many of them would be glad of advice and encouragement, but they are just the schools which find it impossible to ask for an inspection which must be paid for.

. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean a public school like Winchester—is it in that sense he is speaking?

My reference is rather wider. Winchester will certainly come under the description of public schools, but I am using the words "public schools" now in the wide sense of the secondary school not maintained by the Board. The second point relates to educational information. There is probably no civilised country in Europe in which the Government know so little of what is going on in the field of education as England. The Board has no knowledge at all of a very large number of schools and educational institutions, no official knowledge of many of them, and very scanty and precarious knowledge of those that are outside its system of grants. I fear that in not a few private venture schools are frauds on the public. The teaching is deplorable. The buildings are inappropriate. There is no adequate security for the health and progress of the pupils. Now the Government does not wish to put down private schools. We recognise that many of them are excellent, and that there is great value in permitting educational experiments of all kinds to be made even at the cost of some disregard of normal standards of efficiency. But, in view of the large sums of public money invested in education, we think that the Board should be in a position to inform themselves and Parliament, more exactly than we can now do, as to the quantity and quality of the total provision of education in the country. Accordingly, the Bill provides that where the necessary information is not otherwise available, the Board may call upon every school or educational institution to furnish particulars.

Thirdly, we provide in the Bill for the consolidation of the Grants made to elementary education. It has long been recognised that a block area Grant made, to a local educational authority in respect to its general educational system is more satisfactory than a number of different Grants allocated on the basis of particular schools, and particular subjects or activities. The introduction of the block Grant system will, I hope, conduce to further simplification and to the saving of clerical and administrative labour, both in Whitehall and in the provinces, though I think it only fair to add that this process will undoubtedly involve a heavier burden of responsibility and a more delicate and enlightened exercise of discretion, both in the centre and at the periphery. It is quite obvious that if you have a general block Grant system, not allocated for specific purposes, you do necessarily imply that there will be a considerable supply of intelligence, both at the centre and at the circumference. The change is not only to be recommended on grounds of economy. I believe that the moral effects of the proposal which I am pressing upon the House will be all to the good We want local educational authorities to look at the State system of Grants broadly, and we desire our own attitude to be equally liberal. We do not want the local education authority to view every topic from the Grant-earning angle; to consider whether by doing one thing or another, by developing one subject or another, they may earn a little more or a little less of State Grant. We do not wish to be writing letters to the local educational authorities arguing that we are paying them 6s. 8d. too much, or, it may be, not paying them 6s 8d. too little. On the other hand, if the Minister for Education is to be really responsible to Parliament for the expenditure of the large sums which are voted by Parliament, and if Parliament is to have any security that it gets good value for its money, it is, of course, essential that the central authority should retain indisputable and effective power to administer Grants so as to give effect to the national policy, and equally to protect the national interest. Some of the local authorities are better and more to be trusted than others. Subject to this reservation and, broadly speaking, the more freedom and responsibility we can give the local authorities the better, I feel, it will be.

I have sketched the general features of the measure which I have the honour, on behalf of the Government, of submitting to the House. We assume that education is one of the good things of life which should be more widely shared than has hitherto been the case amongst the children and young persons of the country. We assume that education should be the education of the whole man, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, and that it is not beyond the resources of civilisation to devise a scheme of education, possessing certain common qualities, but admitting at the same time of large variation from which the whole youth of the country, male and female, may derive benefit. We assume that the, principles upon which well-to-do parents proceed in the education of their families are valid, also mutatis mutandis for the families of the poor; that the State has need to secure for its juvenile population conditions under which mind, body, and character may be harmoniously developed. We feel also that in the existing circumstances the life of the rising generation can only be protected against the injurious effects of industrial pressure by a further measure of State compulsion. But we argue that the compulsion proposed in this Bill will be no sterilising restriction of wholesome liberty, but an essential condition of a larger and more enlightened freedom, which will tend to stimulate civic spirit, to promote general culture and technical knowledge, and to diffuse a steadier judgment and a better-informed opinion through the whole body of the community.

Though I have sat in this House for twelve years I have never before heard an education measure brought in, or Education Estimates argued, by a lover of education who is a specialist at his job. I think, however much I personally may differ from the proposals put before us by the right hon. Gentleman to-day, everyone of us is glad to find education handled by a man who, at least, is handling the job he likes. If personally I see in the Minister for Education less the able author of "The Republican Tradition in Europe," and more the disciple of Lord Haldane and of that precious German, Dr. Kirschensteiner, I, at any rate, am grateful for the fact that we have a man in charge of the educational work of the country who has an open mind, and who will be able to realise, I think perhaps better than he does at the present time, not the feeling amongst educational experts, but among the parents in this country—a man with a sufficiently open mind to modify the harsh provisions of the Bill he has outlined to us to-day. The fact of the matter is that both the present Minister of Education and all of us in this House during the last three years have got entirely out of touch with the constituencies. I do not suppose there is a quarter of the Members in this House who have made a speech on general political matters to their constituents during the last three years, and I am quite certain that the Minister of Education, or anybody present here to-day, has never made to his constituents one single speech which could justify his voting for increasing the age during which children are compelled to go to school. I have often spoken on this subject in my Constituency, and indeed all over the north of Staffordshire, and I say with conviction that if this Bill could be voted on by the fathers and mothers—by the public generally—of North Staffordshire, it would inevitably be rejected. I believe that that holds in every other part of the United Kingdom to-day. When you propose to raise the school age universally to fourteen; when you propose further to give local authorities the power to raise the compulsory school age to fifteen; when you further say that two days a week for four hours a day education shall be compulsory up to the age of eighteen, and put that proposal before the people in the country who have got to obey that law, and not before Members of the House who have not got to obey that law, I think you will get a very different answer than the answer which will be given for the First Reading or Second Reading of this Bill.

The fact is, it is not our children we are legislating for, but other people's children. We are not the people who will be affected directly by this Bill; it is other people who are not represented here at all. The working classes are represented, but there are no members of the Labour party here present. Of course we all represent their interests, but automatically we look upon education as the sort of education we have had, or our children have, without remembering we are legislating for other people who know much more about the details of this elementary education than we do. Let me put before the House clearly what is the point of view, as I understand it, of the working man, and, above all, the working mother. They have an extremely difficult time even now, when there is no want of employment, to make both ends meet. Every penny that goes into the houses of the working classes is reckoned on beforehand, and is of vital importance to keep body and soul together. The Minister of Education has pointed out the enormous improvement in the children's physique due to physical exercises. I quite agree with him, but the improvement that results from physical exercises will absolutely be wiped out if the parents and the children themselves are starved and cannot get sufficient sustenance. It is no good giving with one hand and taking away with the other. If you give the best physical training and the best intellectual training in the world, and these children have not had proper food, or enough of it, your educational system based upon such a fraud will manifestly fall to pieces. Every penny that goes into the working-class home at the present is of vital importance. If you curtail the wage-earning power of those children, you are doing a serious injury to the working-classes as a whole. Now you are proposing to raise the school age to fourteen and a little over, because I think it is proposed that if a child arrives at fourteen on the first day of the term, he has to remain till the end of the term. That alone is going to be a serious additional tax upon poor families who want every penny that their children bring in. Then you have the possibility of a body rather similar to ourselves in some county council or more likely in some borough council, decreeing that the age shall be raised to fifteen—another serious tax upon the wage- earning powers of working-class families. Then you have the necessary loss of wages that must occur owing to two afternoons a week being taken up entirely by these continuation schools.

All these things have not only the direct effect upon the working-classes of reducing the income, and therefore reducing the body-building power—and it affects not only food but housing—but you have the indirect effect that you have already seen from the Compulsory Education Act of 1872, that people will restrict their families more and more, the more you postpone the date at which children become a wage-earning factor in family life. If you are going to postpone—not under this Bill indeed, but under the provisions outlined by the Minister—wage-earning powers to eighteen, or, possibly, if conscription comes along, to twenty-one, you are thereby imposing a further restriction upon the birth rate of this country. You are making it a more undesirable burden to have a child, instead of giving the people every inducement to incur the frightful dangers and risks of bringing children into the world. I do not want the House to imagine for one moment that I am not as keen as any Member here to see the children of the working-classes given a thoroughly efficient education and a much longer education, but what I want to see is more opportunities and less compulsion. I ask the House to consider for one moment, first of all, what would be the effect now in certain working-class districts of removing the school attendance officer and making education voluntary. I know districts in North Staffordshire where the whole district is inhabited by a fairly skilled class of working men. I make bold to say that if you removed compulsion tomorrow, every one of the children would go to school just as well as at the present time, and you would be saved the burden in that area of the school attendance officers, and all that inquisitorial interference that school attendance officers involve. I believe more particularly in Scotland, where the parents have a real competition to see that their children are well educated, there, too, you would find the parents as a rule, and public opinion as a whole, acting as compulsorily upon the education of the children as any amount of Government rules and regulations. People have no conception of the pride that the ordinary working-class family take in the education of their children. They take just as much pride in sending their children to the elementary school—or would if compulsion did not make all pride in that direction ridiculous —as we do in sending our children to the best public school to get as good education as we got in our time. Therefore, it seems to me, you would be doing much better by education if you gave more freely opportunities for education. I believe you would find in those circumstances a constantly dwindling band of parents who wished to exploit their children, and a constantly increasing band of parents who wished to get the best possible education for their children. Is it not better to induce people to see that their children are better educated by giving them opportunities than to try this absurd business of the Police Court? In this Bill the child is to be fined 5s. if he does not go to school. In that you will be introducing, not to education, but to the Police Court a large number of young persons about whom you are so solicitous. Even if we are all convinced that it is necessary to introduce this new extension of compulsion into education, surely it is our duty, sitting here in the seventh year of a moribund Parliament, to consult the people before we bring about this very drastic change in the domestic life of the vast mass of the people of this country.

Surely we are not now, after three years of divorce between the representatives here and their constituencies outside, going to introduce a measure which will affect every man, woman, and child in the land and affect them much more than the Corn Production Bill? This is a question which ought not to be debated in the dying days of an old Parliament, and this measure should never pass into law under these circumstances. There is one particular reason why we ought to be extremely cautious about passing such a Bill as this into law at the present time. Everyone knows that there is industrial unrest below the surface. Everyone knows that, for the sake of victory, we should do nothing on earth that would in any way exacerbate that industrial unrest. I ask hon. Members, before voting for the Second Reading of this Bill and before imposing this measure upon the fathers and mothers of England to go into their own constituencies and have a meeting and try to find out what the people think about this question. I feel certain they would come back impressed with the vast unpopularity of such a drastic thing as this at the present time. I believe myself that it would do more to exasperate particularly the women, who are having a very bad time of it just now trying to obtain potatoes and sugar. Do not force this measure through in the teeth of the opinion of the people who are going to be effected, while the War is on, at a time when industrial peace is of enormous importance to our prospects in the War.

I can only regret that the Minister for Education, in his singularly lucid description of educational reform, did not devote slightly more attention to the question of compulsion instead of dismissing it in a single sentence as an impracticable suggestion to any scheme of education. Let me deal now with what I regard as the chief factors in these proposals apart from this compulsion of parents. It seems to me that this form of half-time education between the ages of fourteen and eighteen is a very serious danger to the liberties of England. It may be thought that that is putting it rather strongly, but I am convinced that the Minister for Education himself sees no such danger whatever in front of him at the present moment. The right hon. Gentleman was very insistent upon the fact that these extra four years of education were to be education which would create character and give to the future workers of this country not nimbleness and efficiency, but power to think read, and derive advantage from all the great books of the past and the great thoughts of past thinkers. If I thought that would be the result of the scheme I might even swallow my objection to compulsion in order to secure it; but I know perfectly well, and I think the right hon. Gentleman knows at the back of his mind. that that is not the spirit that is moving the great employers of this country to accept half-time labour up to eighteen.

The development of character in their minds—I say it without hesitation—is not so much their object as the development of efficiency in that particular trade, conceal it how you like. If you take the children in the potteries and train them all to be useful potters, you are going to produce a more useful and efficient worker than you have at the present time, and they are going to be trained to create wealth quicker and better than they do now. If you put before the employers on the one hand a scheme which is going to develop in the children the power and capability of thinking for themselves and acting for themselves, and on the other hand a scheme which is going to turn out adjuncts to machines of invaluable efficiency, you are asking too much of human nature if you suppose the employers are going to go in for the first and not for the second. Surely hon. Members have come across, over and over again, young men of the working classes who have climbed up the education ladder, and have gone to the universities, and at the end of their university career are faced with either going back to the mine or the shop or taking a Government job or becoming a trade union official. I know many of them, and I say unhesitatingly that these men, who have been to the university, have had character and the power of thought developed, and they are indeed men, and not cabbages. All this has developed in these men the theory of the Anarchist, the hatred of the social injustice under which we live to-day.

If you make the cattle think they will become dangerous, and when the right hon. Gentleman tries to persuade the House that he is going to make the cattle think, I see at the back of his mind and at the back of the employer's mind not that the cattle may think, but that they may become more capable producers of wealth. I resent Ministers and others coming here and pretending that they are going to teach the working classes to think for themselves when in the background there is this motive, connected, indeed, with a patriotic desire to beat the Germans at their own game; and I think we should look very carefully into any measure against which such a charge may be made. We are fighting the Germans at the present time; I hope we shall beat them, but I want to beat them much more than any other hon. Member, because I want to stamp out this sort of scheme, and not be forced after peace by German competition into adopting all these vile schemes to keep the working classes up, that they may take part in the competition for wealth or territory. If we win this War, surely we shall revert to that form of thought and legislation which has made English people what they are. We have managed to win so far in this War because we have always been taught that we should act upon our own initiative and for ourselves, and not be compelled by inspectors, Governments, and experts how to order our whole lives That is what has made us, and when I hear the Minister of Education coming here and in an eloquent peroration saying how the girlhood of to-day, or rather of tomorrow, will be looked after from the time she is four until she is eighteen, that her health will be studied, her body drilled, her mind drilled, that such a thing as that can be put before us as a desirable aim— and I would add that it does not begin only after birth, for the district visitor comes round before they are born and after they are born, and this constant State inspection of the individual begins before birth and does not end until they are eighteen, because at eighteen the youth goes somewhere else, and is looked after by a military tutor instead of by an individual tutor—or that this grandmotherly legislation can in the long run benefit England, I absolutely deny. It may make the nation temporarily more efficient, temporarily more German, temporarily better producers of wealth, a more docile and more disciplined population, but that in the long run England can benefit from such compulsion, from such legislation, as this I for one absolutely and totally deny.

After the extraordinarily refreshing whiff of mid-Victorian social and political economy to which we have listened from the hon. and gallant Member (Commander Wedgwood), it is a great pleasure to me to say that in my opinion, at any rate, this Bill, if it passes, will mark the greatest advance in the education of the general people of the country that has been made since February of 1870, when Mr. W. E. Forster introduced the Education Act. In that year, I believe, he estimated that only two-fifths of the children of the working classes between six and ten, and only one-third of those between ten and twelve, were in schools which were in receipt of Parliamentary Grants, and practically none above the age of twelve. Now, if this Bill passes, all the children, boys and girls, of the classes which send their children to the elementary schools, are to receive free, efficient, organised, publicly-provided and publicly-inspected education from five up to eighteen, and in the districts where it is required, there will also be publicly-provided free education between two and five. The new regime is to be introduced, as it must be, gradually, but if the Bill passes that change from the position of 1870 to the position that has been outlined will have been made roughly in fifty years, and surely it is a very great advance to have made in a country like England. England has been extraordinarily slow to see that the foundations of national efficiency are laid in national education, but this Bill marks a very splendid step forward in our slow national awakening. I think that the right hon. Gentleman is greatly to be congratulated on having had the courage and the vision to bring forward proposals which are so far-reaching, and I believe that everyone will join with me in hoping that he will continue to guide our educational policy until he sees their fruition and their result.

I am glad that the Government have not been afraid to bring forward a great measure of educational reform during the War. It seems to me to be as truly a war measure as anything which has been necessary for the development of our fighting forces. I believe that to those who have eyes to see many of our failures and shortcomings, muddles, and mutual misunderstandings and suspicions, have been due to the defects in our national system of education; while, on the other hand, much of our success, notably that of our splendid Infantry and of our girl war workers, whether in munitions or in civil work, has been due to the improvement in elementary education that has taken place during the last generation. We are, I think, in England one of the most clever but one of the worst intellectually equipped nations on the face of the globe. We used to look down on education, and to believe that the possession of an instructed mind and trained intellect somehow handicapped us in the ordinary affairs of life, but I believe that during the last few years a great majority of all classes have been coming to realise that that intellectual power which only comes from assiduous and prolonged mental training is a necessary factor in national progress and well-being. It is, of course, good to be able, as we can, to muddle through; it is good to be able to produce, as we can, order out of chaos; but surely it is still better to avoid the muddles and the chaos, and that is what a right system and practice of education can very largely help us in doing. I believe that even in the Army it is being realised that these splendid qualities of leadership which so many of our noncommissioned and commissioned ranks possess are not incompatible with, but are, indeed, improved and developed by, the possession of trained intellectual ability. The other day, to my sorrow, I heard an officer who appeared before the Committee which is considering the position of science in our educational system say, on behalf of the General Staff, that that body did not think that any knowledge of science was at all necessary to the ordinary officer. Bat another officer who accompanied him, though he made it clear that he was expressing a personal view, and one which was still rather heterodox, said that as a knowledge of science was insisted upon by all the officers of the Chinese Army, he did not think a little bit could do any harm in our own. Considering where that came from, I thought it was most encouraging. I believe his view is quite widely held already in the Army, and that what the Chinese Army realises already the military training section of the General Staff may realise within a few years from now. In affirming my view that the importance of education to our national life is developing, I think I am right in saying that never before have our secondary schools in the industrial districts, and our provincial universities where students come considerably below military age, been so full as they are now of students who wish to get the benefit of the best education that is publicly provided.

It is not only because the War has taught us the defects of our educational system that I welcome this Bill as a war measure. The passing of it will necessitate, as the right hon. Gentleman confessed, great readjustments in our system of employment. They will be difficult to make; they will be inconvenient; to some people they will seem impossible; but if they are to be made, I ask the House at what period could they be made better than when our whose industrial fabric is under reconstruction, as it will so largely be during the demobilisation period that will follow the War. I think it would be far better that employers should know exactly how this Bill works before they begin to reform their businesses, so that, as they take back demobilised soldiers and war workers, they may allow for the new system in the employment of young persons which this Bill will set up. That will be far better than if a scheme of this kind were thrown at them some years after they have again settled down to a permanent routine in organising their businesses. If that is true, it means that this Bill ought to pass very soon, for not until it is passed can local education authorities work out their schemes of continuation schooling, and not until those schemes can be worked out, as they will be, no doubt, in concert and consultation with the chief employers, and workers' organisations, will employers know just how they will stand and how this Bill will affect them. I believe that very many good employers will welcome the provisions of this Bill, and that opinion among employers has been working very much in the direction of something of this kind. I do not agree with the hon. and gallant Member (Commander Wedgwood) that the views of employers are wholly utilitarian in these matters. I believe they will welcome a broader outlook and a keener intelligence even more than they will welcome a greater specialisation of the aptitude of those they will employ.

4.0 P.M.

There will, of course, be some who will wish to postpone so great a system of reform as that which has been put before us to-day, and to them I would venture to quote a saying that I happened to come across yesterday of Archbishop Whateley, which he applied to those who always desired to postpone political change. He said, "When the bed of a torrent is dry they think that a bridge is not wanted; when the stream comes down that bridge cannot be built." I think the stream of industrial dislocation will flow for some years after the War, but I think also that it is just then that we shall be able to build across it most easily and securely the bridge of a truly national system of education. I hope, therefore, we shall pass this Bill in time for the period of reconstruction, so that when we are reconstructing so much we can make the proper allowances to admit of this Bill working in with our general industrial fabric. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has not stirred up the troubled pool of religious controversy. Undoubtedly that cannot be done without throwing his Bill on the rocks upon which so many good ships have foundered. The late Chief Secretary for Ireland, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of the Board of Trade, all tried to navigate through that troubled water, and they all failed, and though the political controversies for which they suffered are largely stilled at the present time, I think the right hon. Gentleman was very wise in not launching out upon that sea I think he will believe me when I say that if one side were to trouble the waves now by for instance, reviving that Scylla known as the right of entry, the other aide would promptly establish a formidable Charybdis in the abolition of the denominational tests for publicly paid teachers, and he would find it very difficult, indeed, to get through waters which were encumbered with those dangers. I do not try to follow him at length through the different particulars that he gave of his scheme. But some points I do take out, because they particularly delighted me. First of all is his provision for dealing with children under five. It has been a real disaster in some districts, where some organised provision for the care of small children is necessary, that there has been such a decrease in recent years of the accommodation available for children under five years of age. I believe I am not far wrong if I say that in the last ten years or so the public elementary school accommodation available for children under five has decreased by about 50 per cent., and that somewhere about 300,000 children who used to be in school under the age of five, ten, or twelve years ago, are no longer there. That, of course, is done to save the local education authorities the expense of having to provide new schools as their school education increased. I think that, although one cannot argue that the public elementary school is always, or, indeed, generally the best place for children under five, yet in some districts organised in a particular way with regard to their industries it has been a real drawback that there has been so much exclusion of children from school. I believe it is quite right to deal with that question by allowing authorities to set up nursery schools. I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman comes to deal with Grants he will be able to make it easy for the local education authorities to establish such schools. I think he will have to consider whether Grants will not be necessary for building as well as for maintenance. If his provision of Grants is not on a very generous scale, I think he may find, in some years, that it is necessary to go further and to make the provision of these nursery schools in districts where the organisation of the main industries shows they are really necessary a duty on the local education authorities, and not simply a permissive power as he intends to make it in this Bill.

Secondly, I would like to say a word about his proposal slowly to specialise the tendency of the course of elementary schools towards the end of the normal school course. I am glad of that partly because it gives a practical bias towards manual occupation, and is the only way really to get hold of quite a considerable section of boys and also of girls who at present go to our elementary schools. There are thousands who can really only be appealed to through the hand and the eye, or at any rate who can be appealed to far better in that way than through the brain and the intellect, and, therefore, he will be providing better than has hitherto been done for children of that kind. But partly I agree with him in doing what he intends to do in this, respect because it will tend to remove that criticism of elementary education that all of us have heard so often, namely, that it does not fit the children for their future occupations. That sort of criticism has very often been very absurd when it has criticised the teaching of the children in such subjects as drawing and music, but there has been something sometimes in the complaint that when the children have done with elementary schooling they do not want to settle down to the ordinary occupations that are most obvious for them. If in the last two years the school is given a bias towards the industries and capacities which are needed in the district in which the school is situated, that criticism will be very largely met.

Thirdly, there is the point that attendance at school is to be made compulsory up to fourteen. I believe that a vast majority of the Members of this House and of the people in the country will welcome that most heartily. The half-time system must go, and it is time that it did go. I have always felt that in this matter what Lancashire thinks to-day all England thought yesterday, and that they were really behindhand in their ideas about education. I have listened to the arguments for the retention of the half-time system which have been put forward often in this House. I was impressed by them until once, as chairman of the Accidents Committee of the Home Office, I had to go into the cotton mills in Lancashire and see these little boys at work. Although they are well treated, and it is not uncomfortable or severe employment, after that no argument would have any effect on my mind, because it seemed to me clear that those little boys of twelve were too young and too small to be really gaining from the employment to which they were going. I cannot think, when all industries are called upon to reorganise themselves after the War, that so great an industry as the Lancashire cotton industry will seriously suffer if the little piecers are not so little and if the big piecers are bigger. In my opinion, that which is fullest of good and of promise is the extension of compulsory attendance at school, and continuation schooling for boys and girls from fourteen to eighteen.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman who preceded me (Commander Wedgwood) said that he did not believe that one single Member of this House would vote for leave to be given to introduce this Bill with any conviction that his constituents would approve or that they were aware that anything of this kind was contemplated. I can only say for myself that from 1906 forward I have bored and faitgued every audience in every constituency in which I have spoken by saying that if I were for an hour dictator in this country I should do one thing, and one thing only—namely, make education compulsory up to fourteen, and have compulsory continuation schooling from fourteen to eighteen for boys and girls from one end of the country to the other. It is full time that this great change was brought about. It has been on the lips and in the hearts of educational reformers for years. It has been investigated in all its aspects by that Committee over which my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary (Mr. Lewis) presided, and I am sure in an extremely diligent and amiable way, and I think he is to be congratulated on the Report that his Committee produced. I believe those who study it will be willing to act upon it as it is proposed to do in the provisions of this Bill.

There are a few points I would like to make about this compulsory continuation schooling. First of all, if it is to be done at all it must not be left optional for local educational authorities whether they adopt it or not. Already the Scottish education authorities have certain powers, which I believe they have not used to any great extent. Obviously, the difficulty of doing it piecemeal is insurmountable. You must affect all the industries in the country, wherever they may be, at approximately the same time and in the same manner. It will not do to have engineering carried on by one system of youthful employés and by another system of another set of persons in another part of the country. I am quite sure that the only way in which that is to be done at all is to make it universal, to make it simultaneous, and to make it mandatory on our great authorities. Secondly, I am glad it goes up to eighteen. At eighteen boyhood and girlhood has practically passed. You have taken children and young persons right through the awkward and difficult age in which they are apt not to realise what can be done by the employment of the mind and what gain there is, both in their livelihood and in their lives, from intellectual equipment, and you have got them forward to a stage at which they will be willing to pursue learning and education for their own sake. If you were to stop short anywhere before eighteen, you would not get the full value of the schooling you intend to give. I know many cases where boys have burst out of the elementary school on their twelfth or their thirteenth birthday and were delighted to escape, but at seventeen or eighteen they have begun to regret it and wish that they had continued the later schooling, but by that time they were afraid or shy of going back into the evening school, having forgotten a great deal of what they had learned in the elementary school, whereas if you take them steadily forward you will be able to provide such an educational development that they will continue their education even after eighteen, as many of them want to do.

I rejoice that the right hon. Gentleman said quite straight that steady physical training was going to be a compulsory part of every scheme which a local education authority could put forward. I have always thought that a scheme of compulsory continuation schooling which contained, as an essential element, proper provision for physical training embraced in it all that was good and rejected all that was bad in the scheme of National Service put forward by the National Service League. I believe that there will be an enormous gain in the health of the whole community from what the right hon. Gentleman proposes, not only from the courses of physical training but from the provision upon which he so rightly insisted, that these young persons ought to have their health watched by trained medical officers attached to the schools. I cannot conceive any single thing more likely to improve the whole future of the physical efficiency of the race than having the development of girls up to eighteen watched by trained and qualified women medical education officers. I happen to be acting as chairman of the London School of Medicine for Women, which is now the largest school of medicine for women in the Empire. We shall welcome the medical provisions in the right hon. Gentleman's Bill as giving us a fresh sphere for the women doctors we are training and turning out. I welcome the proposal because it is bound to establish the principle, if it were not established in another part of the Bill, of the inspection of private schools, because, clearly, before a child is allowed exemption from attendance at these continuation schools the local education authority will have to be satisfied that he or she is being properly educated somewhere else. Clearly, also, the local education authorities will not be satisfied unless in some cases they can inspect the school where the child is being educated, and anything which will lead up to inspection of those schools will, first of all, lead to the rapid disappearance of a great many of them, which is all to the good, and, secondly, will lead to the remainder being raised to a higher standard. I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about the power he is going to give to local education authorities to aid clubs and camps. I do not think in the least it is necessary, if you go to sleep and to live in tents, that you should at once become a military establishment. I used to go every summer for a week or a fortnight to one of the seaside camps which were held in connection with the Rugby Boy's Club from Noting Hill, and I agree with everything the right hon. Gentleman has said as to the splendid effect of even a week or a fortnight of whole time super-vision and control and training and enjoyment upon boys of thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, as these children will be. We used to do physical exercises and drill till we were stiff, we used to play football till we were heated, we used to bathe till we were cool, we used to eat until we were full, and then we used to begin all over again from one end of the day to the other, and it did us an immense amount of good not only in health and discipline but, what is just as important, in establishing friendship between people of different classes and in allowing to grow up a feeling of brotherhood almost between the different sorts of people who there came together. I think that the announcements that he made with regard to finance were all to the good. A simplification of Grants has long been overdue. The abolition of the twopenny limit was also overdue. It will be an anachronism under the Bill. I hope also that he intends to abolish fees in public elementary schools, where they still survive—

indicated assent.

—because that also is an overdue change in the finance of elementary education. I was very interested in what he said about the provincial councils that he intends to form. I think he is following the right way in not trying to force this new piece of machinery into the system of our education. Nothing is harder than to get any real feeling of local patriotism in any area larger than a county and smaller than the country. The Board of Agriculture has tried in one or two ways to have provincial councils for different purposes. They do precious little good. I hope these councils which the President of the Board of Education may establish may do better than anything which has yet been set up, but I am sure it is right to begin gradually, and I am sure it is right only to give them powers which may be delegated to the existing local education authorities, and not by statute to take away from any existing authorities any part of the powers which they now possess and transfer them to these councils.

That is all I have to say in touching on the different points he made, but two things came into my mind as he spoke. One was that the success, almost the whole success, of this scheme will depend upon the teachers who may be trained and provided to carry out the new types of teaching which he is going to introduce. Everything will depend upon that. It will want a very high quality of teacher to do this teaching of boys and girls from fourteen to eighteen efficiently—quite as high a type as we have got in any of our State-aided secondary schools—and I am sure he realises that to the full, and that he will make full provision for the training of efficient teachers and that he will see to it that the local education authorities make sufficient provision for adequate salaries for these teachers, because without good salaries you cannot expect to get the type of teacher who will be needed for this very critical work. If the work is badly done, nothing will be worse. If the work is well done by competent, contented, well-paid teachers, I believe it will make a new land of this country of ours. The other thing that was in my mind was this: I thought of all the splendid advance that is to be made, and then I thought of some of the officials of the education authorities as they exist at the present time—authorities such as county boroughs and counties, which will be charged primarily to carry out these schemes. I had some experience as a paid official in the Civil Service in the Board of Education, and some experience in the employ of one of the great public education authorities, the West Riding County Council, and I felt that although the directors and secretaries of education in a great many of our education authorities were persons of broad outlook and eminence, there were some where schemes of this kind would go haltingly and badly, because the official in charge of the local education office is not a man of such real power and vision as will be required to carry out the reforms which the President has sketched. I believe that it would not be impracticable, and that it might be prudent, for the Board of Education to take powers to prematurely terminate the employment of some of these officials by paying them adequate pensions, or at any rate take powers to see that their approval is necessary to the appointment of new secretaries and directors of education in these bodies, on which so very much will depend in the development of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme.

I was glad that he made it clear that, big and wonderful and splendid as these schemes are, they do not cover the whole field that there is to be covered. He only incidentally touched on the education of the class that does not attend public elementary schools. We have no legal definition of those who are expected to send their children to a public elementary school. I believe the nearest we get to it is that a parent who can be expected to afford 9d. a week for the education of his child can be excused from sending that child to a public elementary school, with the result that the child frequently gets a very much worse education than if it had been sent to a public elementary school. The whole question of scholarships to the secondary schools, so that the children may remain at the secondary schools long enough, the whole question of scholarships from the secondary schools, the question of training colleges, the question of universities, and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that long overdue and, I know, very difficult question of pensions for teachers in secondary schools, remain to be dealt with in, so to speak, Volume III. of his publications, and we shall look forward to that volume I have no doubt next year. The Government were right in saying that they did not want to push the House to pass this Bill this Session, but I hope the House will do the pushing in this matter, and that we shall see to it that the Government is persuaded to allow this Bill to go through the House, if not this Session, at any rate during this Parliament. I cannot think there would be much opposition, although I have not an opportunity of consulting my colleagues, to giving the Bill a Second Reading fairly early in the autumn and sending it perhaps to a Grand Committee, because I am sure there will be a great number of detailed questions which could be better dealt with in Grand Committee than in this House. I believe that the great majority of Members of this House would be willing to give ten days or a fortnight to considering it on Report if it came back before Christmas, even though that might shorten what otherwise would be the Christmas holiday. I believe that it is as true now as when Milton wrote the words 270 years ago that

I am one of those who welcome very heartily the moat important educational proposals of my right hon. Friend. No one in this House is more deeply impressed by the gravity of the present situation than I am. Nevertheless, I am very hopeful that it may in some way be possible to pass these proposals into an Act before the conclusion of this Parliament. These proposals refer to England and Wales, and it will not be out of place for me to recall that there is no portion of the Kingdom which takes a greater interest in education and will take a greater interest in these proposals than Wales, and there is no portion of the country which has sacrificed more for the country than Wales. I can assure my right hon. Friend that, when these proposals become operative, there is no part of the Kingdom which will strive more than the Principality of Wales to obtain from them the fullest advantage to the people concerned. It is not relevant or desirable for me in more than a sentence to refer to finance, but I am glad that my right hon. Friend made it clear that he had decided to adopt the block Grant system of payment of Parliamentary Grants. I take this opportunity of expressing the gratitude of Wales to my right hon. Friend not only for the fact that he has been instrumental in obtaining for the country generally larger educational Grants, but for the way in which this has been done. Hon. Members who have knowledge of the conditions of Wales know that for many years we have suffered much injustice because of the fact that on the one hand there has been exceptionally heavy expenditure upon education, due to the enthusiasm of the people for knowledge, and on the other hand there has been the fact that the country as a whole, from the standpoint of assessable value, is considerably lower in its assessment than England taken as a whole. Therefore, we welcome the financial provisions which the right hon. Gentleman has been instrumental in bringing into operation with regard to education in Wales.

I am one of those who firmly believe in the policy of continuation schools. I rejoice that at length the Government of this country has been bold enough to announce that it is their determination as soon as practicable to carry this policy into law. The effect of that provision of the Bill, so far as Wales is concerned, will affect some 160,000 boys and girls in regard to additional education. Let me tell the House that in Wales we have a better chance of carrying out wisely the provision because of the special experience we have had through the working of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act. The experience of our local education authorities in Wales in educational matters has been exceptional, and I say to my right hon. Friend and to the House that if this provision is passed into law we in Wales will be able to work it with the minimum of friction, inconvenience, and loss to those affected by it industrially, and with, I believe, the maximum of gain to the child-life of the country.

I have only one further point as to the proposals so clearly and eloquently outlined by the President of the Board of Education, and that is with reference to the possibilities of the other provision of the Bill to form what is called provincial associations. I listened with very great interest and attention to what the right hon. Gentleman said upon that point. He knows very well that for the last twenty years we in Wales have been endeavouring to frame some scheme which would result in the establishment of this kind of education for the Principality. Until we get the Bill, and have an opportunity of reading the Clauses relating to this project, it is impossible for us to pronounce any definite judgment as to the precise value to us, from the Welsh standpoint, of the provision with regard to the formation of provincial associations; but I feel quite certain that, after we have had an opportunity to study the measure and to come to a conclusion on this and other proposals in the measure, the President of the Board of Education will be ready to receive from Members of this House who represent Welsh constituencies any representation which it may be thought necessary and desirable to make. I do not desire to detain the House longer than to express my great pleasure at having heard these proposals that will promote improvement in our national life, and which, it should not be forgotten, have been brought forward in the midst of the War—a kind of educational oasis in the desert of war. I believe that if the provisions of this Bill become law, there will lie within them the possibility and the power of healing the wounds of war, and of equipping effectively our rising generations to meet what everybody knows must be momentous issues after the restoration of peace.

We shall have the opportunity later of discussing this Bill on the Second Reading, and therefore to-day one may properly enter into a brief and general rather than a particular and prolonged consideration. The right hon. Gentleman the President, whose speech was so full of light and sweetness, referred to himself as a raw Parliamentary hand. I hope he was not much impressed by the remarks which immediately followed his own. I had the pleasure of listening to the remarks of the hon. Member who professed to speak in the name of North Staffordshire. I should like to say that within the past twelve months I have spoken on this subject and upon most of the points which have been placed before the House this afternoon not only in my own constituency but in a good many others. Those meetings were attended by parents, fathers and mothers by representative men, particularly the Labour party, and trade unionists of the locality, by members of educational committees, members of town and county councils, mayors and other dignatories, and without exception I have found that those meetings were prepared to consider favourably ideas of the kind put forward this afternoon. There was a remark made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Camborne (Mr. Acland) of which I am bound to take some notice lest it should be misunderstood. I mean his reference to the directors and secretaries of education in the country. Those men as I know them are a body of very valuable and able and enthusiastic servants and a body which in personnel is constantly improving and which does represent a vast amount of work and of enthusiasm in the cause of education. As far as I see the matter the defect does not lie so much among those officials of the educational authorities in the country as it does often among the persons who form the education committees in which they work. I am sure my right hon. Friend will coincide with me in these remarks and in the desire to do justice to a body of men for whom I have the greatest possible respect

There has been mentioned in this Debate as to a greater amount of specialisation between the ages of twelve and fourteen in public elementary schools. It has long been in the power of educational committees by the arrangement of the curriculum in their schools to produce such a degree of specialisation if they wished to do so. It has seldom been accomplished for a very good reason. I am not at all sure that there is any need for this specialisation at that age or that there can be any possible justification for it from the educational point of view. The theory used to be that the educating of the children of the poor in public elementary schools produced a great number of persons who were unfitted for the mechanical employments in the neighbourhood or for agriculture and who desired and Were only fitted for taking up what one may call the black-coated occupations. I think that what I have called the black-coated occupations are perhaps greater in this than in any other country in the world. There is no other country in which there is a greater demand for that form of service. But before the War commenced there was a falling off in the supply of young people willing to take up those particular occupations, and it has long since ceased to be the case that to educate a boy of the working classes in a public elementary school was to dissociate his mind from the local occupations and to unfit him in any way for a trade or by disposition from associating himself with mechanical employment and industrial pursuits.

The teachers who know these things intimately from their own experience are practically aware that for three or four school generations past—reckoning a school generation at about six years—the drift from the schools has been in the main intentional on the part of the children and their parents into the other occupations to which I have referred. What is the case? You certainly will not find children from twelve to fourteen continuing their education after the age of fourteen, and going to continuation schools with zest and with profit, if you carry the instruction from twelve to fourteen away from the inspiring subjects of the schools, subjects which cause thought and enthusiasm, in the direction of manual subjects, or any kind of subjects which are by the children or their parents looked upon as immediately and directly controlling the daily work of their life.

What is the great need of all education? It is to inspire in the children of thirteen or thirteen and a-half a love of the schools and a desire to continue their studies by themselves and for themselves. The compulsions of life, the need to earn their bread, the claims that fall upon their adolescence and their later years, are all of them compulsory enough to force industry, labour, zest, or devotion, or, at any rate, attention in a full degree. There would be no need for this proposal for compulsory continuation schools if in the schools in the past the classes had not been too large. Coming from homes too often in which there was no education and no cultivation, using no vocabulary, with no preliminary knowledge, leaving school at too early an age, and being taught in huge classes of fifty, sixty, and seventy in number, in one case out of three, in some other cases one out of two, by teachers untrained and unqualified to teach, and continuing on that basis until the age of twelve, often eleven, and going into the mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire, or going on the land at eleven and twelve in many cases, and in other cases escaping the mesh of the school attendant system of twelve or twelve and a-half altogether, can we wonder at where we stand? Following the statement of the right hon. gentleman himself, there must be 1,200,000 children under the age of fourteen out of the schools this year who ought to be in the schools. There are probably 600,000 prematurely exempt from school attendance because of war conditions. To this we must add nearly another 10 per cent. of the school population, who, this year, as in former years, have not been present at school owing to bye-laws and other causes. The teaching in the schools in past years has not been inspiring enough to cause in the minds of the children a desire for continued education. To achieve this will require a much more fertile and effective measure than the plan which has been put before us this afternoon. I wish to protest against this idea of specialising between the ages of twelve and fourteen. You want children to love the book, the poem, the romance, the adventure, art, and music, because when they come out of school they will go on with their own free will to enjoy all those things. They do not do it now except in the smallest percentage of cases. The free library—how is it used? The art gallery t They stare at pictures much less interesting than those presented with the grocer's almanac. The concert hall? "Let us have rag-time!" Specialising at the age from twelve to fourteen will spoil even more the work going on at school.

On the general plan, so ably and lucidly explained, I want to express my good-will and every possible wish for its success, and also, may I say, a strong desire that even now during war-time this may be carried into effect. It is not the case that parents in war-time are opposed to this education. I am told by teachers that never before, in spite of high prices, have the children come to school so well fed as they come now. Never before have the children of the poorest classes come to school so well clad as they do now. Why is this? Because in so many cases the mothers have a larger income at their regular disposal week by week than they had in days gone by. It is not the case that this is a bad time to speed on with this; it is a good time. I heartily hope, therefore, that before very long we shall have the opportunity, on the Second Reading, of discussing this Bill in full detail, but, at the present moment, let me tender my thanks and express my delight that, after so many years in this House, as I have been, I should at last have heard a great Education Bill expounded in a true educational spirit for a purpose, and with a motive, and, I think, a method which in every case deserve to succeed.

The right hon. Gentleman's Bill when we see it will evidently be a very great improvement upon any of those which in and since 1906 I have seen introduced, debated, and destroyed in this House. His Bill will evidently deal primarily, chiefly, and exclusively with education, and not with the denominational question, which he said he did not fear. I congratulate him on his courage, and, as an ex-Welsh Member who knows what lurks behind the denominational question, I hope he will have the same opinion when he takes off his armour at the end of his campaign. Apart from the merits of his Bill, if there were a vote to-day on the First Reading I would vote against it on the ground that a War Ministry has no mandate to introduce this Bill, that an expiring Parliament has no mandate to pass it, and that Members elected seven years ago have no mandate for supporting it. Amongst other provisions, the two crucial points which illustrate my contention are the extension of the age from fourteen to eighteen, with the continuation classes, and the abolition of the half-time system. I say nothing of the merits of the extension of the age or of the continuation classes, but I say it introduces something like a revolution into the homes of the poor. They should have an opportunity of informing their representatives whether or not they wish that done. Then as regards the manufacturer, he may or may not be willing to part with the half-timer, but he should be asked. Is he to be compelled? Besides this intrusion into the domestic circle, is there to be dislocation of industrial life without asking those concerned? What a development this is of democracy, that at the very end of Parliament, the life of which has been prolonged beyond its proper spell of life, those chiefly concerned are not to have any opportunity of being consulted as to measures vitally affecting their own nearest and dearest concerns.

The right hon. Gentleman and others who are authorities on education have expressed considerable confidence in the manufacturer, and they say they really believe that he will be quite willing to part with the half-timer, whom he has always treated exceedingly well, but nevertheless they do not mean to give the manufacturer the opportunity of saying whether he is willing to part with the half-timer. Now, at the end of this Parliament efforts are being made to force this system upon the manufacturer without giving the smallest opportunity to them of saying whether they like it or not. That is the ultimate development of democratic government in this country. Give me something absolute, something tyrannical, if that is the way in which democracy works. We have heard something said about this being war time, but it is characteristic of this House that not a word has been said to-day about the extra charge imposed upon the people of this country by this Bill. Some £3,800,000 more are to be provided by this Bill, but the people are not to be asked their opinion upon it, although an election is almost imminent and this Parliament has completely exhausted its mandate.

So completely regardless has Parliament become of the pouring out of money with both hands that it is frequently used as an argument that our expenditure has reached such a volume that a few millions more or less cannot really make any difference. As to the argument that we must keep pace educationally with our advancement in other directions, I do not know that we are advancing in any other branch of domestic economy. None of our internal affairs are being subjected to any new and drastic proposal, except education, and when we say that education must keep pace with other Departments and other requirements of the country I ask, has anybody considered who is going to pay for it? That seems the last thing which receives any con- sideration in this House. I am perfectly well aware—and I should ill-represent my Constituency if I did not know—that the teachers as a class are underpaid, and. they should participate in this universal advancement of salaries which is being made in proportion as the country is least able to pay for them. That can be done without a Bill, and it does not require a measure of this kind to increase the salary of the teacher. It has been done for other classes without a Bill, and it can be done for the teacher. I do not know how hon. Members who have spoken, may spend their time or who they see going up and down the country, but wherever I go I find men preoccupied with their businesses. They want to know how the War is going, they are interested in recruiting, but they are not thinking about these comparatively small national changes. How inconsistent is the assumption that at this moment an Education Bill is an urgent matter with the admitted results of the education which we already have. Is it not a matter of common knowledge, is it not advanced upon every platform, that our soldiers, so courageous, so full of duty, such a credit to the country, of whom we are all so proud, are the product of this education? I remember an hon. Gentleman rebuking me for something I said which he thought bore an opposite construction, but it is very true that our present system of education has produced brave, dutiful, and reliant soldiers; and why do we want to change it? Where is the great hurry? Why are we to rush hastily and recklessly to adopt this counsel of perfection when we have an all sufficient counsel of necessity? What is the matter with our soldiers that the present system has produced? The hon. Member for North Somerset (Mr. King), to whom nothing is sacred, seizes this opportunity to complain that he wants to have the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge reformed. What is the matter with the graduates from Oxford and Cambridge? Do either of these universities breed conscientious objectors or Christadelphians? [HON. MEMBERS: "Lots of them!"] The Minister of Education was so very kind as to break off to explain to me whether these new provisions in regard to inspection and the like apply to public schools. I understand they do, but not altogether. I take Winchester as typical of the ancient public school, and I wish to ask whether, under the Bill as it now stands, the inspector acting under the instructions of the Education Committee of the Hampshire County Council will be able to inspect the College of Winchester or not?

Not unless the college make a special request.

I am glad of that.

I am very sorry.

5.0 P.M.

I am as anxious as anybody that the teachers should have their share in the general advance of wages, but that does not require a law to bring it about, and I cannot see that any fault has been proved against the present system or that there is anything pretending to an urgency as regards this Bill. I think it should wait until the electors who voted for me have had an opportunity of saying what they think of this Bill, whether I should support the further inroad on family life involved in this extension of age, and whether the great manufacturers in the great manufacturing city of Nottingham are ready at this particular moment, apart from the merits of the question, to relinquish the half-timers when they find, as I know, the utmost difficulty in carrying on their excellent and beneficent operations. As regards the removal of the 2d. limit, that opens up an endless prospect of expenditure. We all know our education authorities. They each want to turn out an Admirable Crichton, and for that the whole populace is taxed. Let them have an opportunity of saying whether they wish to be taxed, and whether they want the rate to be raised above 2d. Fresh duties are pressed by the Bill wholesale upon local bodies. To carry out all of these will require more money. They may all be necessary, but let the electorate say -whether they think they are necessary. It is not enough to plead progress. We may be progressing not towards prosperity but towards poverty, and I am rather inclined to think that we may be progressing towards poverty. We must investigate progress and see whether, like anything else, it may not be acquired at too great a cost. My hon. Friend opposite was very severe upon the hon. Member for New-castle-under-Lyme (Commander Wedgwood), but he very often hits, and on this occasion has hit the right nail on the head, because he does deal with the real and not with the ideal. That is my hon. and gallant Friend's standpoint. For that reason it is that he is so frequently right and that he has a large following in the country who look upon him as not only an independent, but as an extremely sensible man. My right hon. Friend opposite, the late Educational Secretary I think he was, wanted to further adopt the German system of education. He forgets that Lord. Haldane, who is considered to be a great authority on everything of a German character, has expressly stated that this country has nothing to learn from Germany in the matter of education. I am very glad that is so, and I really feel if there was anything to learn from Germany I would rather go without learning it than take it from them. For the rest I could not follow my right hon. Friend the Education Minister in that portion of his extremely able and eloquent speech in which he contrasted the compulsion of his Bill with Conscription. I cannot understand that the two things have anything it common.

On a point of Order. Hon. Members, I find, are under some misapprehension as to whether the Five o'clock Rule applies to-day. It apparently is past five now. Has the Sitting an unlimited duration to-day, or does the Five o'clock Rule apply?

The only limit I know is the Quarter to Three Rule for Monday.

I should have resumed my seat two minutes earlier had there been occasion for this interruption. In point of fact I have nothing more to say. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his eloquent speech, and I hope the Government will take into consideration the points that I have ventured to lay before him. I hope he will believe that, though within these walls there are so many enthusiasts on all subjects, including education, there are many people outside these walls who think that anything may be purchased possibly at too great a cost, and who think the Government should be occupied firstly, secondly, thirdly, and always with the War. The introduction of his admirable Bill is only open to one most serious objection, and that is it has been brought in at the wrong time. It should have been postponed till the proposals in their substance could have been laid before the electorate, and the House would then have known where it was and how it ought to deal with them.

I only want to raise two points. The first one is the provision which I think is proposed—the most important one in the Bill—with regard to day continuation schools. I have had a very long experience as a school manager in London, and I have been a careful observer of the elementary educational developments. I have been for a long time impressed with the great want of something really effective to follow the elementary education in our day schools. The least value for all the money spent on education, in my opinion, was that obtained from the expenditure on the old evening schools; which, up to the present, have been really the continuation of our elementary system of education. These schools were taught by tired teachers. The subjects chosen were often popular ones and were not really chosen with any regard to the industrial necessities of the locality, but with the idea of attracting the students who would enable the tired teacher to get a larger percentage grant as a supplement to his salary. I think everybody concerned with education in London has felt that the time has come when something better than this ought to be provided, and a day continuation school is an enormous improvement. You get a teacher who is occupied with that work only. He does not come into the school tired after a long day's work, and you have a chance of doing something really good and effective. Moreover, I think a day continuation school would do a great deal to check the progress of deterioration and degradation that the Minister so justly referred to.

I am in London schools nearly every week, and the raw material of the London schools is magnificent. Yet almost as soon as the children leave school there is a visible deterioration. The day continuation schools will do a great deal to check this, and will be a most valuable asset not only to London but to the whole of the country. Although this is so greatly to be desired, I do see there are considerable difficulties in making it effective. First of all, it is a difficult matter to make it obligatory all at once, and it may lead to a great deal of friction. Next, I am not quite sure where my right hon. Friend is going to find the teachers. My experience of London education is that the supply of teachers is hardly adequate to the necessities of the present schools, and if you have a big series of day continuation schools I am afraid you will have great difficulty in London in finding suitable teachers in large numbers all at once to fill the sort of posts that the-right hon. Gentleman intends to create.

Then there is the provision of the schools themselves. This evidently means a good deal of extra expense. I had hoped that we should have heard more about what was meant by the financial proposals, in the Bill. I was delighted to hear that the only reference was to a block Grant, because I am very anxious to get rid of the present formula. Education, good and appreciated as it is, is a very heavy burden in the poor districts of London. Although it may only be a 1s. 6d. rate, that is equivalent to a rate of 3s. in many parts, because the assessment values in London are very much higher than anywhere else in England and Wales. I have always felt that to use the assessment value as one of the factors in calculating the Grant is extremely unfair. It has a very unfair incidence, and it should be disregarded. At any rate, the present scale in which the assessment value is such a very large factor ought to be very much modified. As far as I understand the Grants at present, there is a block Grant of 36s., a Grant of three-fifths for the salaries of teachers, and a Grant of one-fifth for general expenses. The 36s. block Grant in the case of London is altogether got rid of by the provision of a 7d. rate. Therefore, the 36s. block Grant, as far as London is concerned, is absolutely a negligible quantity. It is worse than that. It is a minus quantity. Therefore, unless some alteration is made in the present formula, the Grants to London will be something less than three fifths of the teachers' salaries and one fifth of the general expenses. This will amount to 42 per cent, of the total expenditure on elementary education in London. The Board of Education must not disguise from themselves that there is a feeling of great dissatisfaction right through London at the way this Grant is calculated. If they want to make their educational system a success, and if they want the enthusiastic and the whole-hearted support of the various authorities in London, they must not have the Grant on this misguided basis. There is a growing feeling in London that the expenses of education are unduly placed upon the local authority, and I hope very much that the one indication that has been given us this afternoon that the Grants are going to be recast and take the form of a block Grant really means that the old formula is going to be modified, and that at least 50 per cent, of the total cost of the local authority will be borne by the State. Nobody would object to the present formula remaining if some limitation of that sort were put in. I feel very strongly that if the Government want the assistance—they cannot do what they should without the assistance and enthusiasm of the local authorities—their contribution should be at least 50 per cent, of the total expenditure upon elementary and secondary education. I hope the Government will not forget the great feeling that exists in London that the basis ought to be altered, and that something of, this sort will be done; otherwise I am sure there will be a good deal of opposition in this House to the passing of a Bill which does not make the required alterations.

I desire to join in the congratulations so universally tendered to the President of the Board of Education upon the initiation of a spirited and progressive educational policy. I fully endorse what was said by the hon. Member for West Denbighshire (Sir Herbert Roberts) that no part of the country will follow the purpose and labours of the President of the Board of Education with greater sympathy than will the Principality of Wales. When listening to the right hon. Gentleman's admirable and delightful exposition of his high educational ideals, I much regretted that he was only able to put them into concrete proposals on such pedestrian lines. That was explained to me by the comments made in one or two subsequent speeches, particularly by the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Commander Wedgwood) and the hon. Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees). I am sure that if the right hon. Gentleman were submitting his proposals to a legislative assembly in Wales and he were speaking to Wales only, not only would there have been very ardent applause for his ideals and principles, but there would have been very emphatic demands for much more drastic proposals. I am quite in accord with what my colleague in the representation of Denbighshire said in regard to all that has been actually proposed, the only difference between us being that I am in somewhat of the position of Oliver Twist rather than in that of the less reprehensible colleagues of that young gentleman at school. All I desire to urge is that the President should try to get himself clear of what is evidently an adverse environment and should bring forward proposals of a very much bolder character.

The crux of all educational reform is very much a matter of finance and, if I may refer to that matter briefly, I would explain why, to my mind, even the generous proposals of the right hon. Gentleman, which are, of course, the basis of his legislative proposals, are really so completely inadequate. The President did tell us that the actual expenditure in Great Britain upon education was some £40,000,000 per annum and he very happily proposes to increase that expenditure by some £4,000,000. The total of £44,000,000 or £45,000,000 represents about 20s. per head of the population. I cannot help contrasting that with the expenditure on education in the United States, which is 29s. 3d. per head of the population, while in the Colony of New Zealand they spend 30s. per head of the population. Thirty shillings per head of the population in the United Kingdom would represent an expenditure of £70,000,000, therefore, while I am exceedingly grateful to the President for the decided and marked advance he has made in the financial provision for education, I hope he will not consider that he has attained the end of his journey by any means, but that next year he will make a still further considerable advance. I would claim that we who represent Wales are quite entitled to press this consideration upon him. The average rate fixed in England is something like 16½d. The average rate in Wales is 21d. But that is by no means a fair measure of the educational enthusiasm of Wales translated into financial sacrifice. What we spend on education in Wales is equal to an Income Tax of 16d. in the £. Taking the same standard for England, the expenditure is only 8d. in the £. Our sacrifice in that respect in proportion to income is exactly 100 per cent, greater than in England. Further, if England set aside a similar proportion of its income for education to what Wales does, the income available for educational purposes would be between £60,000,000 and £65,000,000—not so very far short of the standard of the United States. I quote these things more particularly to justify what allocation of financial help has already been made to Wales, and for which my colleague has expressed his acknowledgment, which I fully endorse, but I quote them also much more for the purpose of demonstrating and emphasising the competence and right of Wales to manage its educational affairs itself. I think we have established that very fully.

I was rather disappointed that in discussing the administration of education generally the President of the Board of Education did not make any reference to the educational activities and the special conditions of the Principality. The proposal by Lord Haldane that provincial councils should be constituted is one that I would submit deserves the serious attention of this House and of educationists generally. I have always felt that the area of the influence of a university would probably constitute a very convenient and advantageous administrative unit from the educational point of view in England, but that does not concern Wales. Here you have a nation, not a province, full of educational enthusiasm, prepared to act in these matters, to deal with education I have no doubt from the university to the elementary schools, and I should have been glad if the President had seen his way to recognise the existing conditions in Wales, to recall to the House that some eleven years ago the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Birrell) submitted to the House a proposal for creating a National Council for Wales, and incidentally for actually providing that the whole of the funds placed at the disposal of Wales for educational purposes, other than for university education, should be administered absolutely at the control and discretion of the contemplated National Council. Of course I am quite aware that the President may very properly plead that at this moment the question of university control is under consideration by the Royal Commission now sitting under the presidency of Lord Haldane, but this measure is not going to be proceeded with this Session, and will, I suppose, be reintroduced next Session. I sincerely hope that before the introduction of the Bill the Commission will have reported and that the President will see his way to accede to the request made from the Principality that the National Council of Education, which was contemplated eleven years ago, with I believe the assent of education committees should be embodied in the measure which he will submit to us next year. I am very confident that, so far as Wales is concerned, he will not find much opposition. There will be some matters of important detail, such as the question of the allocation of representation to the different localities which will have to be dealt with, but I am confident that my countrymen will not have much difficulty in dealing with them. I want to emphasise the very special character of the educational problem in Wales. England is monoglot—Wales very largely bilingual The proportion of people speaking Welsh is 44 per cent. The proportion of people in Scotland speaking Gælic is only 4 per cent. The problem in Wales is a very much larger one than the problem in Ireland or Scotland. In addition to that, the importance of the Welsh language in the literary and religious life of Wales is very considerable. Therefore, with such weighty considerations, the educational system in Wales can be differentiated from that of England. I would like to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to that fact, and to ask that he will investigate the matter very closely and very sympathetically, as I believe he will, and that later he may see his way to make proposals in accord with the national sentiment of Wales as his predecessors did some years ago, and as the present Prime Minister promised in 1914 should be done whenever any new educational proposals were submitted to the country. There are many other points to be considered which tend in favour of devolution. Many proposals in regard to the reconstruction of our industrial, educational and social life emphasise the necessity for devolution. I will not go into that matter. It is a very large question, but we must all feel that there is before us a maximum need for remitting to suitable legislative assemblies all proper domestic business, and I would submit that there is no department of activity where a nation is better entitled to work out its own salvation than in that of education.

Although this Debate has only gone on for a little over three hours, more than one-third of it was occupied very agreeably to us by the admirable speech of the President of the Board of Education. Two-thirds of the Debate has been occupied by that right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Acland). The subsequent Debate, which might have been much longer, has proved one thing: that the President of the Board of Education cannot regard any measures whatever as uncontroversial. The very first speech that followed must have convinced him, and if that did not convince him the very frank speech from a very characteristic Englishman (Commander Wedgwood) and the speech of a characteristic Welshman (Sir J. D. Rees) were so distinctly antagonistic that they must have shown him that if he expects to get this Bill through during the War he has got to do it as a controversial measure, and he had better shoulder that at once.

Because unless he does, unless he takes some courage, unless the Government are ready to back him up with the same courage and spirit there is no good in telling us that he is glad to introduce it, and that he may be able to put it before the House definitely next Session. That is all mere window-dressing, and does not convince me at all. I want to be convinced that the right hon. Gentleman is really in earnest. He cannot convince me by saying that we have to regard this as non-controversial and telling us in the same breath that he does not propose even to move the Second Reading this Session. Much as I am delighted with Ms speech and the proposals, it makes me bitter, and even contemptuous of the real earnestness and sincerity of men on the Front Benches in treating us like this with a Bill which deals with a subject which is absolutely vital to the welfare of our nation. I look upon this question in the light of a most remarkable article which appeared in the "Times" of the 19th February of this year. I do not often find spiritual solace and enthusiasm in the "Times," but on that day it contained an article which I have no doubt the President of the Board of Education must have read. It was headed "A National College of All Souls." It says that the true memorial to our dead heroes could be best attained by establishing the education of the future young men of this country upon a permanent and better basis. In the course of the article it uses these words, which are, I believe, profoundly true, and all the more remarkable because the anonymous author called himself "An Officer Wounded on the Somme." It is not, therefore, the article of some pundit of the Board of Education, but of a man who has taken his life in his hands to fight for our country. This is what he says:

I might pursue this matter a great deal further, but I shall content myself by saying that I shall welcome the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman immensely when I know he is in earnest about them, it is of no avail to give us inspiring speeches and inspiring ideals at the present time unless there is a serious purpose of devoting ourselves to the work of realising them. I am ready to help as far as I can to carry them out. I am ready to sit late and long; I am ready to give up any vacation; I am ready to undergo any personal inconvenience, as I dare say many other Members are, in order to carry out these objects, but do not let us have a bleating, expostulating and even a cowardly tone—"Please treat this as non-controversial, and do not be surprised if I do not move the Second Reading for another six or nine months."

Everybody agrees that the hon. Gentleman is enthusiastic in the cause of education, and, with regard to the right hon. Gentleman's interesting and sympathetic speech, I think that everyone rejoices at his enthusiasm for education, and admires the way in which he handles the whole of this great subject. He only, however, made passing reference to that most important question, technical education. I think that large engineering and industrial centres, such as my own, are looking to the Government in future to pay far more attention to this most important subject. If we are to compete in the friendly industrial rivalry that is to come after the War, the race will be won by that country which gives most particular attention to technical education. Some years ago I travelled through Germany, and in various towns I observed the marvellous progress in industrial enterprise, which was largely due to the many grants made by the German Government for the improvement of technical education. I say it is simply marvellous the progress made by Germany in their various industries. While there are many things in Germany which we do not wish to follow, yet there are things in regard to which we might learn something from that country, and one of them is the value of bestowing every attention upon the technical education of the rising generation, and there is nothing disadvantageous in our learning something even from our enemies. We know the scale in which those countries have developed and how their artisans through their technical schools have been so wonderfully equipped with every appliance. To give our working classes the skill required in factories would go largely towards increasing the value of trade. In the future we will have to face a National Debt of some £6,000,000,000, upon which there will be an annual charge of from 250 to 300 millions. That will necessitate every effort being put forward by this country to maintain its solvency. You can only do so by expanding the revenue, and you can only expand the revenue by developing your strength. While I stand for economy, I think it would be false economy to in any way stint the expenditure of public money upon so important a subject as education. To educate our people will become a necessity, apart from the moral effect and the higher motives of the improvement and uplifting of the people. Our people will require every possible help which the State can give towards the solving of industrial problems. I know that the right hon. Gentleman, with whom I had some private conversation on the subject, is very sympathetic in this matter of technical education, which I hope he will not lose sight of in any further proposals he may submit to the House. I only wish further to offer him my thanks for the sympathetic references he has made to the subject in the admirable speech which we have had from him this afternoon.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Herbert Fisher, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Herbert Lewis

EDUCATION BILL,—"to make further provision with respect to education in England and Wales, and for purposes connected therewith," presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed.—[Bill 89.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at Twenty-one minutes before Six o'clock.