Search results

There is no nation more ready for self‐sacrifice for the common good than the British. The “ Authorities ” have been put to the proof by the war and the future of the Empire largely depends upon how far they are prepared to abandon nepotism and to accept the service of a man at its value alone. For effective national service means the employment of every available man in that capacity in which he is able to give of his best; it means the very antithesis of the square‐peg‐in‐the‐round‐hole policy so popular with the Government Official ; it means that ability shall no longer subserve insolent ineptitude, nor influence continue to shield the incompetent ; it means the employment of those who for the past four years have offered their services to their country in vain ; it means, in short, the destruction of all those idols which official‐dom loves and the worship of which stands between us and victory. Voices, crying in the wilderness, have raised a plca for cleaner politics, for an imperial and not a party policy, but the plea, so far, has met with little sympathy. But it is not politics alone which are in need of cleansing. The cancer of nepotism, of the necessity for lick‐spittling to secure advancement, has sunk deep into the national life, and even four years of dire peril and unprecedented bloodshed have not mitigated the disease. Knowledge still waits in the ante‐chamber of the clerk ; skill sits on the benches of the Labour Exchange. The introduction of a true and not of a “ camouflaged ” system of national service would afford an opportunity of destroying a system which is sapping the energy of the whole nation. It would be the severest test of the State Department yet devised. No compulsion would be necessary if an honest attempt were made to give every man a fair chance and, if only for this once, to put the right man in the right place.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.

It is seven years ago since I first took up the estimation of dirt in milk samples; there had been numerous complaints about dirty milk sold in Chester, and the Public Health Committee asked me if it would not be possible to estimate the dirt, so that proceedings could be taken against the milk sellers.

AN ESTEEMED correspondent points out that there are about two dozen library magazines of all sorts and sizes in circulation, whereas when he started his career there were no more than three. Our correspondent has himself had considerable editorial experience, and it may be that he is still in harness in that regard. One of his earliest efforts was in running the magazine of the old Library Assistants' Association, and it is not likely that that magazine has ever reached the same heights of excellence as it attained in his day. He observes that there are far too many library magazines now in circulation. We agree.

I'VE said it before, and I'll say it again: Eastbourne is an excellent place for a conference, and I set out for it after five years' absence with the hope that its handsome and genial presence would produce something better than the mixture of ordinary, obvious and sometimes inaudible papers that have been a constituent of more than one intervening conference. That towns can affect such occasions is no doubt a farfetched conceit, but they certainly affect me; as soon as I arrived the environmental magic worked, and old friends and new faces were seen in the golden light of perfect autumn weather.