ready established a Consultative Committee of
Educationists. Why should not a similar standing Committee, consisting
of representatives of the Chambers of Commerce of the country be also
appointed? Such a Committee could render, as could no other body,
invaluable service to the cause of education.

From a recent article by Professor Leacock we learn that some twenty
years ago there was a considerable change in the Canadian schools and
universities. "The railroad magnate, the corporation manager, the
promoter, the multiform director, and all the rest of the group known
as captains of industry, began to besiege the universities clamouring
for practical training for their sons." Mr Leacock tells of a "great
and famous Canadian public school," which he attended, at which
practical banking was taught so resolutely that they had wire gratings
and little wickets, books labelled with the utmost correctness, and
all manner of real-looking things. It all came to an end, and now it
appears that in Canada they are beginning to find that the great thing
is to give a schoolboy a mind that will do anything; when the time
comes "you will train your banker in a bank." It may be that everybody
has not recognised this, and that the railroad magnates and the rest
of them are not yet fully convinced; but Mr Leacock declares that the
most successful schools of commerce will not now attempt to teach the
mechanism of business, because "the solid, orthodox studies of the
university programme, taken in suitable, selective groups, offer the
most practical training in regard to intellectual equipment, that the
world has yet devised."

To the same purport is the evidence given by Mr H.A. Roberts,
Secretary of the Cambridge Appointments Board (see _Minutes of
Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 22nd
November 1912-13th December 1912_, pp. 66-73). The whole of this
testimony deserves careful study. For some few years past the heads
of the great business firms, in this country and abroad, have been
applying in ever increasing numbers to Cambridge (and to Oxford also,
though in this case statistics do not appear to be available) for men
to take charge of departments and agencies; to become, in fact,
"captains of industry." In the year before the war (1913-14) about 135
men were transferred from Cambridge University to commercial posts
through the agency of the Board[1]. One might naturally suppose that
the majority of thes