=Source.=--_The Times_, March 17.
Lord Hartington made a striking speech last night to the
Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute. In the presence of
such an audience a text was perhaps needed, and he took as his
text some remarks made by Professor Huxley, who lately pointed
out the instructive likeness between warfare and industry. If
we are well advised--and Lord Hartington has no misgivings on
the subject--in spending freely to protect ourselves against
aggression, it is equally our duty to be not niggardly in providing
industrial education, and diffusing scientific knowledge. It is the
condition of industrial supremacy, and it is not an unattainable
condition. A Watt or even an Edison is born, not made. But the
knowledge of drawing, mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry, and
other sciences or arts, which aid the artisan in his daily work,
may be imparted, and on the spread of such knowledge may depend
the continuance of industrial supremacy. Great commanders cannot
be called into being; but in the main it depends on the rank and
file of the army of industry whether its battles are lost or won.
How is the work to be accomplished? In answer to this question
Lord Hartington let fall one or two remarks which, though not
offering a complete solution, are, if we mistake not, likely to be
fruitful in consequences. The State, he is satisfied, cannot do all
or much; and he is struck with the inability of purely voluntary
efforts to meet the demand. He finds the necessary assistance, if
anywhere, in our municipal institutions. "I hope the time is not
far distant when our town councils or local governing bodies will
establish in every considerable centre industrial and technical
schools, suitable to the wants of the district, and supported out
of local funds." The institutions which now imperfectly do the
work of diffusing technical instruction "are playing the same part
in relation to technical and industrial education that was played
by the voluntary schools in relation to elementary education."
This points to a national system of technical education; it is the
largest and clearest conception of the subject which any public man
of importance has put forth.