27 JUNE 1908, Page 14

LESSONS ON CIVICS.

Lessons on Civics. (Blackie and Son. .6d.)-This "Sketch of British Institutions at the Present Day" is likely to be a very useful manual. It is rigidly confined to a statement of facts. The nearest approach to a controversial remark is to be found on p. 279 (the pagination is retained from the larger work of which this is a portion), where we read that "a navy is a necessity of our existence," and that "an army is no less necessary." Some of our legislators think otherwise, but they are for the present in a !Mall minority. Something more might have been said about the Church. It is certainly a "British institution," and there is no little error, even in minds which should be better informed, as to what its " Establishment " really means. There is the matter of Church property, for instance. A compendious, dispassionate statement of the terms and conditions of its tenure would have been useful. Possibly it was thought that the controversial 4element could hardly be shut out.