31 OCTOBER 1908, Page 3

Lord Cromer delivered a striking address at the annual meeting

of the subscribers to the British School at Athens on Tuesday. Drawing on his own experience, and noting that the main obstacles to the effective treatment of all questions—whether connected with external or internal affairs—are financial, Lord Cromer insisted that the financier had not merely to deal with figures. "He, perhaps more than any other public man, has to consider human aspirations, wishes, and even prejudices, and his success must be tested by his skill in hitting off what in statics would be called the resultant of the divergent facts and forces with which he has to deal." They must not neglect the purely utilitarian side of education, or exaggerate the value of the classics. But they must not suppose for a moment that utilitarian education alone would do all that was necessary to develop the " megalopsychia " which was so essential to youths destined to take their share in the government and administration of a world-wide Empire. There was no quality more urgently needed to deal with the political problems of the present age than the abhorrence of extremes which was so marked a characteristic of the Greek mind.