6 JANUARY 1917, Page 11

Professor Gilbert Murray took a hopeful view of our national

education in an address which he gave to the Conference oa Tuesday. " We • were now improving, or were before war broke out," especially in " the older, deeply rooted schools." He stoutly denied the common charge that we spent too much time on classics and literature. In Germany secondary education was far more classical than it is here, and did not give more attention to physical science. Professor Murray diagnosed the real fault as a class distinction. Boys in the Public Schools were overdosed with classics, whether they were intellectually fitted to learn Greek or not, while boys of the middle and lower classes " were almost absolutely debarred from the possibility of studying the classics at all."