The debate on the Education Bill closed on Thursday. There
was something almost pathetic in the iron indifference with which the Irish Members met Mr. Lloyd-George's almost tearful appeal to them to support their allies and not to desert those who had been beaten down in their efforts to help Ireland. Mr. Asquith's speech was lucid and trenchant, but hardly convincing, while Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman entirely failed to rise to the high level of statesmanlike opposition reached by Sir Edward Grey. Mr. Balfour wound up the debate in a speech which IVIIR a masterpiece of dialectic. No truer words were spoken in the whole debate than those in which he declared that the diffi- culties from which they suffered "were difficulties in the House, not difficulties in the parish or the school" The second reading was carried by 237 votes (4)2 to 165).
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