Lord Crewe holds another post as well as that of
British Ambassador at Paris ; he is the President of the Classical Association, and it was in this capacity that he addressed a meeting in the Hall of Westminster School on the classics in French education to-day. As every- one knows, the reactionary period through which France is going -affects, for good or ill, her education almost as much as her foreign policy. The classics are returning to a position of dominance in the curriculum of the Lycees. There is a popular impression in England that foreign education is more " practical " than our own, and that while English boys and girls learn Greek grammar, their contemporaries abroad learn accountancy. Luckily for the citizens of Europe this impression is false. On the other hand; it is impossible to dissociate the classical tendencies in French education from the general reactionary and particularly the pro-clerical policy of the Government. The spirit of Greece and Rome is admittedly an essential part of every educated man's equipment, but the further contention that this spirit cannot be assimilated without Greek and Latin grammar is a very different proposition.
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