[To THE EDIVQR or IRE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—My daily reading
for the last twenty years has been the Times and the Manchester Guardian. There are tendencies in both papers which I regard with strong suspicion, and I have always trusted to the Spectator to adjust my ideas on filo events of the week and current opinions. Except on religion and beer I have always _been in agreement with it, so that I had grown to think that I could tell beforehand what view the Spectator would take on any political question, particularly one connected wth economics. To such subjects I would apply a quotation from one of your articles, stored in my memory, on one of Lord Cromer's early Egyptian reports about the time when the finances were emerging on to solid ground. It was to this effect :—
" If, when I undertook this task, I had listened to every proposal that was made to me for the benefit of Egypt and its people, Egypt to-day, instead of being in a prosperous condition, would be in a state of bankruptcy."
These words should always be in the minds of Cabinet Ministers, and should be on the heading of every agenda paper. In the article on education expenditure I have a regretful feeling that the Spectator sinned against its own light. Is it possible that the witchery of the Prime Minister has invaded the atmosphere of the Spectator office? 1 read the article as contending that all education expenditure should be sacrosanct. As regards teachers' salaries, these might remain for the present, but with the increased purchasing power of the pound they must be reviewed just as the interest on War Bonds will be to the reduction of other people's incomes. I should like to say a word with respect to the letter of " Rector's Wife." Surely she looks at the matter from a wrong point of view. She wishes the rector to have the same salary as, or more than, the schoolmaster, and to retain the social standing of the rector and the rector's wife. Remuneration cannot be settled in this way. No doubt the village shopkeeper has a larger income than either parson or schoolmaster, but that is no ground why the stipends of the latter should he increased. The "Rector's Wife" must reconcile herself to the fact that the community to-day puts a higher value on the school- master's service than that of the rector. It is a good thing that schoolmistresses travel abroad. It is to the benefit of those they teach, and given the opportunity of cheap trawl schoolmasters and mistresses will ho encouraged to lean' foreign languages.
Let me conclude by asking the clergy to benefit the Church by doing all in their power to improve the social position of the village schoolmaster by treating him as an equal and nut as en inferior. They would thus be encouraging their son s and daughters tO take up the noble profession of teacher of the children of those to whom we' owe most of the comforts and pleasures of life. They would thus become the missionaries of a real and true Christian Socialism and followers of the great Mastef.—I am, Sir, dec., B. OR MEROD. Harewood Cottage, Cold Ash, near Newbury, Berks.
[We said that there was plenty of room for saving on educa- tion, but that teachers' salaries, which were formerly disgrace- fully low and are not now too high, ought not to be touched.— ED. Spectator.]
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