A.B.C.A.—the Army Bureau of Current • Affairs—is one of th
most hopeful innovations of this war, and the report which has just been issued on its first eight or nine months' working shows that the initial hopes were not misplaced. The aim of A.B.C.A., as its name implies, is to make the average private understand the world he is living in, the cause he is fighting for and the nations he is fighting side by side with. The method is lectures, not by eminent experts from outside, but by the regimental officers, each officer as a rule dealing with his own platoon, who themselves rely in the firs instance on two admirable bulletins, War and Current Affairs, pre- pared by the War Office for this specific purpose. Units are no compelled to arrange these lectures, but something between. 6o per cent. and 8o per cent. do arrange them, and the general conclusion reached is that the average standard of the talks is higher than might have-been expected, that the men on the whole decidedly appreciate the innovation, and that the talk that goes best is one that slides off naturally into a general discussion, with the officer evolving from a lecturer into a chairman. It will be interesting to see what effect a year or two of this has on the demand for adult education after
the war. Mr. W. E. Williams, secretary of the British Institute of Adult Education, is the head of A.B.C.A.
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