I think enough has been said to prove that flies are a very real danger to our community. I have refrained from giving the appalling statistics of our infant mortality, partly because of the difficulty of discriminating between the claims of the flies and those of other agencies which affect the lives of our babies—e.g., the insurance companies which do a large trade in insuring infants. Legislation has not attempted to control the latter. Sanitation might do much to destroy the former. In well-administered towns slaughterhouses no longer ‘fill our butchers’ shops with large blue flies’; they have been replaced by abattoirs, under proper inspection. Stables should also be segregated or controlled. The practice of backing the mansions of Berkeley Square by stable yards should either be given up, or the manure-heaps in which the flies breed should be under cover so close as to prevent the access of the fly. A layer of lime spread over the manure effectively prevents the fly laying. Creolin, in its cheap commercial form, is also recommended, sprayed over the manure-heaps every two or three days. It not only deters flies from ovipositing, but should they succeed in doing so it kills the resulting larvæ.[15]
Ross has shown us how to clear Ismailia of malaria; the Americans have rid Havana, for the first time in a century, of yellow fever; the same could be done with flies, if only the people liked to have it so. The motorcar, with all its destruction of nervous tissue, its prevention of sleep, its danger to life and to limb, has one great merit—it affords no nidus for flies.
CAMBRIDGE
‘Our dear Cambridge.’
Cowley:
‘On the Death of Mr. William Hervey.’
The grant of a charter to the Victoria University in 1880 marked the beginning of a new era in English education. Not to speak of Scotland and Wales, there are in England to-day six Universities which bring the new learning and the old to the very doors of the vast populations which surround their seats. Birmingham claims the Midlands; Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield instruct the manufacturing and commercial centres of the North; while the University of London, full of new aspirations, does its best for the huge and somewhat apathetic population of the capital. The calculated prodigality of the State endowments of Germany, the individual generosity of the citizens of the United States, the vigour of the young Universities of Canada, have smitten the national conscience, if not with shame, at least with fear. But, while so powerful a lever as the dread of industrial decay may have been necessary to overcome the intellectual inertia of the country, the consequent impetus given to the study of science and (it may be hoped) of letters is not dying away, but rather taking permanent shape; and it is now impossible to say, as was said in 1903 by one of the members of the Mosely Educational Commission, that ‘in this country ... we seem to be doing nothing for its own sake, and least of all in education.’
The new edition of the ‘Endowments of the University of Cambridge’ suggests other, though kindred, reflections. The book has for its basis a series of documents, beginning with the year 1293, and ending with the year 1904. The learned Registrary has prefaced the account of each bequest with an explanation, and, by his discriminating comment, has invested his material with something of that charm which characterizes all his work. In one aspect his book serves, and is intended to serve, as a history of the progress of education in Cambridge; and the large amount of new matter which has been incorporated since the previous edition of the ‘Endowments’ in 1876 is, in this aspect, highly satisfactory. Yet, though it is a mistake to suppose that the flow of benefactions to the ancient Universities has entirely ceased, the fact remains that Cambridge has twice appealed—once in 1898, and once again in the spring of 1904—for help, without which she cannot meet her national responsibilities. Oxford has at last been constrained to confess that she is in a similar, if not yet so dire, a strait; and it is easy to understand the effort which it has cost her, as well as her sister University, to sue in formâ pauperis.
In truth, the neglect, almost absolute, of Oxford and Cambridge, while the new Universities are finding generous benefactors, either leads to the conclusion that the old Universities are condemned and found wanting, or has its origin in a profound misconception of their efforts and resources. It may be urged that neither alternative is true; that the needs of the new Universities are more urgent, and that the needs of Oxford and Cambridge will in turn receive attention. But a delay of a few years may in these days involve damage which will not be repaired for more than one generation. Of Cambridge, at any rate, it is asserted that she is at the end of her means, that in the last forty years she has, in her efforts at development, strained her resources to the utmost, and that without assistance, which, to be effectual, must be both prompt and generous, no further advance is possible. Science has emptied the University chest, yet, as the late master of Trinity Hall said, ‘Science is still hungry and aggressive.’ As the result of her straitened resources Cambridge can no longer satisfy the just demands either of science or of letters. When we compare this state of things with that in Germany, where the University of Berlin enjoys a State endowment of £170,000 per annum, or in the United States, whose Universities have received from private benefactors alone £42,000,000 sterling in the last thirty years, apart from large funds provided by the State, we are forced to recognize that much yet remains to be done in England.
It is not difficult to suggest some reasons for the comparative neglect of the older Universities in the matter of benefactions. In the first place, neither of them can appeal to local patriotism; and an appeal on the wider ground of national efficiency is not so easily nor so effectively pushed home. Next, it is hard to imagine that a University whose colleges enjoy a corporate income of something like £300,000 a year can be in serious want of funds. Moreover, if this deficiency really exists, it is generally regarded as the result of the squandering of revenue on an extravagant system of ‘prize fellowships’—that is, fellowships given as the reward merely for a high place in examination, and held by barristers, doctors, and civil servants, professors and lecturers in other Universities, and even successful men of business—persons who do not contribute in any way to the efficiency of the University as a teaching or as an investigating body.
We propose briefly to examine the University balance-sheet, the college system, and the question of the fellowships, and to endeavour to give the candid inquirer some ground for a judgment on the claims of Cambridge. But we must first discuss what is perhaps the most serious obstacle to the satisfaction of her needs. This obstacle is the belief, apparently ineradicable, that the older Universities teach and care for nothing but the ancient languages, theology, and mathematics. For the persistence of this belief the daily press and public speakers are in a great measure to blame. Scarcely a week passes without an allusion which betrays, if not a culpable levity, a most unfortunate ignorance. Cambridge men have listened with amazement to the covert attacks on Cambridge science, and have wondered how long it may be before Cambridge letters are also disparaged. Of late, too, another note has been heard; and, notwithstanding the just aspiration of the new Universities to a many-sided activity, alike in the literary and scientific fields, an attempt, which must be stigmatized as ungenerous and illiberal, has been made in the press and on the public platform to limit the functions of the ancient Universities, and to drive them back into the grooves of the thirties and forties, from which Cambridge, to say nothing of Oxford, has so completely escaped. Whatever the reason may be, it is at least certain that Cambridge is frequently written and spoken of as if she were still the Cambridge of 1850.
It has been suggested, even in responsible journals, that Oxford and Cambridge would do well to keep to the older lines of education, and to leave newer studies to their younger rivals. The obsession of men’s minds by an ideal which passed away half a century ago can alone account for the impression that the policy of restriction to the ancient learning is in any way possible, or has been possible for these fifty years. Those who know Cambridge may well be astonished that responsible persons should gravely speak of the University of Newton and Charles Darwin, of Maxwell and Rayleigh, as still shrouded in medieval shadow.