33
great bank in Sydney, and I believe there are others also, which declines to receive amongst its ranks any tyro who has not passed the prescribed matriculation examination at the Institute of Bankers of New South Wales. The incidence of this must be manifest to all who know what it means to have even a subordinate who has at least some idea of what he has to do. The promiscuous state aid to education may be all very well, but at the best it only exemplifies what the French call un embarras des richesses. Personally, though I may be put down as prejudiced and harsh, I would like to see less dependence on the State in matters of education: I would like to see more love for knowledge for its own sake, more reverence for what has gone before us, more real desire to be acquainted and conversant with our great antecedents, among the youth of the Commonwealth. I should like to see more responsibility laid on the heads of families to educate their youth at their own expense in all the reverence and appreciation of the past, present, and future, following in the footsteps of their great forefathers, from whom they inherit this vast free-given Commonwealth of Australia. These are my own opinions, good or bad. I am in favour of all encouragement being extended and prosecuted, and opportunity given, at a small expense to the individual, towards making the youth of this country capable of grappling with their great future. In time to come, and it may not be in my time, probably not in the time of our children, this great continent of Australia, with its predominant position on the shores of the Pacific, will enter the arena of the Pacific Ocean, along with the countries on its shores, in the battle for existence and self-preservation. On the shores of this great ocean countries numbering in population probably half the inhabitants of the globe exist, have their being and their raison d'être. To meet the wants of the case, and to enable the youth, and the ever-recurring youth, who will in future call Australia their mother country, to cope with a situation which will present itself in no uncertain attitude in coming years, I would earnestly advocate the establishment and the endowment in
