If the Legislature has protected the purchaser—­in spite of the doctrine of “caveat emptor”—­by enactments against adulteration of food, and has in addition, created machinery to enforce those enactments, are not we justified in asking that it shall also protect us against incompetence, especially in cases where the effects, though not so obvious, are even more harmful to the community than those which spring from impure food?  The prevention of overcrowding in occupations would seem to be the business of the State quite as much as is the prevention of overcrowding in dwelling-houses and factories.  The best interests of the nation demand that the entrance to the teaching profession—­to take one example out of many—­should be safeguarded at least as carefully as the entrance to medicine or law.  The supreme importance of the functions exercised by teachers is far from being generally realised, even by teachers themselves; yet upon the effective realisation of that importance the future welfare of the nation largely depends.  Doubtless most of us would prefer that the supply of teachers should be maintained by voluntary enlistment, and that their training should be undertaken, like that of medical students, by institutions which owe their origin to private or public beneficence rather than to the State; nevertheless, the obligation to secure adequate numbers of suitable candidates and to provide for their professional training rests ultimately on the State.  The obligation has been partially recognised as far as elementary education is concerned, but it is by no means confined to that branch.

It is well to realise at this point that the efficient discharge of the duty thus imposed will of necessity involve a much greater degree of compulsion on both teachers and pupils than has hitherto been employed.  The terrible spectacle of the unutilised resources of humanity, which everywhere confronts us in the larger relations of our national life, has been responsible for certain tentatives which have either failed altogether to achieve their object, or have been but partially successful.  Much has been heard of the educational ladder—­incidentally it may be noted that the educational sieve is equally necessary, though not equally popular—­and some attempts have been made to enable a boy or girl of parts to climb from the elementary school to the university without excessive difficulty.  To supplement the glaring deficiencies of elementary education a few—­ridiculously few—­continuation schools have been established.  That these and similar measures have failed of success is largely due to the fact that the State has been content to provide facilities, but has refrained from exercising that degree of compulsion which alone could ensure that they would be utilised by those for whose benefit they were created.  “Such continuation schools as England possesses,” says a German critic, “are without the indispensable condition of compulsion.”  The reforms recently outlined