Planning an Anglo-Maltese culture

Abstract

This is with some modification the text of a lecture that I gave in the British Institute in, Valletta on the 29th April 1943. The subject, planning an Anglo-Maltese culture, may be found not without interest by those entrusted with the organization of higher and elementary education in our Islands. Unfortunately, England's intelectual tradition is not knownl and appreciated as much as it should be in Malta for the deplorable reason that those who in the past might have advanced its claims as a rule very rarely entrusted the work to competent p ersons and mediocre representatives cannot reflect much credit on their Country. Speaking generally, the appointment of the right men as England’s ambassadors abroad - and in a way we are all our Country’s ambassadors - deserves most careful attention. England's men abroad, and England has excellent ''human wealth" to choose of the best from, must be cultured gentlemen, well-mannered and well-spoken , with the broad sympathies, and non-insular, possibly cosmopolitan, outIook emanating naturally from a liberal education. It is a common experience, and the cause of much regret and complaint, that persons of mediocre abilities, placed in responsible positions above their heads, antagonise even friends by their arrogance or superciliousness which are but the natural means of self-defence with which, suspicious and fearful mediocrity instinctively shields itself. After all, political or cultural ideologies are but elusive abstractions; it is the men that carry them out that are the concrete realities by which these ideologies are judged.