Education is admittedly a comprehensive and vague term. It may be used to imply all the training which life affords to any individual member of human society. In a narrower and customary sense it has reference to requirements more or less technical which a community makes of its younger members. Whether viewed in its larger or in its narrower meaning it amounts to a process through which the individual progresses toward a more or less useful place in society.

In the phrase “educational function” is included a large group of federal activities which tend directly or indirectly to influence popular intelligence and accordingly help in the establishment of public policy and law. Such activities frequently underlie legal development in one or another direction. They account occasionally for the creation of new laws.

Well educated as were most of the framers of the Constitution, it is a notable fact that in the long course of their debates in the Convention of 1787 they gave slight attention to the subject of education. In a few minds of that epoch there was a dim ideal of the probable future necessity of instructing the democracy. But public schools at the time were unsystematized and undeveloped.

During 1918–20 twenty-four states enacted some form of pension legislation for public officials and employees. Congress established a retirement system for civil service employees. Various Canadian provinces, several British colonial governments, and a few European states legislated in favor of civil pensions.

In the United States this recent activity is the culmination of a half century of agitation, experimentation and controversy in the matter of civil pensions, whether national, state, county or municipal. Private pensions in various American industries have doubtless favorably influenced the development of government pensions.

This development has resulted in the use of many conflicting definitions of the term “pension.” Due to some aversion to that word, many confusing substitute terms have been used such as: retirement system, vocational insurance, deferred pay, indefinite leave of absence, retiring salary, graduated bonus, gratuity, annuity, superannuation allowance, service relief, old age assurance, provident fund, actuarial equivalent, and public officers' guarantee fund. As used in this article the term civil pension is intended to imply a regular allowance granted to a person for that person's maintenance or the maintenance of one or more persons dependent on the pensioner, that allowance being usually paid in consideration of the pensioner's meritorious services to the grantee; but it may be granted as a deferred wage or salary, as an annuity or as a form of regularly paid charity without reference to any consideration of gratuity, of wages, or of deferred dividends.

Apart from the appropriation bills the legislative record of the third (and final) session of the Sixty-sixth Congress was almost entirely negative. That was to be expected. The only purpose of a short session is to care for supply and Congress is fortunate if it is able to do this. A session of the old Congress after the election of the new, is one of the most striking anomalies of representative government in the United States.

The business of the session raised a number of interesting questions of congressional procedure. There was the usual discussion of the seniority rule for the chairmanships of the committees, with proposals for supplanting it by free election. But the admitted evils of a system under which men hold their posts not according to fitness but to length of service are known while those of a new scheme are not, and no change is contemplated. In the Senate, the situation was amazing. For day after day it laid the appropriation bills aside and discussed a makeshift, compromise tariff bill when it was sure that President Wilson's inevitable veto could not be overridden.

The following brief survey notes a few of the more important and more interesting articles on foreign governments and constitutions which have appeared during the past year or two in leading European journals. It includes discussions of governmental organization, structure, process and procedure only, omitting as far as possible what has been written concerning political issues, party fortunes, or questions of public policy.

Most of the material noted is from British publications and deals with the United Kingdom or its dependencies. Of the discussions dealing with Great Britain one of the most able is an article by J. A. R. Marriott on “Parliament and Finance” in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1920, analyzing the reports of the parliamentary select committee on national expenditure.

Since the referendum on the League of Nations of May 16, 1920, the most important question to be dealt with by the Swiss people was the initiative on treaties, accepted January 30 of this year. The initiative was presented in the form of an amendment to Article 89 of the federal constitution (the referendum article), and may be translated as follows:

“Treaties with foreign powers which are concluded without limit of time or for a period of more than fifteen years shall also be submitted to the people for acceptance or rejection upon demand of 30,000 Swiss citizens qualified to vote, or of eight cantons.”