YOUTH AND THE EMPIRE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19508, 3 January 1929, Page 2

YOUTH AND THE EMPIRE.

TOURS IN THE DOMINION. j PUBLIC SCHOOL SPIRIT. (no* oua cww corsespokdskt.) LONDON, November 27. At the monthly dinner and lecture this week the "Royal Empire Society" was able to use its new name with legal authority. It will probably be some time, however, before the public and even the members, will be able to forget the old name, Boyal Colonial Institute. Nevertheless, speakers at the meeting on Tuesday night made a good beginning. In view of the tour of public school boys through Nejv Zealand next January, it was interesting to hear Dr. Montague J. Kendall, late headmaster of Winchester and organiser of the tour, speak on the subject of "Youth and the Eimpire." The Earl of Clarendon was in the chair. The four pillars of public school education, said Dr. Kendall, were firstly, worship; secondly, grammar, or learn- j ing, or culture, or Latin—call it what! you will; thirdly, the manners of chivalry; and fourthly, service to God and man. These were the qualities which had made England what she was, and were, he believed, moulding the Dominions in the same tradition. "Ljt us glance for one moment at thd public school boy of to-day who is nearing the end of his school career," said Dr. Kendall. "The Great War came when he was four years of age. It formed the background of his childhood. He was brought up in an air of solemnity and wonder, and among the great tales which he heard, none were greater than those connected with the Dominions. The cricket and football players whom he admired as such became invested with a halo of romance. They were the heroes of' Gallipoli, of Vimy Bidge, of Delville Wood, and the Indians who had ventured all for a strange land and an alien faith, all these assumed a much higher place in his mind and his affections. Brotherhood in armß is a higher title than supremacy on the football field. "The years that have passed have done nothing to impair this hero worship. At one school certainly, X daresay at many, the four corners of a memorial cloister are dedicated to the great Dominions, --d their service and sacrifice is commemorated side by side with the members £ .of the Bchool. And then two years ago the partial political separation seemed to him almost an irony, for everything of late years has tended to link the boys of the Empire more closely together. We can speak or fly across th!e Atlantic, and the spiritual bond which unites us has only grown the more strong. Untold Benefits. Dr. Kendall referred to the Bhodes scholars and then to the various settlement schemes and to the tours of boys and girls, some of which had already been made. Forty-ihr-»e boys spent eleven weeks in South Africa last year, and this summer thirty-five spent eight weeks in Canada and Newfoundland. '' They were nearly all of them schoolboys, some returning to school to tell stories of what they had seen, others taking up business or 'Varsity careers with fresh eyes and a wider imagination. The benefit to the boys has been untold. One and all they have returned in a state of wild enthusiasm. It has opened new worlds to them: they have met tho Governor-General and the Governors of various States; they have listened to speeches by statesmen and professors; they have visited every kind of institution —universities, colleges, paper mills, gold mines, etc., and they have stayed in the homes of all kinds of hospitable people. They have climbed the highest mountain in South Africa, and spent autumn days among the Kockies. They have entered into problems of education of the natives, and all agricultural riddles. They know at first-hand the karroo and the prairie land. But, above all these things, they have found everywhere a deep and abiding affection which has taken the form of unlimited hospitality. If this is not education, 1 don't know what deserves that name." Competition for Dominion Trip. This scheme, however, catered only for the wealthy boy, but the genius of Mr Laseott and the group of newspapers with which he was connected lad discovered a new way of supplementing it, by which boys and girls of energy and intelligence from every part of the country and every type of school could compete for a trip to one of the Dominions. "The direct success of this enterprise, 9 9 said Dr. Kendall, ' e has been remarkable. Twenty-five boys and twenty-five girls of unusual intelligence have travelled up and down Canada amid a cateract of hospitality. But the indirect value has been almost incredible. The questions in the examinations were most carefully graded and set by expert teachers. They were attacked in the first instance by more than 200,000 students and more than 80,000 persevered to the end. The whole examination has been handled with skill and impartiality, and since it was placed in the hands of Professor Newton the Koyal Empire Society may claim special credit for its success. It is worthy of note that the candidates who won the great prize were, as it turned out, all boys or girls of known ability ia their own schools. "I sincerely hope that another expedition will be organised on the same lines next year. This is not the end of a long story. Twenty-five girls selected from the best schools in the country also found their way to Canada and back. The eight Clifton boys who won tie Ashburton Shield at Bisley this year were also invited out to comp#e I with the rival men of Canada. Our committee is, at the moment, planning an excursion to New Zealand to start on January 4th and return on May 17th. The party is in the hands of a Charterhouse master, and the ranks are filling fast. It is our most ambitious enterprise." Dr. Kendall showed some fine lantern slides which he himself had taken during an Empire tour. Among those who took part in the subsequent debate was Sir Alfred Pickford, who claimed that the Boy Scout movement made it possible for the public school spirit to be extended from the privileged few to the many. * (