SCHOOL IN LL.-G.'S DAYS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 12 June 1929, Page 2

SCHOOL IN LL.-G.'S DAYS

"HA,RD STRUGGLE FOR BOOKS" HIS GOLD SPADE Sidelights on his school days were given by Mr Lloyd George in his address to the Conference of the National Union of Teachers. Mr Lloyd George said that he was proud of the fact that he was an elementary /schoolmaster's son who was Prime Minister at the time the old miserable conditions of the scholastic profession were changed. "I know from the days of a struggling youth what the treatment of the elementary schoolmaster was in the dark days. ' It burned itself into my mind. '"'There lias-been a great change since I was a boy in an elementary school. Sometimes £ wonder whether it is for the. better, because you are getting things so easily." There were cries of "Oh !" and Mr Lloyd George said : "I don't mean you. I mean the children. In my days we had no books. It was a hard struggle to get them with poverty in the home. "I should have Sad no books myself except that 1 had a schoolmaster for a father, and I used to dig into his boxes and get his books, but the other children had none." It was the best educated democracies that were the most formidable in the war. It was education that -enabled us to mobilise and organise, the resources of this great people. "An educated people is a redoubtable people. War is a crime, and I hope the day is not distant when it will lie treated as a crime and those responsible for it lie dealt with as criminals. All the same, it is the sharpest, .surest test of a nation. "Whal is true of war is doubly true of the conflicts of peace which wc are j now entering on."