PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 57

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

GERMANY'S WATERLOO AWAITS HER. We are reading a great deal about peace terms, and mainly from Germany; but her statesmen's statements are so hazy that no one can really say definitely what Germany is willing to accept, except that, reading between the lines, Germany's proposals definitely expressed are such that the Allies cannot accept. New Europe, a periodical which has been started since the war, says: "On New Year's Day, 1813, Napoleon stood where Germany stands to-day. His Grand Armee had s\vept in triumph through Europe; the nations seemed to be at his feet. But, as to-day, the conquered were uneonquered, and the tide of Napoleonic fortunes began to ebb. Germany is at her Moscow. She needs peace. But unless she can strip herself and her policy of the arrogance of conquest, her Waterloo awaits her. The certainty of her defeat is , far plainer to-day than ever before, and the time required to bring it about is not disproportionate if measured by the magnitude of the cause which our victory will establish.'' This was written in mid-October last year, and in another section of the article we read: "Time is so certainly on our side, and Germany knows it so well, that she will make immense efforts to escape the dread effects of another winter at war." As we know now, there has been another winter of war. Why?. Because Germany will not accept the first principle of a lasting peace —thk freedom op all PEOPLES TO GUIDE THEIR OWN DESTINY. WHAT GERMANY COUNTS ON. Mr Hilaire Belloc, a writer and a historian, in Land and Water says that, to have a- peace in her own way, seeing she cannot get it by force of arms, Germany is now aiming in three ways to break up the coalition against her—(l) by counting upon the divergence of aims existing among the Allies, mainly national. and traditional; (2) by counting upon the war weariness, indifference, and domestic differences existing in each of the Allied nations fighting against her; j and (3) by counting upon internal divisions between bodies of Labour in highly-indus-trialised areas. ' To these ho might have added a fourth: .a democracy does not make for that unity of action and long-thought-out plan relentlessly carried out, and possible only ■ with a centralised despotism. - "THE LOOM OF YOUTH." ' This was written by a Sandhurst schoolboy, who was presumably an officer in 1916, and Mr Seccombe. a well-known writer and critic, says of it: "The present '.volume touches the spot—Tyranny of the Bloods, which has been,.evolving into a hide-bound system ever since the public school assumed its i; present monopoly. It has developed a great deal since I remember it in working,,'during which time both the code and language of the Bloods has become distinctively more Red Indian than it ever was in my remembrance. The questions of schoolboy humour, schoolboy language, and other matters are treated in these pages with an instructive discretion." In one section there is apparently a strong plea made for the teaching of history, for while we are told that the public school boy system is helping to get us out of the mess of August, 1914, it also helped heavily to get us into it by the Little Englander outlook as opposed to Imperialism. And in. passing let me saythat Imperialism which makes for glory abroad and neglects social reforms making people happier at Home, by that very fact stiffens opposition to a wider outlook and emphasises the narroAver outlook. However that may be, an officer of the Royal Field Artillery wrote Home: "I do hope to God you are going to teach the young batch something of. history, the history of the world we live in. Will anything else matter so much?" This_ is necessary to know the price of security won in the past by suffering. To give an illustration: "One hundred years since the old trinity of School, 'Varsity, and Church won the European war, when England stood with its back to the wall against a tyrant. The last gleams of this particular chivalry, and of the grim old square-' chins who'fought in Crimea and at Lucknow have well-nigh passed. It cannot, unassisted, save the Allies of 1917, though it has fought as bravely and as' unreservedly as of old." What is the remedy?. "Education must be irradiated. . . '. Here surely the 'future of England lies, and our public schools, with their noblo heritage and glorious material must discover their share. The athletic god is a fine and a clean and, in the main, a necessary one; but .fts monopoly makes far too small a thing." THE PRICE OF SECURITY. "To know the price of security, let the youth of England learn to know what England has thought and suffered." But is this to be confined to the history-teaching given in the public schools at Home? Remember that the public schools there are similar to our secondary schools, the link between our public schools (our primary schools are the same as the board schools at Home) and the university. But there are so few reaching either the public schools at Home and our secondary schools here. What about all those who leave before, or after, completing the primary school course? History-teaching must be given to all. LUDICROUS ANSWERS. Mr Seccombe gives some amusing history answers, but amusing only as long as we' do not call up what tragedy they reveal. Here are tome he has com?, across: "I recently asked," says he, "some candidates from some of the most expensive schools in Britain, who were trying their hand at a general knowledge

paper, to name five great historians, and the following are a representative collection:—Homer, Virgil, Oman, Micklejohn, Dr Johnson, Plato, and Tout; and the history that they served up was quite on a par with their choice of historians.

"LadysmitJi was a siege in the Indian Mutiny, or a town m which Lord Kitchener was surrounded by the enemy during the whole of the JJoer war; 'Paradise Lost' was written by Shakespeare; Cetcwayo was a great Roman conqueror; 'The Canterbury Tales' were written by Charles Lamb; the Tuileries are mountains in Italy." The syllabuses, then, of our primary and secondary schools must include efficient teaching of history. UNFIT CHILDREN. The writer of the criticism of Aleo Waugh's book also says there must bo more attention paid to physical education. There are 6,000,000 pupils in the county (really board) schools, and these, he Bays rightly, are the real public 6chools, and then he makes the following startling statement: "A moderate computation a year ago (and Sir George Newman thinks that now it may be an underestimate) yielded no fewer than a million children of school age as being so physically or mentally defective as to be unable to derive reasonable benefit from the education which the State provides." Then, follows what is called " the irreducible minimum," to level up school children's physique to what may be regarded as the normal; but that I have not space for. Of course, the writer is referring to the Homeland, where there is more physical and mental unfitness than here. But we are all affected. We are all units of the Great British Empire, and any weakness jn one part affects the whole. Perhaps some of our teachers may be - tempted to order a copy of "The Loom of Youth." It is published by Grant Richards at 5s net, so will be about 6s 6d or 7s here.