PUBLIC SCHOOL BOYS AND THE EMPIRE..
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Limmer's letter deals with a most interesting proposal in a manner which is calculated to give food for thought to those who believe that in a far wider distribution throughout the Empire of the surplus population of these islands lies the ultimate solution of the problem of unemploy- ment, a problem which seems to me to be of far greater importance to the well-being of this country than any other confronting us to-day, while it is admittedly the one which presents the greatest difficulties. It is extraordinary how few people realise that the question instead of being a new one is, in fact," as okl as the hills," and it is anything but creditable to past Governments, whatever their political complexion, that no serious attention was ever directed to it. Even in the halcyon pre-War days it was calculated that some 12,000,000 of the inhabitants of the then United Kingdom had but little between them and penury, while the unemployed population fluctuated round the 800,000 mark. What a commentary on the lack of prevision displayed by our statesmen that during a period when our financial resources were so enormous no attempt to evolve a broad and liberal scheme of State assisted migration within the Empire was made, and that it was not until those resources were practically exhausted, in a fight for our very existence as a nation, that they awoke to the gravity of the situation. Even so, no further time should be lost, and everything possible should be done to encourage our public schools to establish as part of their ordinary curri- culum a course of instruction (the more practical the better) in farming and agriculture specially designed to fit boys for the pursuit of those industries in the Colonies. As Mr. Liminer infers, our public school boy is of the type that is best calculated to maintain and strengthen the ties which bind the units of the Empire together, and to prove in the generations to come that "Through the wide world, Great Mother, wherever thy children roam, England is still their watchword ; England to them is Home."—! am, Sir, &e.,
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