Letters to the Editor
TO MAKE ENGLAND ONE NATION [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—Mr. Lionel James, in your issue of December 7th, deals with the barrier to mutual understanding between the employer and employed classes raised by our Public School segregation of the former in adolescence. This grave problem has been before Spectator readers for some years : the way to solve it has not been found.
Like Mr. James, I fear Dr. Norwood's theory that the University should fell the barrier is already disposed of by experience. But Mr. James' own remedy appears to be, in his own words anent mixed summer camps and the Boy Scouts, equally " but a narrow plank for crossing a wide and deep chasm." Five per cent. of Public School vacancies free of expense " for the cream of Secondary Schools " is little more than a tightrope over it. And the extent and manner of the offer is more likely to embitter than to improve relations between classes.
The problem is surely only part of the general one of abolishing snobbery and unearned privilege. When shall we non .Socialists face the moral duty (and gain the tactical advantage) of going beyond lip-service in these matters ? I see no remedy but the standardizing of all Secondary Schools under Government control. Existing Secondary Schools have proved that this is no check to all that intangible side of a Public School training which we value so much. Only class segregation, or the pursuit of a purely snobbish
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