Marching with the emperor
From Mr Kevin Winstain Sir: Just before I opened my latest issue of The Spectator I had been looking through Have You Anything to Declare? by Maurice Baring (published in 1936). Arnong the poems, classical' extracts, sayings and vari- ous items of literary interest that he com- piled was a shorthand report by M. Mar- quiset of what Napoleon said about educa- tion at one of the sessions of the Council of State held at the Tuileries in 1804-05:
Up to the present the only good education we have met with is that of the ecclesiastical bod- ies. I would rather see the children of a village in the hands of a man who knows only his cat- echism, but whose principles are known to me, than of a half-baked man of learning who has no foundations for his morality and no fixed ideas. Religion is the vaccine of the imagination, she preserves it from all danger- ous and absurd beliefs. An Ignorantine friar knows enough to tell a working man that this life is but a passage. If you take faith away from the people you will end by producing nothing but highway robbers.
`This has come true,' commented Baring. It was good to read Paul Johnson's piece (And another thing, 5 August) and see him lined up and marching with the emperor.
Kevin Winstain
Purley, Surrey
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