DR. 1NGE ON EUGENICS.
[To me Emma or me "SPECTATOR.") Sia,—In a recent lecture the Dean of St. Paul's offered a depressing picture of the future of the English race. He said that he was unable to offer a crumb of comfort to his own class, which had suffered heavily in the war, and was bound to go down under severe taxation, and he declared that we were breeding not from our best but from our worst stock. No one can afford to neglect the opinion of such a profound thinker and observer as Dr. Inge, and if I venture to offer the follow- ing remarks, it is because the question is such an important, and such a complicated, one that any information that may throw some ligLt on it is worth having.
I am Master at a school which has largely increased in numbers as the result of the war. This increase has come not from above but from below. These boys betray their origin in their accent and in their pronunciation; in fact, they are a different type of boy from those we had in pre-war days. They have been sent by parents who might have educated them much more cheaply, but who evidently valued the Public School tone and spirit, and considered that it was worth the difference. And the boys themselves, though undeniably rough, are virile, energetic, and intelligent. I am sure my experience would be that of many another Public Schoolmaster. My conclusion is that the upper middle classes are being strongly reinforced. These are the boys from whom the professional class in the next generation will be made, and It will not suffer in their bands. This is only the experience of the war when officers, worthy of the beet traditions of the Army, were found in all grades of Society. At any rate, it is crumb of comfort.—I am, Sir, Sio.. A SCHOOLMASTER.
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