26 JUNE 1941, Page 10

EDUCATING A FIFTH COLUMN

Snt,—Mr. P. F. Wiener, of Rugby School, gives masters and parents a timely warning when he exposes the methods of the Oxford and Cambridge Examiners in prescribing a certain German text-book for the Higher Certificate examination for 1942. In spite of the German condemnation of the late Chief Scout and the so-called British influence of the Scoot organisation on the youth of the Third Reich, which was broadcast at the beginning of this war, it is now inter-

esting to learn from the pages of this text-book that the Hitler Youth has exactly the same tasks as English Scouts. And—more illuminating still—that the Hitler Youth is even superior to our Scouts. I wonder if the examiners have read the new _autobiography Hitler Youth, by Hans Siemsen, wherein these " tasks " and " superior qualities " are exposed by a Hitler Youth (who escaped from a concentration camp) through the medium of the author This book is terribly re- vealing, and the main tragedy too appalling even to hint at here. These superior qualities had no influence on the Gestapo lately when they shot 20 young Polish Scouts in broad daylight. And so our senior pupils are to study German propaganda-literature to help to obtain (under these conditions) a certificate of a very doubtful con- sistency. Such an examination should be boycotted from now on.—