PUBLIC SCHOOL BOYS AND THE EMPIRE. [To the Editor of
the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—I read with the greatest interest Mr. Limmer's letter on this subject in the Spectator of October 6th, and as an Old Blue feel proud that Christ's Hospital should have been the first of our Public Schools to attack it systematically. He has explained in a convincing way the conditions of the problem, the vital importance of which Colonel Poison's startling figures have thrown into strong relief, and the kind of solution the Christ's Hospital scheme offers. Emigration as a career—that is the kernel ; and a career implies a training.
Hitherto the Public School boy has too often been the emigration failure, the lad who has failed to make good at home, and has been shipped overseas to make a second start in a new country, where, lacking the necessary training and character, he is kept going by doles from the family purse. The "remittance man" has an unsavoury reputation in the Dominions, which does not help on Imperial understanding and co-operation. But colonial life, though it offers many opportunities, makes heavy demands on physique, resolution, and initiative. Those who are to succeed in it must be sound in body and character, and also have a sound training to fall back upon. Otherwise they are only too likely to drift into the big cities, which seem to have the same attractive force overseas as they have at home. Yet it is the country life which it is all-important to maintain, for it is ultimately that which keeps the cities going by supplying them with human material. Thus, viewing the Empire as a whole, the greatest need is the filling up of the rich waste places with a vigorous population. The training required was once given by the home life of rural England, and then we sent out to the Colonies the surplus population of our country districts. But that time has long gone by. It is years since we ceased to send over the man with the plough. The training must be given, therefore, by schools or other organizations, or it will not be given at all. As Mr. Limmer points out, this is at present done to a considerable extent by institutions like the Barnard° Homes. But these hardly touch the class that supplies our Public Schools, and which, like every class, has inherited qualities of its own which can contribute a valuable element that might otherwise be lacking to the building up of the new nations. And there is another aspect which needs emphasis. If the rural parts of Greater Britain are to maintain their own life against the powerful pull of the cities, they will need as leaders men of a better education and wider outlook than can be got in the Elementary Schools. The establishment of such a system of emigration training in our Public Schools might thus render much the same kind of service to the rural communities overseas as the Officers' Training Corps did to the British Army in the Great War.
It is to be hoped that other Public Schools will turn their attention in the same direction, and that the movement may have the powerful support of the Spectator.—I am, Sir, &c., HARRY R. REICH:EL.
University College, Bangor, N. Wales. October 26th.
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