[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR. "]
SIR,—The admirable article on " Signs of Compromise" in your issue of June 9th contains a statement which I am sure you will be pleased to modify after reading what I am glad to be able to put before you. When urging that Voluntary schools should be allowed in certain circumstances to return to the status quo ante 1902, you said : " We have, indeed, received little or no support or encouragement from the uncompromising opponents of the Bill in regard to this proposal." To one of the moat distinguished of these opponents your statement does not apply. On May 20th the Bishop of Salisbury gave in his Cathedral the last of a series of lectures on matters connected with the present controversy. In it be dealt with "practical proposals," and advocated, among other things, your own suggestion, with special reference to your article of May 12th. His addresses have been published in a pamphlet called " The Education Question," from p. 67 of which I take the following passage :—
" Any body of managers that gave up the rate should have all possible freedom in the management and the choice of teachers, subject, of course, to the claims of efficiency, and subject also, in my opinion, to the general control of the local authority."
From this you will see that the Bishop's proposal asks in one respect less than your own, in that he is prepared to accept the supervision of the local education authority, which did not exist before 1902. On the other band, he wishes to restore school-fees in the special class of schools he and you would call into existence, a proposal which might be suitable for towns, but would, I think, be disastrous in country districts- This measure of support from so great a scholar and so keen an educationist as the Bishop of Salisbury shows that you are not entirely without encouragement from the opponents of the Bill. It and the manifesto of Nonconformist laymen put forward by my old neighbour, Mr. A. R. Fordham, should convince those of us who follow your lead that possibilities of peace may emerge from the midst of the conflict. If, after all, the centres can unite, the extremists on either wing may be left to the congenial but harmless task of mutual vitupera-
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