A TRAVELLING "EMPIRE UNIVERSITY."
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The suggestion, commented on in the Spectator of August 11th, made by Mr. Arthur Mee is superficially an enticing idea. But it has one great drawback. It adds one more influence to the many now at work tending towards making parents and children lead their lives apart from each other. Mr. Mee's scheme, as I understand it, involves boys at the age of sixteen or so going to the Antipodes and back. Does Mr. Mee suggest sending boys out of range of home and parents into countries and surroundings which will give God knows what mental reaction to their eallow minds ? I am no advocate of the namby-pamby in education for boys or girls, but I do think that both sexes are the better for remaining at least within short range of home influence.
I suggest that the Dominions themselves show us a better way. There a comparatively large proportion of parents make it their aim to take their children on a tour to Europe or to the Old Country alone, while their families are in their teens. I have often wondered how they manage to do it. They do make specific savings to this end, and one supposes that commercial competition cannot be so cut-throat in character as here to allow paterfamilias to cut loose from his business for a period of six months or longer. The fact remains they do it. How can a reciprocating movement from the Old Country to the Dominions be set up ? Such a movement, I submit, would be a more healthy, if less hectic, way of making the citizens of all parts of the British Common- wealth of Nations know each other than sending shiploads of boys afloat and away from family restraints.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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