LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
BRACED AND COMPACT ? "
SIR,—Are not the attitudes suggested both by Mrs. Tarn and the barrack-room talk (referred to by "Lance-Corporal ") both indicative of something rather warped having crept into our post-war education?
"What do they know of England who only England know?" During all the years of peace many thousands of British men and women in far and often lonely outposts of the Empire have faced— day in and day out—long hours of hard work, discomfort, privations, disease, and frequently death because they realised not merely the "glory," but also the responsibilities of Empire ; and while their efforts, as I firmly believe, are not by any means unremembered by the natives among whom and for whom they are so patiently labour- ing, are they not too frequently entirely forgotten by many of a post-war generation who have spent those same years of peace in the more congenial security of England and are only now—for the first time—beginning to learn the meaning of the words " discomfort " and "insecurity "? I am well aware of that other side of the picture to which Mrs. Tarn referred—indeed, confined herself—but the fact still remains that we have an Empire of which we need not—and certainly should not—be too greatly ashamed.
Could not more have been done in the twenty years of peace to educate our post-war generation in the matter of citizenship and trusteeship of that Empire, and is there not, after all, much to be said for Tennyson's prayer:
"God grant our greatness may not fail through craven fears of being great "?
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