It is interesting that the first article to be published
by Major- metal J. H. Beith—Ian Hay—after relinquishing the post f Director of Public Relations at the War Office should be on e subject of the now famous " old school tie " letter by CoL C. Bingham, as result of which the writer was retired from command of a cadet battalion. Ian Hay's article, which Ppeared in Tuesday's Daily Mail, is on the whole a temperate ndorsement of the gist—not the method of expression—of the Ingham letter. Its essence is contained in the paragraph: " A boy who has been educated at a State-aided school and left it perhaps at the age of 14, in order to start working for a living, has had far fewer opportunities of man-manage- ment and leadership than the Public School boy—that is to say the boy who has been educated at a boarding-school until reaching the age of 18 or 19."
That is plainly true, and Ian Hay draws the right conclu- sion when he goes on to contend, as the Headmaster of Rugby has just been contending in The Spectator, that what is wanted is to give every suitable boy the chance of public-school facili- ties. He himself was at Fettes.
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