IN TIME OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2339, 22 December 1914, Page 6

IN TIME OF WAR

CARE OF CHILDREN. "DETAILS, GUAEDING THE LINE." "We are trustees for prosperity," says the Right Hon. Joseph A. Pease, President of the British Board of Education, in a recently circulated'address to teachers, or as he calls them, "my colleagues in the national service of education." "We guard the lines of communication between the present and the future," ho continues. "In the educational system for whioh I speak, there aro more than seven millions of pupils and students, most of them of tender age—an army comparable in numbers with the forces which now stand armed in the European confliot. These seven millions are tho future England. At the present moment a blow has been dealt, and, I sincerely believe, through no fault of ours, at tho moral foundation of civilised life. When the conflict is over, we shall not only .have to reconstruct the material fabric of civilisation, but also to reaffirm its spiritual purpose. We must sep to it that neither wo nor those who come after us lose faith: that the seven millions may grow up still believing in national honesty and goodwill in generosity, in humanity, in the supremo blossiiig of peace. "It is to them that we shall hand over the national and international polity which emerges from the present struggle—a form of society, wo may hope, broader and more firmly based, freed of the secular heritage of racial hatred and militay aggession which Europe is now expiatinc, but assurfdly more exacting—demanding of all its members larger faculties, more highly trained aptitudes, a clearer realisation of the common duty and! destiny of men. Let us seo to it that these seven millions, and those who follow them in the linked generations of school life, como to their task well equipped. Their achievements will bo tho justification of our endeavours; their well-being tho measure of our success. At least lot us be able in after years to toll them that we did oiir best; that in tho hours of national stress and strain, faced by dangers without and anxiety within, we neither lost hope nor surrendered our trust."