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Hokitika Guardian, 24 August 1933, Page 4

The headmaster of Rugby, Mr P. H. B. Lyon, addressing the National Peace Conference, said that the history hooks of to-day were certainly very much better than those of a generation ago, but the masters, especially in preparatory schools, were not always sufficiently up to date to deal with history in the right way. Some of them were anxious to keep the boys out of touch with modern international problems. In teaching this great gospel of peace they need sympathy, determination, and not a little cunning. Boys were suspicious of anything they believed to be a stunt, and if they suspected a master of having a bee in his bonnet that bee would never escape to infect tile bonnets of other people. It was ai present impossible to staff the schools entirely with firm believers in the League of Nations. He hoped the time would come when they would be able to do so, but at present it was a new idea, and many of their masters wore old. If they were going to give the idea- that the campaign for peace was something a little soft and weak they would never win just those men who in time were going to carry the banner of peace all over the world. The appeal to reason was the first appeal that he would wish to he- made to boys/ who were reasonable creatures, although they might often appear to he otherwise. If they put before the hoy the right view cf war, and just told him the facts, his reasonable nature would emerge. Peace often seemed to him like a rather insipid female in a nightgown with a dove perched upon one breast and a wreath of somewhat faded laurel in- her hand. Let them not stress so much the fact that war was hew,

rible as that war was futile and fatal to all human good and human happiness. Boys were more ready then they used to be to sec clearly and to throw off their prejudices. Internationalism bad suffered a great deal because its apostles had sometimes preached as if it were an alternative to love of one’s country and not an extension of it .