"A YANK AT ETON"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 210, 2 July 1943, Page 3

"A YANK AT ETON"

Sir.-My high opinion of your filmreviewer "G.M." suffered a shock when ‘I found him wondering how we British managed to win the Battle of Waterloo as an outcome of his seeing Eton through Hollywood eyes. I am not an Etonian, but I have had contacts enough with the products of both the great English public schools and the more ordinary costless school to save me from any such wondering. The greatness of Britain springs out of the combination of all the various types which she produces, -and, despite much propaganda in favour of dead-level equality of status (a thing which can never be, by the way, in any society), there are many of us who still believe that the loss of any one strand would weaken the whole fabric, Oddly enough, it was from an American source that I gleaned the assertion, some months ago, that Britain’s chief "secret of Empire" is the British gentleman, described by this American writer, as a valuable product unproduceable by any other nation on earth! And, if our demo- | crats feel like slaying me for so quoting a citizen of democratic America, I shall plead to be spared on the ground that I am not one of them, but an ordinary Briton sufficiently devoid of class consciousness to be able to see that, as

this American suggests, the English public school and- university type of gentleman has served Britain well, and is likely to continue,so to do-unless our stupid levellers make the breed ex-

tinct.

C.C.

C.

(Cambridge):

(Our correspondent barks up the wrong tree. What our film critic said was, in effect: "If this is Eton, how did we ever win Waterloo?"