"Girls, we've come to the end of the first term in another school year. Some of you, like myself, are old Brackenfielders, and others have joined us lately, and are only just beginning to shake down into our ways. It's for the sake of these that I want just briefly to recapitulate some of the standards of this school. We've always held very lofty ideals here, and we who are prefects want to make sure that during our time they are kept, and that we hand them on unsullied to those who come after us. What is the great object that we set ourselves to aim at? Perhaps some of you will say, 'To do well at our lessons', or 'To win at games'. Well, that's all a part of it. The main thing that we're really striving for is the formation of character. There's nothing finer in all the world. And character can only be formed by overcoming difficulties. Every hard lesson you master, or every game you win, helps you to win it. There are plenty of difficulties at school. Nobody finds it plain sailing. When you're cooped up with so many other girls you soon find you can't have all your own way, and it must be a give-and-take system if you're to live peaceably with your fellows. When this great war broke out, people had begun to say that our young men of Britain had grown soft and ease-loving, and thought of nothing except pleasure. Yet at the nation's call they flung up all they had and flocked to enlist, and proved by their magnificent courage the grit that was in them after all. Our women, too--Society women who had been, perhaps justly, branded as 'mere butterflies'--put their shoulders to the wheel, and have shown how they, too, could face dangers and difficulties and privations. As nurses, ambulance drivers, canteen workers, telephone operators, some have played their part in the field of war; and their sisters at home have worked with equal courage to make munitions, and supply the places left vacant by the men. Now, I don't suppose there is a girl in this room who does not call herself patriotic. Let her stop for a moment to consider what she means. It isn't only waving the Union Jack, and singing 'God Save the King', and knitting socks for soldiers. That's the mere outside of it. There's a far deeper part than that. We're only schoolgirls now, but in a few years we shall become a part of the women of the nation. In the future Britain will have to depend largely on her women. Let them see that they fit themselves for the burden! We used to be told that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of our great public schools. Well, I believe that many future struggles are being decided by the life in our girls' schools of to-day. Though we mayn't realize it, we're all playing our part in history, and though our names may never go down to posterity, our influence will. The watchwords of all patriotic women at present are 'Service and Sacrifice'. In the few years that we are here at school let us try to prepare ourselves to be an asset to the nation