Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography; Waugh, Alec, 1898-1981
It was a magnificent affair that inaugural banquet at the Connaught
Rooms. Viscount Bryce and Sir Oliver Lodge were the chief speakers, as
far as I remember. And a number of other very venerable persons
described themselves, like the old gentleman in the story, as being no
older than they felt. I don’t think that there were at the high table
three people under thirty. And the aims and objects of the League were
outlined subsequently in the daily press in an article headed with
commendable accuracy, but with a singular absence of self-criticism,
“The Age of Youth.” But still we had hopes of it. I found myself
vice-president of the Education Committee. One Committee meeting I
attended. It was my last.
We assembled to discuss the reformation of the Public Schools. There
were eight of us. Four of these were girls, of the Girton-Newnham-1917
Club variety. The other half was composed of a secondary schoolmaster, a
journalist, an imponderable young Scot, and myself. The schoolmaster was
the president. He knew a good deal about the practical side of the
business, and he was, therefore, somewhat sceptical. He opened
proceedings with a bland, highly noncommittal speech about “harnessing
the activities of youth,” which was very jolly but got us little
“forra’der.” The journalist, who was, in a sense, secretary of the
affair, then read some letters from people who had been sufficiently
far-seeing to decline the honour to co-operate. Then the Scotsman began
his innings: it was a good, breezy innings, of the Walter Brearley-Tom
Wass variety; vigorous, but with the bat infrequently connected with the
ball. His idea was to draft manifestoes, circularise headmasters, and
open a press campaign on such as declined co-operation. I suggested that
headmasters were busy men, that they had secretaries and waste-paper
baskets, and that a press campaign on what would be consequently the
entire educational world would be a gallant, but unprofitable,
undertaking. This perturbed the Scot.
“What, then,” he asked me, “are we going to do?”
“That,” I said, “is what I have come here this afternoon to learn.”
He emitted a snort of disgust. “But we must do something.” And for the
first time one of the four flappers spoke: “We’ve got,” she said, “to
justify our existence.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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