rget how in those first months of war,
consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and the
sadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation we
should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the
vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that
our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a
three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had
taught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach the
same lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires of
hate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we shall be
confessing that a Christian education cannot teach us anything about
Christianity.

The student in arms would not have had us despair. Peace when it comes
will make demands on our fortitude. There will be many lying in the
no-man's land between vice and virtue who will need to be rescued at
great risk. There will be many forlorn hopes to be led against
disease, the foster child of vice, that has gained strength under the
cover of war. The disappointing days of peace will give an opportunity
for the development of Christian qualities fully as great as the
bracing days of battle. Teachers will need to gird up their loins for
the task of giving a wise welcome to the thousands that an awakened
State will send to sit at their feet, and unless they can give
spiritual food as well as worldly wisdom and paying knowledge, the
souls of the new-comers will be starved beyond the remedy of any free
meals. How to spiritualise education is the real problem, for it is
only by a spiritualised education that we can escape from the
avalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world just
now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal
road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the
past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the
future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all
denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient
and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the
best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one
condition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicated
themselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it is
impossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not the
recompense that comes to many