t for anybody else. Those who come in
late will have to hear what they can, and you must tell them the rest
afterwards. Oh, here they are! Quietly, please! There's plenty of room
over there. Violet, will you shut the door? Now that we're all together,
I want to have a talk with you. You know I'm what may be called 'Prime
Minister' of our School Parliament, and, though your wardens will report
all we say in council, I think it is well to have a public meeting
sometimes. This term everything seems to have made a fresh start. We're
in new buildings, and we have new rules, and our very Parliament is a
new institution. You're all in new forms, and I'm the new Head Prefect.
It's not only in school that everything's different, but in the outside
world as well. This is our first term since peace was signed. I can
remember our first term after War was declared. I was only in
IIIA. then--quite a youngster! Hetty Hughes, who was the head girl, made
a speech, and told us what we ought to do to try to help our country. I
think some of us who were here have never forgotten that. We nearly
hurrahed the roof off, and we formed a Knitting Club and a Soldiers'
Parcel Society on the spot. You know for yourselves how we worked to keep
those up. Well, to-day the Empire is at peace, but our country needs our
help as much as ever, or even more. It's making a fresh start, and we
want the new world to be a better place than the old. Hundreds of
thousands of gallant young lives have been gladly given to establish this
new world--in this school alone we know to our cost--and we owe it to our
heroic dead not to let their sacrifice be in vain. We want a better and
purer England to rise up and make a clean sweep of the bad things that
disgraced her before. I expect you'll say: 'Oh, that's for politicians,
and not for us schoolgirls!' but it isn't. Popular opinion is a mighty
thing. The schoolgirls of to-day are the women of to-morrow, and the
women of a country have an enormous amount to do with the formation of
public opinion--more nowadays than ever before--and their influence will
go on increasing with every year that passes. If each of us tries to help
the world instead of hindering it, think what an asset each one may be to
the country! It's really a tremendous honor to know that we can all take
our part in the reconstruction of England. It's like each being allowed
to lay a brick in the foundation of a new building. Of course you'll ask
me: 'Wel