Sig,—Mr. Wilcock, in his long letter, has drawn more deductions
from my short one than I could have thought possible. Perhaps I sacrificed clearness to brevity in my endeavour_ not to take up too much of your valuable space. The schoolmistress and I were patients together in a hospital ward. In those circumstances books are a great comfort, and as I had read with much interest Prof. Hearnshaw's Germany the Aggressor, I offered to lend it to her. She refused the loan with firm- ness, giving as her reason the fact that she already knew the cause of all wars. Was I wrong in concluding that she had been influenced by a book that gave the same " cause " for war as she instanced? The schoolmistress was young in comparison with myself, but too old to lay claim to such omniscience unless, as I suggested, she had absorbed certain political theories and held to them as to a religion. (Is this "a particularly callow form of sophistry " ?)
It is apparently an offence to one schoolmaster (but I hope not to many) for someone outside his profession to expect teachers of youth to keep an open mind. In a fairly long life I have had the privilege of meeting a few great men—schoolmasters among them. They all bore this resemblance to each other that, like the Clerk of Oxenford, they would gladly learn, as well as gladly teach;–Yours sincerely,
The Grange Nursing Home, Morden MARGERY REILLY.
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