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of the most widely renowned of all the soldiers of Gustavus? He never mentioned Sir Dugald Dalgetty.

Col. C. E. YATE, C.S.I., C.M.G., M.P., said: I should like to support the hope just expressed by our Chairman, that Sir George ScottMoncrieff may go on and give us more of his historical essays. We have listened to a most interesting account on the influence of those two great commanders, Alexander and Gustavus Adolphus, and we must all hope that we may have the benefit of more.

I would also like to say how much I was struck by the pertinence of the Chairman's remark about the manner in which Gustavus Adolphus was served by his officers, and especially his foreign officers. I remember being particularly struck at Stockholm by the number of coats of arms of Scottish families in the halls of nobility there, who had served and gained notoriety under Gustavus Adolphus and who apparently were most devoted to him.

As to what the Lecturer has said about "the after effects of the influence of these two great captains," I cannot say that I can accept without further consideration the contention that the after effects of Alexander's influence was less than that of Gustavus Adolphus.

The Lecturer himself has described how Alexander left behind him "a region permeated with Greek Settlements, imbued with Greek civilization, freedom, love of learning and philosophy," and, though I cannot recall at the moment the exact dates that those settlements lasted to, we know from coins and other sources that the Greek Kingdom founded by him in Bactria lasted for a very long time, and the after effects of Alexander's influence I cannot help thinking may have lasted longer than those of Gustavus Adolphus.

The latter, as the Lecturer has said, raised the standard of discipline to the higher ideal of the fear of God," and "the influence of his own noble example passed on from generation to generation,”’ but still I am doubtful if the effects of that influence were greater in the world than that of Alexander's.

There is one thing on which I am entirely in accord with Sir George Scott-Moncrieff, and that is his remark that where the political as well as the military leadership rests in the same man, it is obvious that his influence for good or evil, must exercise a

more marked effect than in cases where the political power is in the hands of another."

That applies to-day just as much as it did in the times of Alexander, and I imagine most of us here to-day will agree that if the negotiations now going on at the Peace Conference in Paris had been left in the hands of the military leaders of the Allied Armies instead of in the hands of the politicians of some twenty different countries, we should have a better prospect of a quick settlement than we seem to have at present.

Lt. Col. MACKINLAY drew attention to the fact that notwithstanding the great number of scientific mechanical inventions now used in warfare and the immense amount of organization now involved in military operations, that the man behind the gun remains the important factor, and the influence of the general on the fighting men still remains paramount.

Sir George Scott-Moncrieff has drawn attention, he said, to the good discipline inspired by great captains, and especially by the high religious ideals of Cromwell and Gustavus Adolphus, fighting for religious liberty; the Christian characters of many of our own commanders in our great war have doubtless contributed to the success, which was granted to us after the widespread day of prayer.

Lt.-Col. MACKINLAY then proposed a sincere vote of thanks to the learned Chairman, Professor W. P. Ker, for presiding, and for his helpful opening of the discussion.

Seconded by Mr. HOSTE. Carried unanimously.

THE 607TH ORDINARY MEETING,

HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL,
WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, MARCH 3RD, 1919,
AT 4.30 P.M.

PROFESSOR H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.Sc.,
IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read, confirmed and signed.

The SECRETARY announced the election of Mrs. J. Cain, of Dummagudem, S. India, as an Associate.

THE TEACHER'S

VOCATION.

By M. J. RENDALL,

Esq., M.A., Head Master of Winchester College.

ED

DUCATION has not escaped the chaos and welter which are besetting the rest of the civilised world: every detail of study and administration is in the grip of controversial forces; there is no sure haven even for that linguistic discipline which has for centuries all but held a monopoly in our Public Schools; nay, so potent are the forces of disruption that a learned member of your own Society concurs with the rationalist views of Dr. Mercier and wishes to abandon Greek and Latin as general subjects of study.

There are, in fact, few forces of reaction; but there is a fierce contest between the two types of reform, that which is based on orderly progress and that which cries for revolution. And yet, just as to-day in Berlin, while the streets seethe with tumult and murder, the same sun shines upon all the combatants, the same quiet stars look down upon their nightly scuffles, so, be the contention of the Schools never so fierce, the subjects never so modern, the eternal principles, which are above all controversy and defy all change, stand like beacon lights to those who are fighting for Education. The sun and the stars are not quenched.

I am thinking of those ideals, which, whatever his subjects or status may be, guide and illuminate every teacher in his or her vocation. The word itself-calling or vocation-has an oldworld, half-ecclesiastical flavour, and, though Falstaff thought it no sin to labour in a vocation of his own seeking and Macaulay allows a moss-trooper to pursue a calling, I prefer to seek my interpretation of the term in a beautiful sentence of Fuller's "Heaven is his vocation and therefore he counts earthly employments avocations." Seeley, in his Natural Religion, gives us a concise definition which exactly concurs with my own view : "Where there is the perception of an ideal, we may expect to find the sense of a vocation."

Of

To put it roundly, no teacher deserves the title whose eyes are so dimmed by questions of salary, status, tenure, etiquette and curriculum, though all these matters are of importance, that he cannot keep his eyes fixed on those special ideals upon which his profession rests. It is interesting to find a champion of working-men's education like Mr. Mansbridge strongly asserting the principle of vocation or, as he by inference calls it, "ordination." "I believe," he says, "that God working through Society does ordain men to specific work for the carrying out of which He confers the necessary gifts and characteristics. all the laws which govern the work of mankind the law of diversity of gifts is at once the most obvious and the most ignored. In a Society working in correspondence with the Divine law I believe that there would arise a sufficient number of all kinds of necessary workers-poets, musicians, navvies, woodworkers, stoneworkers, farmers.' One other sentence rounds off Mr. Mansbridge's view: "The full and complete exercise of any God-given capacity or characteristic is in itself worship and leads to that fuller worship which is the highest conscious act of man." I am glad to recognise that navvies and stoneworkers have their ordained profession in a State, and that their whole life can become an act of worship, a claim, by the way, which Froude makes for all his great Elizabethans, and especially for the mariners their life, he writes, was "one great liturgy." But, no doubt, if Mr. Mansbridge or anyone else were to draw up a hierarchy of the professions, that of the teacher would stand near the top, suspended somewhere between heaven and earth, swayed this way and that by his vocation and his avocations.

If there is any truth-and I believe there is much-in this theory of special aptitudes and affinities for special vocations, we

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must choose our men, or rather they must choose themselves, with care and deliberation. It is not a question of selecting a profession, but of discovering the profession which is waiting for us. There is probably no other calling which has suffered so much from haphazard or even topsy-turvy methods of selection. In the past a black or a blue coat has covered a multitude of incapacities; a combination of the two has proved irresistible. So much for the higher ranks of the profession. The lower ranks have been too often recruited from men who discovered no other aptitude-many of whom have spent sorrowful years in neglecting and misunderstanding the children under their charge.

What then are the characteristics which we should demand in others or seek in ourselves; what is the "beetle on the tongue or the "winged eagle on the back" of our Apis ?

The first, and perhaps the greatest, is a sense of ecstasy and wonder in the presence of youth, an intimate sympathy with and sensibility for childhood, a full appreciation of the divinity that hedges the child about. The thought is Greek, but the feeling is not confined to Greece, it has come unspoilt down the ages. To plant fair seed in a fair soil, to water and foster it, to watch the harvest growing-" orient and immortal wheat" Traherne would have termed it-this is sheer joy to those who love boyhood. To those who do not it spells boredom ineffable and much vexation of soul. The enthusiasm of the child-lover is the Greek epws tempered by Christian àɣáπη. For a real teacher we want the former as well as the latter. I incline to think it is the rarer of the two qualities. Mr. Neville Talbot has a striking passage in his book, Religion behind the Front, in which he speaks of the subaltern's "infinite and romantic task of loving his men-not necessarily of liking them, though certainly this will often follow-but of putting their interests first and his own second."

The teacher must both love and like his children. All the highest educators have felt a thrill of excitement in their work : the contact of spirit with spirit is like an electric current. The classroom is a house of joy or a house of torment. To take two great names, you cannot picture a Vittorino or a Miss Mason (the "Egeria" of Mr. Holmes' Idyll) otherwise than alive and happy in their work, and the cause of all their excitement and wonder is the budding soul which lies somewhere behind and shines through living eyes. The old Greek epws is there still;

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