in the House of Commons. When this is
done all England falls flat upon its face.

But for my part when I heard of the Cambridge vote, I felt as Lord
Chatham did when he said in parliament, "Sir, I rejoice that America
has resisted." For I have long harboured views of my own upon the
higher education of women. In these days, however, it requires no little
hardihood to utter a single word of criticism against it. It is like
throwing half a brick through the glass roof of a conservatory. It is
bound to make trouble. Let me hasten, therefore, to say that I believe
most heartily in the higher education of women; in fact, the higher the
better. The only question to my mind is: What is "higher education"
and how do you get it? With which goes the secondary enquiry, What is
a woman and is she just the same as a man? I know that it sounds a
terrible thing to say in these days, but I don't believe she is.

Let me say also that when I speak of coeducation I speak of what I
know. I was coeducated myself some thirty-five years ago, at the very
beginning of the thing. I learned my Greek alongside of a bevy of beauty
on the opposite benches that mashed up the irregular verbs for us very
badly. Incidentally, those girls are all married long since, and all
the Greek they know now you could put under a thimble. But of that
presently.

I have had further experience as well. I spent three years in the
graduate school of Chicago, where coeducational girls were as thick as
autumn leaves, and some thicker. And as a college professor at McGill
University in Montreal, I have taught mingled classes of men and women
for twenty years.

On the basis of which experience I say with assurance that the thing is
a mistake and has nothing to recommend it but its relative cheapness.
Let me emphasise this last point and have done with it. Coeducation is
of course a great economy. To teach ten men and ten women in a single
class of twenty costs only half as much as to teach two classes.
Where economy must rule, then, the thing has got to be. But where the
discussion turns not on what is cheapest, but on what is best, then the
case is entirely different.

The fundamental trouble is that men and women are different creatures,
with different minds and different aptitudes and different paths in
life. There is no need to raise here the question of which is superior
and which is inferior (though I think, the Lord help me, I know the
answer to that too). The