on the platform and began what might be termed a presidential
speech.

"Girls, we've come to the end of the first term in another school year.
Some of you, like myself, are old Brackenfielders, and others have
joined us lately, and are only just beginning to shake down into our
ways. It's for the sake of these that I want just briefly to
recapitulate some of the standards of this school. We've always held
very lofty ideals here, and we who are prefects want to make sure that
during our time they are kept, and that we hand them on unsullied to
those who come after us. What is the great object that we set ourselves
to aim at? Perhaps some of you will say, 'To do well at our lessons', or
'To win at games'. Well, that's all a part of it. The main thing that
we're really striving for is the formation of character. There's nothing
finer in all the world. And character can only be formed by overcoming
difficulties. Every hard lesson you master, or every game you win, helps
you to win it. There are plenty of difficulties at school. Nobody finds
it plain sailing. When you're cooped up with so many other girls you
soon find you can't have all your own way, and it must be a
give-and-take system if you're to live peaceably with your fellows. When
this great war broke out, people had begun to say that our young men of
Britain had grown soft and ease-loving, and thought of nothing except
pleasure. Yet at the nation's call they flung up all they had and
flocked to enlist, and proved by their magnificent courage the grit that
was in them after all. Our women, too--Society women who had been,
perhaps justly, branded as 'mere butterflies'--put their shoulders to
the wheel, and have shown how they, too, could face dangers and
difficulties and privations. As nurses, ambulance drivers, canteen
workers, telephone operators, some have played their part in the field
of war; and their sisters at home have worked with equal courage to
make munitions, and supply the places left vacant by the men. Now, I
don't suppose there is a girl in this room who does not call herself
patriotic. Let her stop for a moment to consider what she means. It
isn't only waving the Union Jack, and singing 'God Save the King', and
knitting socks for soldiers. That's the mere outside of it. There's a
far deeper part than that. We're only schoolgirls now, but in a few
years we shall become a part of the women of the nation. In the future
Britain will have to depend large