at certain unwarrantable attacks which he considered
Mr. Andrew Lang had lately made on these choice spirits." This
discussion arose from a paper by the Chairman on the new school of
poetry "in which, in spite of its good points, he condemned the
absence of the sentiment of the moral, which he held to be the really
stirring and popular element in literature."

Evidently some of his friends tended towards a youthful cynicism for
in a paper on Barrie's _Window in Thrums_ Gilbert apologises to "such
of you as are much bitten with the George Moore state of mind."

The book which describes the rusty emotions and toilsome lives of the
Thrums weavers will always remain a book that has given me something,
and the fact that mine is merely the popular view and that what I
feel in it can be equally felt by the majority of fellow-creatures,
this fact, such is my hardened and abandoned state, only makes me
like the book more. I have long found myself in that hopeless
minority that is engaged in protecting the majority of mankind from
the attacks of all men. . . .

In this sentiment we recognise the G.K. that is to be, but not when
we find him seconding Mr. Bentley in the motion that "a scientific
education is much more useful than a classic."

"Mr. M," reading a paper on Herodotus, "gave a minute account of the
life of the historian, dwelling much upon the doubt and controversy
surrounding his birth and several incidents of his history"; while
"Mr. F. read a paper on Newspapers, tracing their growth from the
Acta Diurna of the later Roman Empire to the hordes of papers of the
present day."

Perhaps best of all these efforts was that of Mr. L.D., who "after
describing the governments of England, France, Russia, Germany and
the United States, proceeded to give his opinion on their various
merits, first saying that he personally was a republican."

Of the boys that appear in _The Debater_, Robert Vernede was killed
in the Great War; Laurence Solomon at his death in 1940 was Senior
Tutor of University College, London; his brother Maurice who became
one of the Directors of the General Electric Company is now an
invalid. I read a year or so ago an interesting _Times_ obituary of
Mr. Bertram, who was Director of Civil Aviation in the Air Ministry;
Mr. Salter became a Principal in the Treasury, having practised as a
solicitor up to the War; Mr. Fordham, a barrister, was one of the
Legal Advisers to the Ministry of Labour and has now