Christ, whom all these politicians sanctimoniously pretend to make such a fuss of, once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  And yet we regard this internecine conflict between our precious political parties as a sacred institution.  By Allah, we are a funny people!

Of course your officials at the Board of Education—­that beautiful timber-headed, timber-hearted, timber-souled structure—­ could come down on me with an avalanche of statistics.  “Look at our results,” they cry.  I look.  There are certain brains that even our educational system cannot benumb.  A few clever ones, at the cost of enormously expensive machinery, are sent to the universities, where they learn how to teach others the important things whereby they achieved their own unimportant success.  The shining lights are those whom we turn out as syndicalist leaders and other kinds of anti-patriotic demagogues.  We systematically deny them the wine of thought, but give them the dregs.  But in the past we did not care; they were vastly clever people, a credit to our national system.  It gave them chances which they took.  We were devilish proud of them.

On the other hand, the vast mass are sent away with the intellectual equipment of a public school-boy of twelve, and, as I have declared, a large remnant have not been taught even how to read and write.  The storm of political controversy on educational matters has centred round such questions as whether the story of Joseph and his Brethren and the Parable of the Prodigal Son should be taught to little Baptists by a Church of England teacher, and what proportion of rates paid by Church of England ratepayers should go to giving little Baptists a Baptistical training.  If there was a Christ who could come down among us, with what scorching sarcasm would he not shrivel up the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who in His Name have prevented the People from learning how to read and write.

Look through Hansard.  There never has been a Debate in the House of Commons devoted to the question of Education itself.  If the War can teach us any lessons, as a nation—­and sometimes I doubt whether it will—­it ought at least to teach us the essential vicious rottenness of our present educational system.

This tirade may seem a far cry from Mrs. Boyce and her sister mothers.  It is not.  I started by saying that there are hundreds of thousands of British mothers, with sons in the Army, who have never read a line of print dealing with the war, who have the haziest notion of what it is all about.  All they know is that we are fighting Germans, who for some incomprehensible reason have declared themselves to be our enemies; that the Germans, by hearsay accounts, are dreadful people who stick babies on bayonets and drop bombs on women and children.  They really know little more.  But that is enough.  They know that it is the part of a man to fight for his country.  They would not have their sons be called cowards.  They themselves have the blind, instinctive, and therefore sacred love of country, which is named patriotism—­and they send forth their sons to fight.