THE PETE RITE Vol. XXXIX
MAY, 1947
EDITORIAL
No. 315
"Mr. Speaker, what hath passed in the Lower House this session?" "Seven weeks, may it please Your Majesty." This well-authenticated piece of dialogue of the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth may seem singularly inappropriate to the feverish activity of our present-day legislators; but, m statis mutandis, it may describe the Spring Term of 1947. Eleven weeks passed. Eleven cold, uncharitable weeks during which we sat in classrooms or stared from windows at snow, and snow, and again snow, and finally at the creeping catastrophe of flood-water. It must be left to statisticians and calculators (it is their age) to put it all into figures and tell us how keen the frost, how deep the snow, how devastating and unprecedented the floods. We are content to record (for posterity) eleven weeks of unspeakable weather and shivering inactivity. As for the fuel crisis—what "passed in the Lower House" and the rest of the acts of Shinwell and all that he did (and said), are they not written in the book of Hansard? Some such is our general impression of the term that has just passed. Yet, perhaps, as impressions do, it will prove fallacious on an examination of the facts. Though much of the term's programme was inevitably and disappointingly left undone, even so, much was achieved, as the following pages testify. We would select the Science Exhibition for special mention. The revival of this pre-war institution was an unqualified success. It received gratifying publicity in the Press and on the Radio and was proof, if proof were needed, that the School is fully alive to the vital importance in the modern world of this aspect of education. The Exhibition lasted three days, and involved an immense amount of preparation and organization. We were indeed grateful to Mr. E. K. Robinson and his colleagues of the Science Staff for their unflagging labours and their unsparing devotion to their cause. The many boys who took part are also to be congratulated as well on their enthusiasm and hard preliminary work as on their efficiency in demonstrating their various exhibits. It was Charles Lamb who remarked somewhat plaintively, "there is certainly a march of science: but who will beat the drum for the retreat?" He would have had no encouragement had he been able to visit the Exhibition. Another innovation was our participation in the special Epiphany Service at York Minster on Sunday, the 26th January. Some details are given in our Chapel record, and in our reference here we would 1
