THE [Vol. XLII
PETER! FEBRUARY, 1950
No. 323
EDITORIAL The appearance of the date 1950 on the cover of this issue, the first "Peterite" of the new year, can hardly fail to touch the imagination. Another half century has been passed in the long history of St. Peter's School; fifty more years have been lived in the enduring story of an institution, which, in the words of A. F. Leach, the great historian of our English Schools, "is older than the House of Commons, older than the Universities, older than the Lord Mayor, older than the House of Lords, older even than the Throne or the nation itself". The pedants and sticklers for accuracy insist (rightly enough for pedants and sticklers for accuracy) that another year must pass before the 20th century has run the full half of its course. But, just as the protests of their fathers, who would have it that the 20th century did not begin until 1st January, 1901, fell upon deaf ears, so today ordinary people have refused to be cheated of the emotions aroused by the magic figure, 1950. Newspapers and periodicals ushered in the new year with a spate of retrospective articles reviewing the changes which the half century has brought or turning a nostalgic glance towards the England of 1900. In the life of a School whose story goes back more than thirteen hundred years, a half century is but a short span. But for us, as for the world at large, they have been fifty years of rapid and decisive change, and the significance of the period is not to be measured by mere lapse of time. As the years have passed since the century began, the times have become increasingly critical for schools like our own. Two wars, impinging drastically on the whole life of the nation, have tested our educational institutions and challenged them to justify themselves to a new world. We should be grateful to those who have administered our affairs in the last half century so wisely. In this year 1950 St. Peter's stands where it did, proud of its independence and strong in the knowledge that it is abreast of the educational needs of the mid-twentieth century. Of our vitality today the following pages speak clearly. Among the notable events recorded we would mention particularly the moving service in Chapel when the Archbishop of York dedicated the Memorial Book, worthily housed in the new Ante-Chapel, wherein are inscribed the names of Old Peterites who fell in the two World Wars. It is satisfying that we have been able to pay our tribute to their