THE PETERITE Vol. 11,1 \
JANUARY, 1952
No. 329
EDITORIAL The outstanding event of the Christmas Term was undoubtedly the moving and dignified ceremony of the unveiling of the Memorial Plaque to Frank Pick, of which we give a full account elsewhere in our pages. None of those now in the School can remember Frank Pick's last visit to St. Peter's, in 1939, some two and a half years before his death; and few probably had a just appreciation of his greatness in our national life until they heard Lord Latham's inspiring address. Perhaps (understandably enough) captains of England's test teams or film stars appeal most vividly to the schoolboy imagination, but it is probably true to say that Frank Pick was the most distinguished national figure which St. Peter's has produced in the twentieth century. At the time of his death an appreciation in The Times quoted a saying of Mr. Walter Eliot's that "Frank Pick was the nearest approach to Lorenzo the Magnificent that a modem democracy could achieve", and added that "he probably did more to encourage modern art, both in its pure and commercialised forms, than any man in his generation". He had, too, administrative and organizing genius of a high order, as the record of his career proves abundantly. Perhaps his greatest achievement in this respect (and one to which, oddly enough, no reference was made on the 23rd November) was the organization, at the request of the Government, in the years before the war, of an evacuation scheme for London, a scheme which worked perfectly when the time of testing came. St. Peter's is grateful to the London Transport Executive, and especially to Lord Latham, for this abiding memorial to one of our greatest sons. The continued numerical growth of the School has made it inevitable that the Senior and Junior Schools should become more and more distinct entities, except, of course, in matters academic, in which continuity of syllabus and a coherent organization give us an advantage which we shall never jeopardize. The example of a separate St. Olave's Carol Service will be followed in the coming term by arrangements for a daily Junior School Chapel Service. This, we
