School Life in England

War has inflicted many a hardship on schools in Britain, but education still carries on. Examples of how it does:

> Several universities have been heavily damaged. Liverpool University and some schools of the University of London which suffered direct hits have moved to other buildings.

> Cambridge, bombed, jeers at Oxford: "The Nazis know which is the university that counts in this country."

> Although the enrollment of many of its colleges is half that of peacetime, Oxford is still full of undergraduates, unlike Oxford in World War I, which had a mere handful of disabled undergraduates and students from overseas.

> Oxford's New College, in its annual report, the Record, listed 476 former New College men in the armed forces and eight killed in action, added that: "There being no artificial light out of doors, the beauty of the architecture by moonlight is remarkable." Magdalen College has let the Magdalen ground go to hay, formed a joint crew and a joint cricket team with New.

> The aristocratic "public" (British for private) schools have suffered financially. One of them, Weymouth, has closed. The rest are so hard up that they are getting Parliament to pass a bill to let them spend endowment capital. Eton advertised one of its houses to let, and an Eton master hinted that the school might one day be reduced to admitting girls.

> 5,175.000 young Britons are now safely seated in schools scattered over the countryside. Still in London are 112,000 hardy moppets. Only 20,000 went to school last winter, but by last week persistent truant officers had rounded up most of the rest and got them into classrooms. Many schools are crowded, noisy, uneasy; pupils spend much of their time popping into shelters and under desks.

> A new disease, "evacuosis," has become so serious that the Ministry of Health has stationed a psychiatrist in each reception area. Typical case: a twelve-year-old girl, homesick, stole twelve toys from a store, wrapped each in a package with a note (e.g., "With love from Cousin Gloria"), posted them all to herself.

> Some 8,000 evacuees now occupy 31 new national camp schools run by the Government. They live in cedar houses, have plenty of room to play. They learn, besides ABCs, to garden and mend shoes, and they enjoy getting even with unpopular masters by calling them such names as "Old Heinkel" and "Dive-Bombing Smith." Each camp (enrollment: about 250) costs around $150,000 to build and $30,000 a year to run. So popular are they that the Government indicated they might be continued after the war.

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