IT would be a hard matter to convict an Old Grad of lack of affection for his Alma Mater, not in vociferation only, but oftentimes in works. Through life he bears testimony to the college loyalty bred in him during four years of intensive application. But profounder still is the love of Old Boys for the boarding schools where an æon ago, leaving behind the friendly harbor of home, they first pushed their cockleshells into deep water. Go back to your school; watch the boys sitting at the front desks. You will see yourself at twelve in corduroys with wide collar and red tie, and as your eye sweeps the big schoolroom you will watch yourself growing up: fourteen — sixteen — finally eighteen, on the first pinnacle of the mountain range of life.

Filled with thoughts like these, a group of Old Boys in England revisited, a few years ago, Clifton School. The discussion turned on what things are most important for the formative years, and whether the experience of men who had hit the mark they aimed at might not be of help to boys just fitting the arrow to the bow.

Sir Francis Younghusband was a member of that group, famous for his Indian career and his march to Lhasa; Sir Henry Newbolt, poet, patriot, and chronicler of the Navy. And, amongst others of great note, Earl Haig, whose imperturbability saved the Empire.

It was agreed that a message signed by these men should be sent to the boys at the School, and Sir Henry Newbolt was requested to draft a letter to the School paper in the name of the group. That letter we here reproduce, knowing well that Old Boys on this side of the water will not neglect its significance.

To THE EDITORS OF The Cliftonian

SIRS, We are Old Cliftonians who left the School long ago, but are still, and more than ever, concerned for its lasting welfare. We remember the great days of Percival and Wilson, and we have since watched with interest and sympathy every development in the history of Clifton, and every indication of the growth of her power for good. We look with pride on the spirit and success of the younger generations, and we are moved with a strong desire to send them a message out of the past, in the hope that our experience of life may perhaps here and there lighten a difficulty or confirm a faith.
The present age is generally felt to be more chaotic than those which went before it; its theories and its methods are more disorderly, its faults more extravagant, its hopes vaster but more fluctuating. There is more greed, and far less happiness; more aspiration, and yet more uncertainty and discouragement. Life has become more controversial; controversy is more violent; the unintelligent are perverting science into a new form of superstition; religion is in danger of being crushed out between the materialistic selfishness of the rich and luxurious and the materialistic hopes of the overworked and underpaid.
For this feverish condition of society we have no new remedy to offer, but we are impelled to remind our fellow Cliftonians of an old one. We who now write are men of different character and experiences, but we have at least this in common. In the last forty or fifty years we have lived through times of great national prosperity and still greater danger and anxiety. These years have convinced us all that no kind of life is complete, no kind of life can make the world intelligible or give us any lasting satisfaction, unless there enters into it the element which is called Religion. We are not speaking of this or that form of religion, but of the impulse which is expressed in all such forms: the desire to find God in the universe and to understand our relation to Him.
It is our hope that our School may receive in the future a continually more effective equipment for this search; such instruction as helped us in our own youth to recognize that our existence is more than an individual existence; that we live in a world of mutual influence, of interest concentrated on self and also of interest directed to the service of others; further still, that ‘there is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life,’ beyond pleasure, beyond success, and beyond happiness. These are good, but they can neither guide us nor in the long run satisfy us. Guidance and lasting satisfaction are, as we believe, to be found only in faith— in the assurance that the life of man progresses by conformity with a Universal Spirit and a divine beauty of character; so that every act and preference of every one of us is of immortal consequence, because it either helps or hinders the realization of the order which God is perpetually designing for the world.
HAIG, F. M.
HERBERT WARREN
J. H. WHITLEY
HENRY NEW BOLT
FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND