Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine the Western world influences which will increase the social diffi- culties at home and which will render the problem well-nigh im- possible of solution. It is at their own peril that the Western nations act if they take to the East a new civilization without Christianity. The Christian education of women in the East is thus a sub- ject both complex and urgent, and it is one which calls for the best thought and study which educated women in the West can give. A conference to consider the problem was held at Oxford early in September last. Addresses were given by the Bishop of Oxford, Professor Cairns, Miss Powell, Miss Richardson, the Rev. W. Temple and others engaged in educational work at home and abroad ; a full report has been published. At the close of the conference a small committee was formed to conserve results and to act as a body of reference. The honorary secretary is Miss de Selincourt, formerly principal of the Lady Muir Training School, Allahabad, and any questions may be sent to her at Annandale, North End Road, Golders Green, London, N.W., England. The aim of the committee is not to form any new organisation or society but to enlist fresh interest in the work of already existing mission boards. Miss de Selincourt will be glad to give details of educational posts that are at present vacant in the East and to explain the a Short Service Scheme by which teachers and others who cannot take up permanent work abroad may give valuable aid for a year or more. Great opportunities for helping the women of India are also open to English women who go out to stay with friends and who have had no technical training, and the interest, sympathy and thought of those who remain at home are no less needed. In this critical moment of the world ' s history the women of the East are appealing to the women of the West, and there is not one of us who may not, if she will, take a share in the response to that appeal. FAMOUS, BUT FORGOTTEN. Twelve neat brown volumes, strong in the binding of sixty years since, stand in dusty leisure on the top shelf of our College library. Inside, an equally neat label proclaims their presentation to the St. John ' s College Ladies ' School Library by Dr. Thorn, the year of the benefaction not being specified, though probably much later than 1853, the date on the title page. Charming steel engravings, on a surface mellowed to the softest creamy brown, and excellent print for the excellent sentiments on every page, have failed, however, to attract the readers of either institution 23

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Havergal College Magazine for their special contribution in the building up of national life, and for their help in arriving at an adequate solution of the prob- lems which confront the awakened peoples. But if women are to take their right place in the new move- ments, it is obvious that they must be educated, and this fact is being recognized in the East as well as in the West. The leaders of the new political movements in China realize that the develop- ment of women ' s education is one of the most urgent necessities for China and, in India, Hindu and Moslem reformers are dis- cussing the question and are themselves founding schools for girls. In these circumstances, the leaders in the East naturally turn to the West for help, and to Western women has come the supremely important question of the kind of training that shall be given to the women of the East. Shall they receive a merely Western edu- cation, and thus bring to their nation an ideal of human life which is not interwoven with the old national ideals, or shall they remain true to the best which their nation has always desired for its women and yet add to the old ideal the new social and intellectual freedom and the spiritual forces which Christianity and Christian education can give ? With the entrance of Western science and Western civilisation the old faiths are rapidly losing their hold. Shall the women of the East receive an education which will bring to them material benefits but which will offer them nothing to sat- isfy their deep religious instincts, and which will give them neither spiritual ideals nor moral power with which to cope with the strangely difficult conditions of their lives ? The opportunity now before English women and others of giving help to the women and girls of the East can hardly be over- estimated. ' Not only are Western teachers needed to serve on the staffs of schools, both for kindergarten and form work, but they are even more urgently required for training Indian and Chinese teachers who shall be able to educate the millions of Indian and Chinese girls — teachers who will be enthusiastic over their work and who will not merely try to cram the children with facts out of Western text-books. The influence which Christian teachers might have at this moment in moulding the destinies of the Eastern nations is, without exa ggeration, incalculable. Moreover, English women who give their interest and thoughts to the needs of India, China and Japan are not thereby neglecting home problems. The social perplexities of England will not be truly solved so long as an attempt is made to deal with them in isolation. Social prob- lems today are closely bound together throughout the world ; they are part of one great movement which is confined by no geographi- cal boundaries. If Christian ideals do not raise the moral and spiritual standards of the East there will come flooding back upon 22

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Havergal College Magazine which has owned the dignified dozen, and at least half of their number were uncut, alas, when the writer took them down two years ago. Either the title, The Works of Hannah More, or the extreme respectability of the author, has proved alarming to those whom that lady would have called the young females of the Red River Settlement. Some adventurous spirits have, it is true, explored the gentle hills and vales of Hannah ' s verse, and the tragedies The Inflexible Captive, Percy, and The Fatal Falsehood, show foot-prints, or, rather, finger-prints, of early travellers. The stern warning, however, of Vol. V., page 33, Let not the vulgar read this pensive strain ' has had due ef- fect, and it seems to have crushed any youthful Manitoban desires to study the still more pensive pages of the prose essays. An unslaked thirst for romance, however diluted, has not spared the Stories for Persons in the Mid die Ranks, and the once famous Coelebs in Search of a Wife; but it fell to my lot to thrust the paper-knife for the first time into the dense paragraphs of the author ' s life, with her Strictures an the Modem System of Female Education and several succeeding volumes. For every true book lover there is a hallowed joy in cutting one ' s own pages ' ' — one of the familiarities that may lead to lifer long intimacy, and, in any case, a definite sense of proprietorship. Real friendship of course goes further, in the company of pencil and marginal appreciations and reflections. It is with mingled feelings that one cuts pages that should have seen daylight sixty years ago. Then the Strictures still awoke an echo; Coelebs was yet a classic on the family shelf, and the Sacred Dramas stood in the front rank of books that might be safely presented to a young lady on the more important occasions of her life, sow, the Time machine seems to have whirled us on far more than a century since those weighty sentences were penned and those correct sentiments endorsed by readers who, in an age of limited reading, might be counted by thousands. Coelebs, hard though it is to believe it, ran into six editions in the year the book appeared, and the large fortune enjoyed by Mrs. More in her declining years is yet another testimony to the popular admiration of her works. It is difficult to remind ourselves, in turning over the leaves, that the language and the thoughts are those of one who long survived Jane Austen. The shadow of Dr. Johnson lies heavv on every page. Of the wit of Garrick, the splendour of Burke, the urbane gentleness of Reynolds — all among her friends and cor- respondents — no trace is to be found. Few women enjoyed in their early years more varied and delightful social opportunities; few writers have left twelve volumes more uniform and sedate. Her 24