Indeed, we were sick of party politics: we were in search of some league of international co-operation of the young people of Europe, which should have the right to direct our destinies. “It had been our war,” we said, “it was going to be our peace.” It sounds foolish now, no doubt, at this distant date, but we believed in it then; we were sincere in our desire for it. They offered us “The League of Youth.”
It was a magnificent affair that inaugural banquet at the Connaught Rooms. Viscount Bryce and Sir Oliver Lodge were the chief speakers, as far as I remember. And a number of other very venerable persons described themselves, like the old gentleman in the story, as being no older than they felt. I don’t think that there were at the high table three people under thirty. And the aims and objects of the League were outlined subsequently in the daily press in an article headed with commendable accuracy, but with a singular absence of self-criticism, “The Age of Youth.” But still we had hopes of it. I found myself vice-president of the Education Committee. One Committee meeting I attended. It was my last.
We assembled to discuss the reformation of the Public Schools. There were eight of us. Four of these were girls, of the Girton-Newnham-1917 Club variety. The other half was composed of a secondary schoolmaster, a journalist, an imponderable young Scot, and myself. The schoolmaster was the president. He knew a good deal about the practical side of the business, and he was, therefore, somewhat sceptical. He opened proceedings with a bland, highly noncommittal speech about “harnessing the activities of youth,” which was very jolly but got us little “forra’der.” The journalist, who was, in a sense, secretary of the affair, then read some letters from people who had been sufficiently far-seeing to decline the honour to co-operate. Then the Scotsman began his innings: it was a good, breezy innings, of the Walter Brearley-Tom Wass variety; vigorous, but with the bat infrequently connected with the ball. His idea was to draft manifestoes, circularise headmasters, and open a press campaign on such as declined co-operation. I suggested that headmasters were busy men, that they had secretaries and waste-paper baskets, and that a press campaign on what would be consequently the entire educational world would be a gallant, but unprofitable, undertaking. This perturbed the Scot.