CHAPTER III

A POLYTECHNIC IN WAR-TIME

_Address at the Prize Distribution, Borough Polytechnic Institute, Southwark, 16th February, 1917_

I WILL commence by drawing your attention to some of the satisfactory features of the Principal's report on the work of the Institute during the past year. It has been a year of great difficulties. Some of our staff are serving with the colours, and our classes have been depleted. But in spite of everything, we have done very well. First, the average result in the examinations has been good, surprisingly good in view of the present circumstances. The Governors attach great importance to the maintenance of a high average result; it is the best single test of efficiency. Again, our individual successes have been notable. We have gained--I say _we_ because we are all one in our pleasure at these successes--we have gained two £80 L.C.C. scholarships, nineteen exhibitions, in addition to a first-place, and medals, prizes and certificates. All this is very satisfactory. It tells of efficient teaching, and of hard work and regular attendance on the part of the students. We know that we are keeping up the standard of efficiency which in the past has been a source of pride to every one connected with this Institute.

Now all this good work does not come about by itself without any one making an effort. Such a record requires our skilled staff of teachers and organisers. They have worked very hard during the last session under great difficulties, in order to create the successful result which we are here to celebrate. I know something about teaching. It is very exacting work, and can be made successful only by continual devotion. I am sure that I am voicing your feelings, and I know that I am expressing those of the Governors, when I thank the ladies and gentlemen of the staff very heartily for their services during the last session.

Prize-givings are always pleasant occasions. We have come here to think about our successes, and to congratulate our students. There is no more satisfactory Governors' Meeting in the course of the year than when we meet on this occasion, and face our friends and tell them how pleased we are at the successful result of their hard work. This evening I am in a doubly happy position, for my colleagues have asked me to be their spokesman in tendering our good wishes to the prize-winners. You have worked hard and you have done well, and I am sure that you all deserve your successes; they are a pleasure not only to you, but in your homes and to your companions and fellow-students.

Successful work here will enable you to acquire skill in your trades, and thereby the better to earn your living. Earning a living is on the average no bad test of service rendered to the community. A man who has made himself skilful in his trade and has done well for himself in his walk of life, has in general good reason to believe that he is a citizen who has benefited his country. It is an evil day for a nation when it loses respect for success in industry.

But if you steer your lives by the compass which points steadily to the North Pole of personal success, you will have missed your greatest chances in life. The genial climate is in the south.

What I mean is this: you must make up your mind to find the best part of your happiness in kindly helpful relations with others. It should be our ambition to leave our own small corner of the world a little tidier and a little happier than when we entered it. I am well aware that this is an old story; but old stories are sometimes true, and this is the biggest truth in the whole world. The warm kindly feelings are the happy feelings. The fortunate people are those whose minds are filled with thoughts in which they forget themselves and remember others. It is not true that nature is a mere scene of struggle in which every one competes with his neighbour. Those communities thrive best and last longest which are filled with a spirit of mutual help.

The future of the country lies with you. The crown of your success is the promise of future work, often unrecognised work, done under discouragement, but done steadily and cheerfully. It is on you that the country depends for the maintenance and the growth of those ideals without which a race withers. Do not be discouraged by difficulties which seem unsurmountable. The conditions of life which mould us all are modified by our will, by our energy, and by the purity of our intentions.

If we may judge of intensity of feeling by length of memory, the enjoyment of receiving a prize bites very deep. Across the space of more than forty years, before many of your parents were born, or when they were being carried about in long clothes, I can remember, as if it were yesterday, the occasion when I received my first prize at school. I can see the mediæval school-room, the headmaster, and my companions. Perhaps some of you, when a generation has passed by, will remember the scene to-night--this Stanley Gymnasium recalling the memory of Miss Maude Stanley, who devoted to our welfare so much of her energy and her thought--the adjoining Edric Hall associated with the name of Mr. Edric Bayley, the Father of the Institute; Mr. Millis and Miss Smith, the first Principal and the first Lady Superintendent, the architects of our prosperity; Mr. Leonard Spicer, our Chairman and member of a family and of a firm known throughout the world, and respected in proportion as they are known. And the cause why to-night we are a small gathering is one more reason why this assembly can never slip from your memory. We meet at a moment when England stands in as deadly a peril as in any previous moment of her history--such peril as when the Spanish ships of the Armada rode in the English Channel, or when Napoleon watched our coast across the Strait of Dover. The present danger can be overcome only by the same courage as that which saved our freedom in those former times.

Therefore, to-night, in recalling the activities of the various sections of our society which form this great Polytechnic Institute, our thoughts go further afield. They travel by land and by sea, till they bring before our minds the gallant band whom this Institute has sent to the Front--more than 800 of our members are with the Colours. What our fighting men have done for us, for the world in general, and for the future of England, is so overwhelming that words cannot praise them enough. I will just say one thing to you: When you read of great deeds done in past times, of perils encountered, of adventures, of undaunted courage, of patriotism, of self-sacrifice, of suffering endured for noble cause, you each can say--I, too, have known such heroes; they are among my countrymen, they are among my fellow-workers, they are among my fellow-students and companions, they are among the dear inmates of my home. And for those who have fallen, it is for us to erect a monument sufficient to transmit to future ages the memory of their sacrifice. For this purpose there is only one memorial which can suffice, namely, the cause for which they died. The greatness of England, the future of England, has been left by them to our keeping. Guard it well.

The greatness of a country is nothing else than the greatness of the lives of the men and of the women who compose it. Do not look round and think who ought to be great Englishmen--be great yourselves--you are the people to achieve it, you who are sitting here to-night. There can be no substitute service for this purpose. It is the collective energy of the whole people that will be needed to fashion a new England worthy of the sufferings which for its sake have been endured.

A few days ago I asked a man who has worked in Egypt for many years under Lord Kitchener, what he would pick out as the best sign of Lord Kitchener's greatness. He answered, whatever Kitchener set himself to do, thereby became important. Now that is the secret of it all--take hold of your opportunities and make them important.

Here we are in this Borough Polytechnic. What an opportunity it represents. This Institute is a centre for social meeting, a centre for recreation, a centre for education, a centre for discussion. We will not sacrifice any one of our sides. They must all be part of the greatness which we claim. Make them all first-rate.

Consider first the social and recreative sides. For heaven's sake don't think that you must be dull in order to be great. There is no finer test of a nation than the way in which it fashions its amusements. Three centuries ago after the Armada we made a good start in Southwark. Shakespeare had his theatre here and wrote his plays to be acted in this borough. He has walked these streets, and if you had met him in Westminster he would, quite likely, have told you that he was going down to the "Elephant." And even now the performances given at the "Old Vic" are among the best in London for the purpose of seeing his plays properly acted. What Southwark has done for the drama, she can do for the other arts, by using this Institute as the instrument for her energies. Why should we not be a centre for artistic enterprise--I mean for our own art and our own enterprise, thought of by ourselves and enjoyed by ourselves and carried through by ourselves? We shall not always enjoy each others' creations, but the great point is to make our own efforts. Of course all efforts require preparation and stimulus and knowledge of what others are doing.

At the present time--interrupted for the moment by the war--a great revolution in the art of painting is in progress throughout the world. Its centres are Paris and Italy and London and Munich, and its origin in the far east, in China and Japan. There are two sides as in every revolution, the Conservatives and the Revolutionists. Our own frescoes in a neighbouring room represent an early stage of the movement in London. Why should we not know all about it--obtain loans of pictures which illustrate its phases and its cross currents, and compare these with examples of the old style?

But pictures are only one phase of art, and not the sort of art which we ourselves can produce most easily. There are music, dancing, recitation, literature, carving and modelling, and the various decorative arts, such as embroidery, bookbinding, dress-making and upholstery. This list, incomplete as it is, tells us two great truths--you cannot separate art and recreation, and you cannot separate art and business. The list includes items which we consider as amusements, and items which we think of as business. We began with dancing and ended with upholstery. Make them all beautiful.

Beautiful things have dignity. Enjoy the rhythm of your dancing and admire the beauty of your embroidery or your bookbinding. In whatever you do, have an ideal of excellence. Any separation between art and work is not only an error, but it is very bad business. Our brave allies, the French, have made Paris the art centre of the world. They have built up and maintain their large and lucrative trade in the decorative products of France, mainly by reason of three qualities which they possess. In the first place, they enjoy art themselves, and reverence it. In the second place, they have a tremendous power of hard work. And in the third place, every Frenchman, and still more every Frenchwoman, have within them an immense fund of common sense. The threefold secret is, Love of Art, Industry, and Common Sense.

To make available our industry and common sense in the trades where they are wanted, rigorous training in schools of design and technique are necessary. We have such departments here. But all such training of you will be a failure unless you yourselves enjoy art and beauty as a natural recreation. A technical school of training is like a deep, narrow well, sunk with careful labour to tap the underground river of water which flows below the surface of our natures. But your well will be dry unless the bright warm sun has first drawn up the vapour from the wide ocean, and the free untrammelled breezes have carried the clouds hither and thither, until at length they break, as it were by chance over the distant hills and soak the land with their downpour.

What I have said about art is a parable which applies to other occupations and other studies. It is more than a parable; it is the literal truth. The love of art is the love of excellence, it is the enjoyment of the triumph of design over the shapeless products of chance forces. An engineer, who is worth his salt, loves the beauty of his machines, shown in their adjustment of parts and in their swift, smooth motions. He loves also the sense of foresight and of insight which knowledge can give him. People say that machinery and commerce are driving beauty out of the modern world. I do not believe it. A new beauty is being added, a more intellectual beauty, appealing to the understanding as much as to the eye.

The wonder of London ever takes the mind with fresh astonishment. The city possesses parks, and palaces, and cathedrals. But no other parts of it surpass in wonder its houses of business and its workshops and its factories.

In the next few years the future of the world will be decided for centuries to come. The battles of this war are only the first part of the contest between races, and between the ways of life for which those races stand. We believe that England, with its various peoples and communities scattered in islands and continents beyond the seas, stands for ways of life infinitely precious, the way of humanity, the way of liberty, the way of self-government, the way of good order based on toleration and kindly feeling, the way of peaceful industry. The final decision in this struggle will be found in the workshops of the world. It lies in your hands. Statesmen and emperors will only register the results which you have achieved. Your weapons will be skill, and energy, and knowledge. You will require a sane understanding of your own rights, and a sane understanding of the rights and the difficulties of other classes. The greatness of England will be your greatness, and its success your success.

The arsenal for war is at Woolwich. This Polytechnic Institute is an arsenal for peace, where you can find the weapons for the conquest of your lives.