Retires From the Chair
| Date | 01 May 1941 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455054100301403 |
| Author | Gertrude Tuckwell |
| Published date | 01 May 1941 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
I92
MISS GERTRUDE TUCKWELL, C.H., J.P.
RETIRES FROM THE CHAIR
ADDRESS TO THE 28th NATIONAL CONFERENCE
T HERE’ S _ a lovely little church at Witley, the
T
the school age of children, which touches our work
village in which I am temporarily living. It
so nearly, raised first to 15 and gradually to 18 and
is one of the most beautiful in the neighbour-
a truer system of education develop.
hood.
It is Saxon and Norman, and one kneels
So we have moved forward, getting nearer and
each Sunday in a Saxon nave, a quaint red fresco
nearer to the ideal of equality of opportunity for
looking down on one, !the story of the life of the
every child who starts, able to think more or less
Holy Virgin, so old that it is supposed to have been
happily that things have reached a certain point of
there as one of the earliest of the frescoes of any of
progress when there came drawn across what we
the old churches round. And one kneels with a sense
hoped was the upward path the red, red herring
that thousands of prayers have gone up in all the
of war. The blow fell.
The emergency found us
past centuries since long before William the
unprepared as usual-though we always stand up
Conqueror.
to it and win through-and as usual we added a few
Some weeks ago the scholarly incumbent was
muddles of our own.
preaching and his
&dquo;
sermon was on
Vengeance.&dquo; He
I shall not forget how first of all the children
took the law of Moses-an eye for an eye and a tooth
were evacuated, correctly evacuated, of course, but
for a tooth-that first idea of justice, and showed
you know how when the children were evacuated,
how before that the loss of one tooth might mean all
so far as you poor shepherds were concerned, they
the teeth of the other person being sacrificed just as
were in many cases lost. The children on probation
harm to one person might mean the entire family
were not handed over by you to the probation
of his opponent being swept out. Then he went on
officers in the country who should have taken them
gradually to show how the unstrained quality of
on; it was often left for the infant gangsters to be
mercy had developed our sense of justice and how
discovered in the place to which they went. What
we had worked, led greatly I think by those cryptic
were the authorities thinking of ?
Did they think
and sometimes contradictory sayings of Our Lord,
that the country air would reform them or did they
the greatest of Teachers and the greatest of Agita-
think they had sent them to Arcadia and they would
tors, who had told us that the return of the prodigal
become picture post-card children just because they
might be a greater cause for rejoicing than the liv-
had gone there? It was very far from being the
ing of a blameless life. He showed how our values
case.
A dear old jobbing gardener lives not far
had shifted, how our feelings had changed about
from us.
He asked my brother tao come over and
the relative positions of the person who has suffered
see his house.
It was all spick and span and one
and the offender...
To continue reading
Request your trial