Three Guineas Read Online Free PDF

reason that they can be bargained with. We have the right to say to her, ‘You shall only have our guinea with which to help you rebuild your college if you will help this gentleman whose letter also lies before us to prevent war.’ We can say to her, ‘You must educate the young to hate war. You must teach them to feel the inhumanity, the beastliness, the insupportability of war.’ But what kind of education shall we bargain for? What sort of education will teach the young to hate war?
    That is a question that is difficult enough in itself; and may well seem unanswerable by those who are of Mary Kingsley’s persuasion — those who have had no direct experience of university education themselves. Yet the part that education plays in human life is so important, and the part that it might play in answering your question is so considerable that to shirk any attempt to see how we can influence the young through education against war would be craven. Let us therefore turn from our station on the bridge across the Thames to another bridge over another river, this time in one of the great universities; for both have rivers, and both have bridges, too, for us to stand upon. Once more, how strange it looks, this world of domes and spires, of lecture rooms and laboratories, from our vantage point! How different it looks to us from what it must look to you! To those who behold it from Mary Kingsley’s angle —‘being allowed to learn German was ALL the paid education I ever had’— it may well appear a world so remote, so formidable, so intricate in its ceremonies and traditions that any criticism or comment may well seem futile. Here, too, we marvel at the brilliance of your clothes; here, too, we watch maces erect themselves and processions form, and note with eyes too dazzled to record the differences, let alone to explain them, the subtle distinctions of hats and hoods, of purples and crimsons, of velvet and cloth, of cap and gown. It is a solemn spectacle. The words of Arthur’s song in Pendennis rise to our lips:
    Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate,
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant . . .
    and again,
    I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.
    But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute,
Like outcast spirits, who wait
And see through Heaven’s gate
Angels within it.
    But, since both you, Sir, and the honorary treasurer of the college rebuilding fund are waiting for answers to your letters we must cease to hang over old bridges humming old songs; we must attempt to deal with the question of education, however imperfectly.
    What, then, is this ‘university education’ of which Mary Kingsley’s sisterhood have heard so much and to which they have contributed so painfully? What is this mysterious process that takes about three years to accomplish, costs a round sum in hard cash, and turns the crude and raw human being into the finished product — an educated man or woman? There can be no doubt in the first place of its supreme value. The witness of biography — that witness which any one who can read English can consult on the shelves of any public library — is unanimous upon this point; the value of education is among the greatest of all human values. Biography proves this in two ways. First, there is the fact that the great majority of the men who have ruled England for the past 500 years, who are now ruling England in Parliament and the Civil Service, have received a university education. Second, there is the fact which is even more impressive if you consider what toil, what privation it implies — and of this, too, there is ample proof in biography — the fact of the immense sum of money that has been spent upon education in the past 500 years. The income of Oxford University is £435,656 (1933- 4), the income of Cambridge University is £212,000 (1930). In addition to the university income each