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Auburn felt strongly about the school. To be honest the school is not very big--in fact it's about as big as the train--and it lolls by the side of the road under enormous elms and is warm and sunny and just exactly as hygienic as the law demands, but no fancy-work. It was built by public subscription in Auburn, and generations of Auburn people have learnt to read and write and add there. Moreover, what is highly important, they have also had a little religious instruction there, since it is a Church School and not one of the new-fangled places who, in order to avoid interdenominational strife, have thrown away the baby with the bath water and done away with the Catechism and the Ten Commandments altogether.

In common with most of my generation I would blush to call myself deeply religious, but I do find it odd that as a nation we will fight and die for principles which we cannot find time to teach in our free schools. However, that is as may be, and, as I was saying, about the time when Hitler was thinking of taking over Austria there was a minority movement in Auburn which aimed to shut the school for ever. The senior children--that is, those over eleven--were already bundled off to the town every morning and brought home at night in a special bus, and the argument was that since there were only twenty-odd babies left it seemed unnecessary to keep two schoolma'ams to look after them and that they might as well go into the town with their elders. The new arrangement was made somewhat perfunctorily, and the school was marked for closing.