Education: School for Statesmen

Are Britons turning against the Atlantic Charter? That younger Britons may be was indicated by a recent debate at the Oxford Union—most famous sounding board of youthful English opinion. The Union’s 1933 vote against bearing arms “for King and country” echoed round the world, is said to have persuaded Mussolini that Britain would not fight.

The recent debate, attended by 20 U.S. soldiers, was on a motion that “in the opinion of this House, it is not in the interests of permanent peace in Europe that the treatment of Germany by the Allies should be based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter.” The decision, by a large majority: “Aye.”

The presence of the Americans on the floor during the debate broke a lifelong, 121-year-old Union tradition. Since the days (1830) when William Ewart Gladstone was its secretary,*the Union has firmly confined its visitors of every rank to the gallery.

The Oxford Union is Britain’s nursery of politicians, and the presidency of the Union is Oxford’s top undergraduate honor. The Union is housed with clublike amenities in St. Michael’s Street, in Gothic buildings as sizable as one side of a college quadrangle. The great hall’s gallery, officers’ dais, and rows of facing benches recall the House of Commons scene as sharply as its casually businesslike, irrelevantly witty proceedings recall the Commons’ tempo and temper.

* Some other Union officers: Lords Asquith, Curzon, Birkenhead, Tweedsmuir.