Since last Monday arrangements have been made for three camps in the North of England to be occupied by scholars of three different authorities. Now we have to consider what use we can make of the whole programme of the camps, and whether we are to mortgage the whole of them permanently during the war for whole-time boarding school use. I think that a number of these camps could properly be retained for the purpose for which we originally built them, for relays of children not only from the congested areas of the great towns, but from some of the reception areas where their presence is becoming a little tiresome to householders. They may well turn into holiday camps from two points of view, benefiting not merely the children who go to them, but also the householders who will be temporarily relieved of the children. Furthermore, the use of these camps by relays of children passing through them will enable us to take a larger number of children, give them the necessary drill in assembly, and getting them together in unfamiliar surroundings, which will be invaluable if afterwards they have to do that under the stress of intensive aerial warfare.

This is one of the reasons why we do not wish to fill up all the camps at once. Even the numbers which we are already considering constitute a very great educational experiment. We are having to fill 11,000 places for children of 11 years of age and upwards. That is nearly twice the number of pupils there are in the 10 biggest public schools of England, which have not got more than 6,500 pupils between them. If any of us had before the war proposed to found 10 great public schools in one year, we should have been laughed out of court for an arrogant set of busybodies who had no conception of what the task of founding a boarding school is like. Yet that is what we are to try to do this year.

Do not let us under-estimate the size of the experiment and hastily demand that all these things should be in full working order by 1st April.

These are the main points which I wished to bring before the House. I say again that it is a very important and it may be a very lasting and far-reaching experiment which we are conducting. It it true that we owe it to the lull which we now enjoy, and it is possible that that lull will not continue, but so long as it does let us make sure that we are doing our best to utilise this strange gift which fortune has put into our hands, and say to ourselves, "We are not setting about the education of flocks of young children but about the founding of one, two, five, 15 or 20 boarding schools in which thousands of young people will live and where the conditions will bear very much more instantly and immediately upon them than do the conditions in any day school or billet." Let us remember the responsibility which is placed upon us, and not hesitate to keep a camp empty a week, two weeks, or a month if need be, if we can thereby make sure that the young people we are sending to it look upon their stay there as one of the best times in their lives, and not as a period of imprisonment from which they would be only too glad to be released.