Seeds

It was children's week. All over the northern hemisphere they were going back to school (see EDUCATION). Around the whole world their lives were being shaped in treaties, liberations, new laws, new beginnings.

The shadowy outlines of order would not be clear or put to the test until the children grew up. But it was a hopeful week. In London the Council of Foreign Ministers was patching up Europe (see Conferences). The liberation of Asia had signally failed to produce explosions and cataclysms gloomily prophesied a month ago (see The Liberation).

Beneath the nations and their complex dealings were the peoples themselves--curiously alike, as curiously different. Even their children were as far apart as the proudly "different" boys of London's Westminster School and the regimented moppets of Japan.

Last week both were changing. Westminster faced an impending rule requiring public (i.e., private) schools to accept scholarship children for at least 30% of their enrollments. Even if they returned to their top hats, Westminster boys would have to doff them to Socialist Ministers of the Crown. Meanwhile, they went about London in the shockingly plain grey flannels they had worn in Herefordshire, to which they were evacuated before the blitz. Westminster would never be quite the same.

As for the Japanese, they had already warned teachers against continuing nationalist and militarist indoctrination. No more than Westminster could they continue to ignore a world that changed and moved, and yearned to achieve unity while cherishing variety.

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