About a year ago a group of Rugby School masters planned a short residential course for factory workers; and Shakespeare, History, Poetry, Religion, Music, and Geography seemed the obvious subjects to choose. In addition, a few lectures on Classics were proposed and provoked the inevitable reaction: ‘surely that's dead; why can't you bury it?’, ‘the world has passed through that phase’, and so on. But in spite of these protests six lectures, each lasting an hour, were allotted to the Civilization of Ancient Greece.

As general organizer I regarded these lectures as the most interesting feature of the course: it is perhaps relevant to add that I had read very little Greek since taking Matriculation thirty years before, and so I felt sufficiently detached to judge impartially. It was easy to guess that in prospect these lectures would be unpopular; and indeed, before the first, I heard students saying that no one expected to enjoy the Greek. So we decided to watch carefully; and if, after three lectures, there were little interest shown, then we were prepared to cancel the remainder. But it was soon abundantly clear that there was no risk of failure, and by the third lecture Greek was evidently one of the most successful features of a course that was enjoyed by all. Here are a few sentences from various letters sent by the students after the course: ‘I thought that the subjects were too “classic”, especially the last one (Ancient Greek civilization)…. Now I know that these subjects are vital for anyone who is to get the most out of life’; ‘Doors were opened to me into new worlds of delight’, meaning poetry and classics; ‘What a change from technical studies which unfortunately resume next week: I now feel that I want to give up engineering… gave me the incentive to go farther afield and delve deeper into the classics’; ‘Two weeks of exquisite delight’… with later special reference to the Greek class; ‘Greek culture and literature for instance seemed such dry subjects before, but now I realize how much we can learn from them and how very similar their problems were to those confronting us to-day.’