When hostilities broke out last August, by no means the least concerned were some thirty or forty boys from Shanghai Municipal foreign schools who had entered for the Senior Cambridge Examination and who were about to begin the final stage of their preparations. On that examination, their whole career might well depend; but re-opening of school on September 6, for the most critical term of all, was impossible. However, informal classes were started, for those pupils who happened to be in Shanghai at the time, in the Committee Room of the Y.M.C.A. There, studies were pursued, almost without equipment, and were all too frequent y the crashing of bombs on the North Station, These classes were transferred, early in November, to the American School building, which was then housing four complete schools at once. For a fortnight, the boys had to contend not only with over-crowding, but also with the nerve-wracking distract tion of power-dives, bombs and heavy artillery, first over Hungjao, then Nantao. They had three short weeks of peace before their ordeal. By this time, twenty seven candidates had returned to Shanghai: some had only been back since the middle of October. Alt the twenty seven sat the examination. And the result?
Twenty six passed—eighteen with London Matriculation exemption. This would have been an excellent result even in normal times, seeing that in England and Wales three out of ten entrants fail this test: with a furious war raging all round the city, it should be credited to the Shanghai boy as an heroic achievement. Incidentally, a number of these successful candidates have already been placed in promising positions with leading Shanghai firms; others have commenced courses in professional or technical training, either here or abroad. Yet who, last September, would have blamed these s, had they thrown in their hands and said, "It can't be done?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.