Education: Playing Fields of Eton

Britain's hallowed public (i.e., private) schools last week ran into a fight that sounded for a while like the Battle of the Atlantic, but they finally limped into port, safe for the present. Up before Parliament was a proposal euphoniously titled the Public and Other Schools Bill, to let hard-pressed schools draw on the principal of their trust endowments to meet their operating deficits during the war emergency.

Some of the most aristocratic schools in Britain backed the bill: Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse. Their existence depended on its passage. Financial troubles had already forced one public school, Weyrnouth, to...