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Show A BOY PEER AND HIS MOTHER When we are told that flfty-flve heirs to peerages peer-ages have been slain on the field of battle we realize what havoc the greaf war has wrought in the British aristocracy. No war England ever fought, with the possible exception of the internecine inter-necine strife that was waged so bioodily between the forces of York and Lancaster, has so affected the future of the House of Lords. The Wars of the Roses came near blotting out the aristocracy of England. When they ended with the death of Richard III on Bosworth field, many ancient families fam-ilies had entirely disappeared. But of course the England of that remote period was a sort of Mexico, and cannot be compared with the British empire of today. To disregard all other differences, differ-ences, there is this striking one: in those old days England lost her lords; today she is losing boys who would have been lords had they lived, tenant Wyndham Tennant, the eldest son of Lord ant Wyndham Tennant, the eldest son of Lord Glenconner. This lad who was killed in September, Septem-ber, joined the army on reaching the age of eighteen. He was nineteen when he died. Shortly Short-ly before his death, on the eve of going into action, ac-tion, he wrote a letter to his mother which sounds as though it had been the result of a premonition. "This is written in case anything happens to me," he wrote, "for I should like j ou to have just a little message from my own nand. Your love for me and my love for you have made my whole life one of the happiest there has ever been. This is a great day for me. 'High heart, high speech, high deeds, mid honoring eyes.' God bless you and give you peace." It is a beautiful message, worthy of the knightly tradition of old England. The boy peers who pass in mournful pageantry through the bloody scenes of Shakespeare's chronicle chron-icle plays talked just like that. England has lost much, but she has not lost the accent and the gesture of nobility. There are two classes of women who must regard re-gard with dismay the depletion of the ranks of pthe English aristocracy. I mean American mothers moth-ers who want titles for their daughters, and the London musical hall favorites who want titles for .themselves. The killing off of oldest sons in the , peerage means that younger sons will inherit Younger sons are more apt to bo under the influence in-fluence of their parents than the eldest sons were, and noble British parents usually exert their influence in favor of alliances within the charmed circle. They make an occasional exception ex-ception in the case of an American girl whose papa is enormously wealthy; but they frown upon those managing American mamas who seek to better their social position by annexing titles via the altar. And of course they frown upon the vivacious music hall girls who have been in the habit of capturing immature and susceptible lord-lings. lord-lings. Mark my word, the English nobility for some years to come will not be invaded by American Amer-ican girls or London dancing comediennes. Town Talk. |