The Graduation of the Annuity Experience 1900–1920

Extract

Probably all of you have played cricket and football, and if I were to say that you could learn those games by reading about them in books you would laugh me to scorn. The furthest you would go would be to admit that having played a game to some extent you might get useful hints from books or conversation. Some of you might even feel that in a few cases the hints do as much harm as good by tending to reduce originality which, after all, counts for a good deal in any game, and by introducing an element of surprise may in games, as in war, win when a stereotyped method is doomed to failure. It is a steep descent from these high altitudes to the subject we are discussing tonight, but I suggest that what is true of games is also true, to a large extent, of graduation. You will never learn how to graduate by reading about it. Take an experience, that is, the exposed to risk and the deaths (or the week's sickness or whatever the subject implies) or the rates of mortality, and see what they look like and appreciate the hideous unevenness and spend time in trying out of your own head to ‘make the rough places smooth,’ and after that begin your reading.