40 CHAPS PREPARE FOR NEW LIFE

First school-leavers' course
" THESE chaps have been trying to tackle all the problems they will have to face when they go from here. We've had a go at everything."
The speaker was Fr. P. Blake, S.J., one-time R.A.F. chaplain who has retained his aeronautical slang : the "chaps" were forty teenage-girls, most of them seventeen or eighteen years of age, just about to leave school ; the problem they were about to tackle just then was that of Communism.
All last week in the Convent of Our Lady of Sion, Bayswater, London, those forty girls were attending retreats and lectures, preparing themselves in advance for the large-sized problems which confront anyone from a Catholic home and background, leaving a good Catholic school and going out into the world.
They had come from eight or nine different convents, in places as far apart as Shropshire, London,
Chelmsford and Worthing and were taking part in an abundantly
successful experiment which is likely to be repeated on a far larger scale next year.
Leadership
The idea arose from a meeting of 150 nuns addressed by Fr. Blake nearly twelve months ago. They had discussed together die '' leakage" of Catholic youth which so often occurs in the first, vital years which follow school-leavihg,
Fr. Blake told them of the wartime R.A.F. leadership courses and the good work still being done along similar lines at Loyola Hall in
Lancashire. It was decided that something similar should be tried with a group of girls just about to leave school.
Last week's school leavers' leadership course was the first to be held. It began with a two-day retreat. Then came a talk from Miss S. Winterbottom on qualities of leadership. another by Fr. John 14eenan on the need for leaders, and a third from Mr. Frank Sheed on proofs of the existence of God. C' How to reason it out with the woman next door.") Fr. Blake gave them a talk on the theology of the Mass, backed up with a demonstration " dry " Mass which. the girls said later, gave them a completely new insight into its meaning.
And so it went on all the weekthe divinity of Christ, courtship, marriage and home (" We know now how to hook and to hold a good man," said one brisk young 'teenager), education of children, Communism, and the responsibilities and opportunities of the Catholic woman in the world.
Hardened off
More than a dozen lectures and discussions. plus retreats might be heavy going for adults but not for these keen eager youngsters whose mood at the end of it all was to get right out and-in Fr. Blake's Air Force language-" get weaving."
Around a lunch table representatives of each of the convents agreed that the week had " pulled together all the loose ends" of the most important things they had learned in recent years. " We know we've been in a hot house, now we're hardened off for life outside," said one.
And another added : " We are having a start that no other convent school girls have ever had before. It has been so good that everyone. everywhere roust have the same."