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 Another Random Document on
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them. But parents are, as a matter of fact, as likely to make
mistakes as any one else.
We find in anything what we bring to it. And parents expecting their
sons to be brave, truthful, obedient, clever, find them so. An outside
opinion is of extreme value, and a house master or a head master is
the ideal person to give it. When a house master and a father meet
on equal grounds and discuss the son's welfare honestly, the
auspices could hardly be more fortunate. They so rarely meet,
because parents and schoolmasters do not trust each other, because
they have adopted the false position of buyer and seller; the
combination remains, however, none the less ideal.
I do not myself see what advantages the day school possesses over
the boarding school, save those that are concerned with a particular
facet of morality, and beyond the weakening of a partisanship that is
inclined to put a boy in blinkers. There are some very fine day
schools in the country, but the day school, especially of recent years,
has tended to become an alternative for parents with large families
who cannot afford to send their sons to expensive boarding schools.
And, after all, the suggestion that day schools should be generally
substituted for boarding schools is obviously impracticable.
Many of the finest Public Schools are situated in remote parts of the
country, others in small towns that were once honoured with a
monastery. How are these venerable institutions to be converted into
day schools. A few retired colonels might possibly form a colony in
Shoreham and send their sons to Lancing. A convenient train would
take them to Brighton, where they might walk on the promenade
and recall the reckless adventures of their youth. But civilisation
draws us to big towns for our livelihood. However much the
stockbroker might wish to send his son as a day boarder to
Shrewsbury, he would find it quite impossible to do so. The town of
Shrewsbury would provide no scope for his activities. He could not
possibly settle there. A scheme that would involve the complete
alteration of the public school system can only be called a revolution.
A reformer has to work on his existing material. He cannot say—
wash it out and start again. He cannot put back the clock.
Mr. Oscar Browning has said that when he went to Eton in 1851 only
five schools could lay claim to the dignity of being called a Public
School. There must be at least fifty first-class Public Schools to-day;
they are nearly all boarding schools, and every few years a
comparatively unknown school proves itself a worthy competitor to
older foundations. It is not the slightest use to say, even if we
believed it, that day schools are better than boarding schools and
leave the matter there. A politician might with equal ability draw up
an elaborate defence of the feudal system. It may very well be that
we should be all more happy if we could reconstruct society on a
feudal basis: we might just as well express a belief that our
efficiency would be increased were a kindly providence to dower us
with wings. It may be, though I doubt it, that the advocates of the
day school are in the right, that under such a system of education
immorality and the blood system would pass. But it is for us to
discover some method by which the existing system may be so
modified as to produce of itself the required change.
Now it is very tempting for a controversialist, when he has
completed the arraignment of his enemies, to slip hastily over the
policy he himself proposes to adopt. I wonder how many letters
have been addressed to the press during the last seven years in
which the writer, having stated in strong terms the calamities to
which a certain line of thought or policy has reduced the country,
has demanded in a final paragraph that 'something should be done
before it is too late.' He suggests perhaps a 'change of spirit.'
It is a good weapon that 'change of spirit.' We can all of us, when
occasion demands, indulge in spirited invective; we can all detect
numberless flaws and inequalities in the existing social system. Why,
for instance, does our income run to three instead of to four figures.
Why are we paying away a third of that small sum in income-tax?
The flow of indignation is swift, and by the time we have written our
950 words, it is not hard to devote the remaining '50' to a general
appeal for 'some one to do something before it is too late.' Every
contributor to the press has saved his argument like that some time
or another. And, in the case of Public Schools, the trouble is that we
can do little save repeat the parrot cry of 'a change of spirit.' For it is
'a change of spirit' more than anything else that is needed.
We are kept wondering, however, how that change is to be effected.
S. P. B. Mais used to say that 'Literature would save us.' But
literature is only a part of life, one channel of self-expression, and in
the case of Mr. Mais one is troubled by the knowledge that he,
himself, is in many ways the ideal schoolmaster. He has a genius for
teaching. He happens to have taught literature and mathematics,
and because he taught them so successfully he has imagined that
they are the panacea. He is too modest to realise any subject that
he taught would have assumed the qualities of a panacea, that it
was he and not his subject that was important. He could rouse his
form, if he wished, to a high pitch of enthusiasm by a lecture on the
properties of Cherry Boot Polish. But 'he is alone, the Arabian Bird.'
Martin Browne suggests religion. And, no doubt, for the truly
religious boy many of the difficulties of school life would be
smoothed out. Unfortunately, however, religion plays, and will play, a
small part in a boy's life at school. A boy has been told to believe
certain things by his parents, and he has accepted these beliefs
unquestioningly and without enthusiasm. They have not been tested
by experience. They are not real to him. Religion, in its truest form,
rises out of the conflict of a man's life. Faith is subconscious thought.
I do not think you can expect the average small boy to be deeply
influenced by religion. His religion, if he has one, is an unswerving
devotion to his house and school. He would be ready to sacrifice
himself for what he considered to be the school's service.
Forty years ago a captain of my old house died after a kick on the
head received in the Three Cock, the big house match of the year.
The brass on the chapel wall which is dedicated to his memory,—
 'Te duce, care Puer, pueri cum lusimus olim
Optimus in cursu quem sequeremur eras
Caelestem exacto tetigisti limite metam;
Fratribus ab, fratrem detur ad astra sequi.'

appealed far more to our imagination than the story of early

martyrs. Action rather than contemplation is the essence of school
life.
I am aware that many will disagree with this assertion. Both Martin
Browne and Jack Hood made in their books a great point of religious
teaching and early confirmation, but I cannot help feeling that in this
respect they are exceptional; certainly if they had not been
exceptional they would not have written books; religion has meant a
lot to them, and they feel that it should do the same for others. It is
a mistake we all make in our different spheres. The poet thinks he
will reform the world by placing the poems of Shelley in the hands of
trade union officials; and the small craftsman sees life redeemed by
hand weaving and hand pottery. We all think that the prop that has
supported us will support others. It is part of our egotism. For the
many, to whom faith is not intuitive, religion needs a solid
foundation of experience.
A change of spirit requires a change of setting, and I am inclined to
think that this would be provided were boys to leave school at
seventeen instead of nineteen.
It would not, perhaps, from the point of view of the moral question,
cause a very great diminution in the actual immorality between boys
of the same age and the same social position. But it certainly would
improve matters. As things are at present, the boy of fifteen and a
half occupies a pleasantly irresponsible position. He has left behind
him the anxieties of the day room, and the responsibilities of
seniority are still far distant. His peccadilloes are not taken seriously.
He can rag in form and smash windows in the studies without
prejudice to his future. He has imbibed the example of Prince Hal.
For a while he may rollick with Falstaff at the Boar's Head. Time
enough to settle down when the privileges of power draw nearer
him. For a good year and a half he may make merry.
The lowering of the age limit would telescope events; it would
reduce the period of revelry to a couple of months. No sooner would
a boy have ceased to be a fag than he would be under the eye of
authority as a candidate for responsibility. A display of
rhodomontade would prejudice his future. He would play for safety;
and such considerations would certainly place a check on his moral
lapses. He would think twice. If he was discovered he would have no
time to recover his position by subsequent good behaviour. He would
be passed over in the struggle for promotion.
To a certain extent the lowering of the age limit would prevent that
type of immorality that takes place between boys of the same age
and same position, but only to a certain extent. There always will be
such misconduct in schools; it will never be possible to stamp it out
entirely, but it is possible to overrate its seriousness. Certainly the
romantic friendship is more important, and it is because of the
romantic friendship that I advocate so strongly the lowering of the
age limit.
I have said that the romantic friendship is the natural growth of an
unnatural system; but even a natural growth develops soon or late,
according to the soil in which it is planted and the climate by which
it is nourished. The presence of boys of 18 to 19, by their example,
force this growth like a hot-house atmosphere. In a boy of eighteen
the sexual impulse has become defined. He understands the
implications of its symptoms. He is old enough to be married. But
the boy of sixteen is not so sure of himself. In him the impulse is
wavering and undetermined. He does not understand the nature of
the emotions that are moving him. And he only comes to understand
it through the example of elder boys. If a boy were told nothing of
the existence of romantic friendships, of their technique, of the
complicated moral code that allows this and denies that, if his
curiosity were not continually quickened by stray references in
sermons and addresses, I believe that he would not, at the age of
seventeen, have realised that the friendship he felt for a smaller boy
was essentially different from that which he was feeling for his
contemporaries. It would be a deeper, an intenser friendship, but he
would not see that it possessed a different nature. Why should he?
The schoolboy has read The Hill. He expects every Verney to find a
Desmond. So much has been written about the lasting friendships of
school life. Every boy must have his 'special friend.' Why should he
be any different from his fellows? There would be moments when he
might wish to caress his friend, but he would immediately smother
such a wish, feeling it to be foolish, girlish, unworthy of him. He
would be too young, he would not have the intellectual
independence to be able to say to himself: 'This is what I want. And
what I want is natural to me. Damn anything else!' Shadowy
imaginings would haunt his reveries, but they would never become
defined in action.
For a boy of eighteen it is different. His impulses are strong; he
knows now exactly what he wants. And he is prepared to get what
he wants. He knows that the emotions he feels for a small boy are of
a different nature altogether from the friendship that he feels for his
contemporaries, and the fact that there are boys in the school old
enough to have defined these emotions, provides a hot-house
atmosphere for the development of younger boys.
To most people life comes at second hand. They learn from books,
cinemas, and plays what are the appropriate emotions and the
correct procedure for any given situation. The public school boy is no
less conventional than his elders. He allows his inclinations to be
directed into the accepted course. He is surprised, in the first place,
by a delightful and unexpected emotion; but the surprise soon
passes. He has formed just such another attachment as has been
formed by practically every senior boy in his house. He exchanges
confidences, he seeks the advice of some older boy, and follows the
convention. If there were no senior boys, no example, and no
convention, the first surprise of charmed bewilderment would
endure. In the course of time it might very well be that out of that
first romantic story would grow a deep, mutual, and lasting
friendship. But such a development is hardly possible in an unnatural
society where children and fully grown men are herded
indiscriminately together.
The example of elder boys, moreover, not only defines the nature of
half-perceived emotions; it also forces emotions that would
otherwise remain a long while in bud. There are many who consider
it is the blood thing to have a jeune ami; that such a relationship is
the privilege of a house colour. They want to be talked about. They
have themselves spoken when juniors with bated breath of
supposed 'cases.' They would like to be spoken of like that
themselves, to feel themselves moving in an atmosphere of
conjecture and intrigue, to gather an added sense of their own
importance.
Besides this itch, a natural one, to occupy the limelight by copying
the customs of the great, there is the subtle influence of indirect
example. In the same way that a boy who goes often to the theatre
and the cinema and observes there the charming processes of love,
begins to long for tenderness, and caresses, and endearments, so
does the schoolboy who hears on all sides romantic confidences, find
himself drawn into the glittering circle. This lure would at least be
removed by the lowering of the age limit. That it would solve all the
difficulties I would not for a moment maintain.
We cannot imagine a world in which men and women will not desert
or betray each other; in which husbands will remain faithful and the
unmarried chaste. Why should we expect school life, which is the
world in little, to be so startlingly different. Parents refuse to believe
that their own children are mortal: 'These things,' they say, 'may
happen to our neighbour's children. They do not happen to our
own.' And schoolmasters are only too anxious to reassure them.
Parents have such faith in their sons that they will believe in the
most superficial testimonials. They are so anxious to be deceived.
For this reason I believe that a mere statement of facts has value.
There is much clamour to-day for reconstruction, and the
controversialist who has not a cut and dried scheme for regenerating
the world is looked on with disfavour. But on sex questions, which
are after all intensely personal questions, which concern the
individual in the first place and society in the second, only the
superficial will dogmatise.
I cannot do better than quote from Havelock Ellis's General Preface
to The Psychology of Sex:—

'A resolve slowly grew up within me,' he writes, 'one main part
of my life-work should be to make clear the problem of sex.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can
honestly say that in all that I have done that resolve has never
been far from my thoughts.... Now that I have, at length,
reached the time for beginning to publish my results, these
results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth I had hoped to
settle problems for those that came after; now I am quietly
content if I do little more than state them. For even that, I now
think, is much. It is, at least, the half of knowledge. In this
particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts
to suppress that which can never be suppressed, though in the
effort of suppression it may become perverted.'

If this is the conclusion at the end of his work and of his life, of
perhaps the greatest living authority on sex, by what right does the
amateur produce cheerful remedies.
In the case of the Public School it is indeed something to state the
problems. There is so much ignorance to dispel; the ignorance of
mothers, the ignorance of fathers who have themselves not been to
a Public School, the conspiracy of silence of boys, old boys and
masters. Too much and, at the same time, too little, is made of
immorality. Schoolmasters assure us that its appearance is
occasional, but their attitude to it is that of a doctor who suspects
that his patient is suffering from a malignant disease and watches all
the time for signs of it to appear. The schoolmaster is always afraid
lest he may be sitting on a volcano. He encourages the athletic cult
as a preventative, in the belief that the boy who is keen on games
will not wish to endanger his health, and that the boy who has
played football all the afternoon and has boxed between tea and
lock-up will be too tired to embark on any further adventures. It
does not occur to him that the boy will be equally too tired to do his
prep.
Such encouragement of the athletic cult is a confession of failure. It
is as though the master were to say: 'I know I cannot interest you in
your work. I know that unless I look after you, you will land yourself
in all manner of mischief. A man must have a god of sorts, therefore
make unto yourself whatsoever manner of god you choose, and I
will see that it receives a fitting reverence.'
The public school code of honour, the majority of the standards,
indeed, of school life are dependent on the athletic worship, and the
athletic worship is in its turn largely dependent, not so much on the
moral question, as on the official attitude to the moral question. Too
much energy has been devoted to the damming of trickles, while on
another side of the hill the main stream has passed into the valley,
laying waste the plains.
Greater honesty between boys, parents, and masters would
undoubtedly achieve much. But more than a change of spirit is
required. If no boy was allowed to stay on at school after the term in
which he became seventeen years old, I believe that the moral
question would, to a large extent, simplify itself.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE LEAVING AGE WITH REGARD TO
ATHLETICS

But it is not only on account of the moral question that I would

advocate the lowering of the age limit. Such a reform would, I
believe, make its influence felt on every side of school life. It would
not alter, but it would modify certain conditions. The blood system
would still exist, but less acutely. The gap between the junior and
senior would be small. At present a man of nineteen who has been
tried for his county eleven appears to the junior as a gorgeous giant.
He and his friends live in a world apart, and they know it. A good
three years separates him from the anxieties and indignities of the
day room. No one, save his actual contemporaries, remember him as
being anything but a blood. He is, and has been, a prince among
mankind. He idles through his last two years, a very splendid, a very
attractive figure; but, as we have already seen, his is hardly the ideal
apprenticeship for life.
If the leaving age were fixed at seventeen instead of nineteen, so
proud a position would be unattainable. There would still be bloods,
still elegant creatures to saunter across the courts, languidly arm in
arm. But a certain refinement would be missing. The languor would
be less certain of itself, it would seem to fear a sudden assault and a
fierce shout of 'Jones, you young swine, what right have you to
shove on side?' There is a difference between the blood of eighteen
and the blood of sixteen. It is only four terms since the blood of
sixteen was suffering the last exaction of the law. He remembers
vividly being beaten for ragging in the dormitories; it is not so long
since he was a fag. If we were suddenly transplanted on a magic
carpet into the luxury of an Eastern court we should stand for some
time in dazed bewilderment, marvelling at what had happened to us,
wondering who were these comely Ethiopians that prostrated
themselves before us. For quite five minutes we should lack the
courage to give an order. The blood of sixteen feels like this; can he
have achieved so swiftly his ambition? It is only yesterday that he
was trembling in the presence of the great. By the time he has
recovered from his bewilderment and is preparing to exert his
authority his year of office is at an end.
Not only, moreover, is the sixteen year old blood unable to hold so
exalted an opinion of his own importance, but his immediate juniors
refuse to recognise him as the gilded figure of romance. The men on
the Fifth Form table remember when the head of the house helped
them to wreck Bennett's study. They cannot feel him to be so vastly
superior to themselves. It is different for the blood of eighteen. He
has passed slowly through many circles to the dignity of an
Olympian. He has served his period of probation. He was not a colt's
cap one season and the next a colour. He took a year to pass from
house cap to seconds, and another year from seconds to firsts. He
discovered himself gradually. He rose slowly to his greatness. By the
time he has reached his last year the days of conflict are infinitely
remote. He can hardly believe it possible that he was ever caned. He
is, in fact, a great deal too old for a Public School. And as things are
now it is impossible for any, save the exceptional boy, to reach a
position of authority till he is eighteen, or at least seventeen.
A great many boys do undoubtedly leave between the ages of
sixteen and eighteen, but by doing so they lose the most valuable
lessons they should learn at school. A boy who leaves before he has
been a house prefect fails to put the coping stone to his education.
The responsibilities of prefectship are an invaluable experience. And
when the house master begs the parent to let 'Arthur stop on
another year,' the parent naturally gives way. And it is, of course,
always the wrong type of person who stays on that extra year. It is
the clever, the brilliant, the athletic boy, the boy who already stands
out above his contemporaries and in the course of the next year will
be even more prominent, that is encouraged to remain. It would not
matter if the dull boy stayed on another year. His natural talents
would not be sufficient to lift him to the rarefied atmosphere of
Olympus. It is the second eleven colour who is urged to stay on to
get his firsts. The fast bowler who is asked to captain the side next
year, the exhibitioner who hopes that another year's work will win
him a scholarship at Balliol. The great become more great, and, as
their undistinguished contemporaries fall out of the race, the gap
between the prefect and the fag grows more pronounced. The
intermediate steps are few and dimly seen. It is not surprising that
the blood system should gloriously flourish. It would not so flourish
were the leaving age to be fixed at seventeen. We have the proof of
this in the knowledge of what happened during the war, when the
big men left suddenly in August, 1914, when boys of sixteen sat at
the Sixth Form table, and when no one stayed on at school after his
eighteenth birthday.
War conditions were, of course, abnormal. It was inevitable that at
such a time the rewards of school life should lose their value. It was
impossible to feel the old excitement about the result of a house
match when the morning paper had brought with it the story of
Neuve Chapelle. The winning of cups and the gaining of colours
ceased to be an end in themselves. For the boy who was prevented
by lack of years from joining the army in 1914 school life became a
period of probation, of marking time. Life in its fullest sense was
waiting for him on the other side; no prefect ever looked forward to
Oxford more eagerly than those of us who were still at school in
1915 looked forward to the day when we should join the army. Our
imagination was quickened by the stories told us by old boys
returning from depôts and from the front. Was it possible that Smith,
who had played with us only eight months earlier in the Two Cock,
should be in charge of a company in the front line trenches? We
fretted at our tether; our eyes were fixed on the future. We scorned
the prizes that lay to our hand. We began to reconstruct our scale of
values: it was not only the giants of the football field who were
winning honours for themselves and for the school in France. Queer,
insignificant fellows who had never risen above the Upper Fourth,
and had never been in the running for a house cap, came home on
leave with the blue and white riband of the military cross. We began
to realise that it was not only the blood that was entitled to our
respect. The blood system received a rude shock in August, 1914. It
will never, unless we become involved in social revolution, receive
such another. I believe, however, that it would be considerably
modified were the leaving age to be altered.
There would be also less hooliganism and less bullying. The third
yearer would no longer be in a position of reckless freedom. Studies
would still be stripped, scholars would still be ragged, but the
process would be compressed. The swash-buckling element would
find itself sooner in authority. The scholar would reach sooner the
immunity of the Sixth. And the prefect would be no less capable of
keeping order. For, after all, the prefect owes his power as much to
the system that is behind him as to himself.
But perhaps the greatest difference that the change would effect
would be in the boy's attitude to his own life. Six years is a very long
time to be in one place. I remember at the end of my first year
overhearing a conversation between the barber and a boy who was
leaving the next day.
'Well, Mr. Meredith,' the barber was saying, 'I suppose this is the last
time I shall cut your hair. I have cut it a good many times.'
'I have been in this town,' said Meredith, 'for ten years: five years at
the prep, and five years at the school. I'm jolly well sick of it.'
It is certainly a mistake to send a boy to the prep. of the school to
which he will one day go. Ten years is too long. But six is too long,
too—at that age.
It is not easy for any one under thirty to picture himself in six years'
time. We look back and remember ourselves six years ago in the
discomfort and disquiet of khaki. What a lot has happened since
then. Who can tell what the next six years may hold? Very few men
under thirty can look far ahead, and the new boy at a Public School
who can see his life mapped out for six years naturally does not look
beyond them. He hardly realises that there is a world outside. He
will have to travel so far before he reaches it. He comes to consider
his Public School not as a prelude, but as the whole sphere in which
his personality has to move. Certain prizes and certain honours await
him. He does not pause to think whether those prizes and those
honours will be of much or little service to him after he has put the
cloistered world behind him. Not only is he incapable of viewing his
life under the hard light of eternity, he is incapable of viewing it
under the light of the fifty odd years of traffic that wait for him
among phenomena. He accepts unquestioningly the standards and
values of his school. He does not feel that he is preparing for a
contest. That phase of endeavour belonged to his 'prep.' He has
started the race.
There is a big difference between four years and six. It is a wall over
which even the fag can peer on tiptoe. The passage of ambitions
and loyalties and jealousies is much more swift. It is possible to
consider four years as a prelude; and as soon as public school life is
regarded as a prelude the scale of values becomes changed. The
boy begins to wonder whether he is doing his best to fit himself for
after life. He will cease to be contented with the honours that come
to him on the way. Because his school is a fixed institution, because
the scope of his masters is fixed within its walls, there is a tendency
to regard him as an inhabitant and not a sojourner there. That is
what the schoolboy should never be allowed to forget—that he is
passing through one phase of his life into another; it is because he
has forgotten that that he so often pauses bewildered and irresolute
on the threshold of life.
 CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION

Were the moral question to be tackled sensibly, and were the

reduction of the age limit to modify the 'blood' system, and insist
upon the fact that school life is only a prelude, I believe that
athletics would occupy their proper place in the life of the school.
The social force of religion depends, to a large extent, on the
appreciation of the importance of what will follow the 'here and
now.' During the war, when the future was insecure, and no one
could see anything certainly beyond the limits of a fortnight's leave,
the country plunged recklessly in search of pleasure. No one looked
ahead. No one paused to consider what would be the harvest of
their sowing.
The eyes of the preparatory school boy are fixed upon the future. He
knows that the successes and failures of the moment are
unimportant. He knows that a strenuous contest lies in wait for him.
In consequence there is at a Preparatory School little of the fanatical
devotion that colours the fabric of public school life. I remember a
house master once saying that it was impossible for a member of a
house side to do much work while the house matches were in
progress. And, as the house matches covered a period of six weeks,
this was a pretty generous allowance. At the same time the house
master only spoke the truth: it was practically impossible to do much
work during the house matches term; we could think of little else.
Every evening we would discuss at considerable length the
afternoon's punt-about and the morrow's match. We would devise
schemes for the better outwitting of our opponents. We would
discuss the weakness and strength of individual players. And the
majority of masters, certainly of house masters, shared this fervour.
It is true that a certain house master, when presented with the
excuse for an indifferent prose that house matches were too
exciting, remarked: 'I don't know whom they excite, they don't
excite me.' But this assertion was belied by his subsequent
behaviour on the touchline. During house matches there is an
educational moratorium. In peace time the energies and interests of
a nation are directed into a thousand different channels, but in war
time every interest is secondary to that of war. And, while house
matches are in progress, the atmosphere of a house is not unlike
that of a nation that is at war. Individual members may have their
private troubles, but they realise that these troubles are of small
account at such a time. And, though it is no doubt admirable for the
individual to feel himself of less importance than the community, it
will hardly be conceded that self-negation in such a cause is likely to
prove of any very permanent value to him.
Now there are those who will urge that boy nature cannot be
altered, that it is natural for a boy to worship games, and that you
cannot expect him to be otherwise. But that I shall never believe is
so. For myself, I know that I play cricket and football as keenly as I
did seven years ago, that I spend a great many evenings with a
Wisden in my hands; but that I manage to get through a fair amount
of work between each January and December. That is not in itself a
fair argument. One cannot arraign the enthusiasms of sixteen before
the enthusiasms of twenty-three any more than one can arraign the
enthusiasms of twenty-three before those of forty. There is no more
fallacious argument than the 'when you have reached my age,
young man.' At different stages of our life we are vexed by different
problems. At twenty-three our sexual life is of vast importance; it
stretches before us, a wide field for courage, enterprise, adventure.
In the man of forty, curiosity has been satisfied. He has settled many
of the problems that perplexed him when he was a young man. And
he says: 'My dear fellow, all this that is worrying you does not really
matter.' But he is wrong. It does matter to a young man of twenty.
And nothing is trivial that has ever exercised deeply the human
spirit.
In a world that is in flux the permanence or impermanence of any
emotion is of less matter than its intensity while it lasts. Sooner or
later everything must desert us. Is the brain a useless possession
because it will one day soften. Are teeth less efficacious now
because one day they will decay. Is a young man of twenty going to
listen to the impotent man of sixty who mutters: 'Young man, the
charms of woman are a snare and an illusion. When you have
reached my age you will be no longer moved by them.' For that is
where the 'when you are my age, young man,' argument finally
lands us. And it is not fair to say to a boy of seventeen: 'This mad
excitement about games is absurd. In six years even you will have
outgrown it.' It is for us to decide whether this mad excitement is
the natural expression of a boy's temperament, or whether it is the
peculiar growth of a peculiar environment.
I will take as an example Sandhurst as it was in the autumn of 1916.
It was composed almost entirely of boys straight from the Public
Schools, and I should imagine that the average age of a company
was about eighteen, the age, that is to say, at which most of them
would have been about to start on their last year. They brought with
them the standards of public school life. One would have expected
them to establish their standards at Sandhurst. They did nothing of
the sort. There was nothing that bore the least approach to a blood
system. There were seniors and juniors, that was all. There was no
fierce cult of athleticism. The G.C. who scored tries in company
matches was not granted a general permission to drive his bayonet
through college furniture. In the daily life games played a prominent
part. Indeed, the under officer whose company did not make use of
the ground allotted to it would have had to face an unpleasant half-
hour with the commandant. But games never became the business
of life. They were played for their own sake. They were untouched
by professionalism. If a three-quarter missed a pass five yards from
the line he did not bury himself in a far corner of the anteroom,
apart from the gaiety of his companions. The average company side
played just as keenly as a house fifteen at school. While we were on
the field we were as desperately anxious to win. But we did not
spend the morning in a state of nervous irritation, nor did the issue
of the contests drive us to deep despondency, or to hysterical
elation. A certain intensity had passed. Yet I do not think that ever
before had I derived such pleasure from the actual playing of the
game as I did at Sandhurst.
One would not, of course, hold up a military institution as the model
for an educational system. But, from the point of view of athletics,
the Sandhurst that I knew in the winter of 1916 and the spring of
1917 possessed all the merits and none of the faults that one
associates with the average Public School. And yet that Sandhurst
was composed of the same boys that a few months earlier had, at
their Public Schools, rigidly observed the exacting ritual of the great
god of sport.
Reasons for this change are not difficult to find, and it may be
noticed that they are in line with the improvements suggested in an
earlier chapter. There is no blood system, because there is little
disparity of age between the G.C.'s. Juniors belong to a lower caste
than the seniors, but they inhabit that lower world without worrying
much about what is happening in the superior world. Contact
between the two is not established. There is a hard dividing line. A
junior may not sit on a certain side of the anteroom. There is no
social fluidity. One is one thing or the other. Athletic worship in
school was due largely, I suggested, to the absence of any other
focus for a boy's enthusiasm. At Sandhurst several such focuses
were provided. To begin with, the work was interesting. The morning
was not a mere succession of tiresome hours relieved by a quarter
of an hour's break. The G.C. did not listen to lectures and tactics
with the listless condescension that he had paid formerly to the
Greek syntax; he realised that the knowledge of the subjects he was
studying would be of practical value to him at a later date. He was
anxious to be a good officer. He was, therefore, interested in his
work. He was also at Sandhurst for a very little while. He regarded
Sandhurst quite definitely as the anteroom to a career; he never
imagined it to be anything else. In a few months he would have
joined his regiment. The honours he won at Sandhurst would be of
little value in themselves, and were only worth the gaining in as far
as they would enhance the reputation which he would take with him
to his regiment. A Sandhurst cadet was always looking beyond the
present.
Nor did the officers in charge of companies feel any compunction to
prescribe athleticism as an antidote to immorality. In the first place,
they were not responsible for the G.C.'s moral welfare, nor was
there, indeed, any occasion for alarm. The amount of immoral
conduct between G.C.'s, if there was any, must have been extremely
small. Such conduct is essentially faute de mieux: women were
abundantly available for those who wanted them. And in a town
such as Camberley there were endless opportunities for innocent
romance.
The three main causes for athleticism were removed, and in
consequence there was no athleticism. Now it is obviously impossible
for all these conditions to be introduced into a Public School. There
must be a disparity of age, schoolmasters must feel some anxiety
about the morals of the boys that are to be entrusted to them. But,
if we can show that the complete removal of certain conditions of
public school life can entirely remove certain evils, we can only
assume that the modification of these conditions would cause
considerable improvement. The smaller the disparity of age between
the eldest and the youngest boy, the less intense will be the blood
system. The shorter the period that a boy spends at school, the less
will be the tendency to regard school life as the complete compass
of his life. The supply of another focus for a boy's enthusiasm will
diminish the strength of his athletic ardour. The greater the honesty
in tackling the moral question, the less will masters feel themselves
forced to recommend athleticism as an antidote to immorality. And
these changes are, I believe, possible without altering appreciably
the principle of public school education. The supply of other focuses
may, at first glance, seem a highly difficult job. It may, indeed, be
advanced that were there another focus, athleticism could not exist
in its present state, and that there would be no need for a reduction
of the age limit. But I am inclined to think that it would be hardly
possible to run any school which contained boys of thirteen and boys
of nineteen and not have a blood system and an athletic worship.
The forces of a natural inclination are too strongly entrenched
behind the barricade of six years. The masters do not stand a fair
chance. But the weakening of one force means the strengthening of
another. A lowering of the barricade by a couple of years would give
the other side a chance of contending equally. The moment a boy
realised that the prizes of school life had only a temporary value, he
would question his blind devotion to the religion of athleticism. He
would wonder whether other things were not worth while. His
allegiance would be divided.
But the passing of regulations cannot in themselves effect a
reformation. They can be of great assistance; they can support and
they can protect. They cannot build. And, in the study of public
school life, we have to return in the end to the point from which we
started. Boys and parents and schoolmasters must meet on a
common ground and discuss their mutual welfare. They can do
nothing till they are honest with each other, till they face the facts
together. When they had once done that they would not find the
road hopelessly barricaded. The solutions that I have, from time to
time, suggested in these chapters, would, I believe, prove beneficial.
But it is as a statement of facts, an analysis of certain conditions,
tendencies, and lines of thought, that I would chiefly submit this
book to the consideration of parents and schoolmasters and those
others who are interested in these questions. For nothing can be
done till the conspiracy of silence, the policy of evasion and self-
deception, the diplomacy of the merchant and his goods is broken
down, till, that is to say, parents and schoolmasters meet on the
common ground of co-operation, till they can look each other in the
face and say: 'Things are so, and it is for us to find a remedy.'
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
 Some New Publications
from MESSRS COLLINS' LIST
Published from their London Offices, 48 PALL MALL, S.W.

Note.—Messrs Collins will always be pleased to send lists of their

forthcoming books to any one who will send name and address.

Old England BERNARD GILBERT

Royal 8vo, Cloth, 20/- net
A God's-Eye view of a village. This book is unique in English
literature both in conception and treatment. The author presents a
whole community to the reader, taking for his subject our largest
social unit—an English village—where everybody knows everything
about every one. He has taken a typical village during one day of the
war and given a camera obscura presentment of the multitudinous
intrigues, ambitions, desires, disputes, relationships, and interests
which thread its fabric so closely. There is no hero or heroine, for the
author presents some hundreds of characters, each all important to
himself. These speak their own thoughts, throw startling sidelights
on their neighbours; and from the whole, a picture of a village
community takes definite shape. The author has snapped his village
at one instant on one day, so that there is no 'action.' The village is
frozen motionless whilst the reader inspects each inhabitant. There
is no sentimentalism, no 'kailyard' gloss; the villagers expressing
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