CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Twenty years ago a father said to his son, who had just come down from Oxford with a batting average of 35.7: 'For ten years, my boy, you have been playing cricket all through the summer at my expense. You can now either come into my business and play first-class cricket during your month's holiday in August, or, if you want to continue to play cricket all through the season, you can go down to the Oval and apply to be taken on as a professional.' The moral, the obvious moral, that is to say, is admirable. And the elderly gentleman whom I overheard repeating this story in the pavilion, leant back in his seat and affirmed proudly, though with a deep sense of the passage of good things, that it was in such a spirit that the game had been played when he was young. 'That's what cricket meant to the Studds, the Lyttletons, the Fosters. We didn't have any of these amateur professionals, none of these fine fellows who get found soft jobs by their county committees. What's the difference, I should like to know, between the fellow who gets paid five pounds a match and the fellow who is presented with the directorship of a ladies' corset factory at a comfortable salary, and who has only to go to the office once a week to sign his name in the directors' attendance book?' The elderly gentleman shrugged his shoulders with disgust.

He was quite right, of course. There are too many cricketers who make as much money out of the game as any professional, yet are entitled to put initials before their name upon the score card. And the father was quite right when he insisted on the industry of his son. He was none the less right because things probably failed to turn out as they had been planned. They rarely do. We can guess what happened.

For a year the son worked hard. During his month's holiday he made a couple of centuries in first-class cricket, and various papers commenting on this achievement expressed their regret that so promising a cricketer should only be available in August. It is needless to add that the other members of the family saw to it that these references did not escape the attention of their father. Next season the county started so well, that by the end of May it stood at the head of the championship, and the young financier was entreated to turn out for the Yorkshire match in the middle of June. On such an occasion parental discipline was naturally relaxed. And an innings of 87 on a tricky wicket was followed by an invitation to play for the Gentlemen at Lords. Parental pride was flattered. Next season the same thing happened, only more frequently. There was, in fact, an understanding that he was available for all the important matches, and very soon not only the fixtures with Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey, came to be regarded as important, but also those with Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Worcester. Indeed, in five years' time the son found himself playing county cricket steadily from May to August and as an amateur. Things happen like that. Still the pact, as the elderly gentleman in the pavilion asserted, had been made in the right spirit. And it was, after all, a family affair.

But the fine distinction between the amateur and the amateur professional is defined only by the obvious moral to this story, and the subtler moral had passed unnoticed by the elderly reactionary in the pavilion. A young man, twenty-three years of age, has been expensively educated for some ten to twelve years. And he is faced at the end of his education, when it is assumed, that is to say, that he is equipped with the knowledge and trained ability that will enable him to take up that portion of the world's work for which he is best fitted, with two alternatives. Either he can go into his father's business, or else he can lose his caste and sign on as a professional cricketer. It occurred neither to the father nor to the son nor to the elderly gentleman who repeated the story in the pavilion that any other alternative was possible, or, indeed, desirable. The son was not in a position to say to his father: 'Of course I wouldn't become a pro. But I'm really not keen on your business. I shouldn't be a success at it. I'd rather do something else.' He could not say that, because there was nothing else for him to do. Six years earlier he could have gone to Sandhurst. If he had worked harder at school he might possibly have passed into the Egyptian civil service. It is possible that his blue would have obtained for him a schoolmastership, but his gulf in mods, would have limited his choice of schools. And the prospects of a junior master at a second-rate Public School are not inviting. So, whatever his own inclinations might have been, he had to accept his father's offer. It is here that we find the true moral of the story; and we ask ourselves whether this young man was, in spite of his ten years at Oxford and at a Public School, really educated. He had learnt how to make centuries in county cricket, and he had acquired a certain quantity of uncorrelated information. But he had not developed the ability to perform properly the type of work for which he was best fitted, nor, indeed, had he discovered what that type of work might be. As likely as not his father's business was the last that he should have chosen. We all react from our surroundings, and he had probably become heartily sick of his father's particular form of 'shop.' He had so often sat wearily at the dinner table, fingering his bread, piling the salt into pyramids on the edge of the cruet, while his father had explained to his mother the minute details of his latest deal. 'You see, my dear, I bought in at twenty-six....' Of all hideous employments the buying and selling of shares had seemed to him the weariest. And yet there was nothing for him but to accept a desk beside a telephone with the files of the Financial News spread out before him.

He can have brought no enthusiasm to his work. Out of a sense of duty, and in order to improve his own position, he may have worked hard during the winter months, but he must have worked without pleasure, with his work not as an end but as a means.

Yet nothing in a man's life is of more importance than his profession. If he does not enjoy his work he values too highly the privileges that success in it will bring to him. He asks too much of his private life, and if he is disappointed, he embarks on a desperate search for pleasure. Half of the discontent of modern life, the discontent that expresses itself in endless parties, dances, and entertainments, can be traced to the reactions of men and women engaged in uncongenial employment. And so we return again to that first question. Can we call a man educated who has not discovered in what capacity he is most likely to be of service to society, or who, having discovered it, has not taken steps to qualify himself for that profession. That, in a sentence, is the case against the English Public School. A system stands or falls by its products.

And it is only natural that parents who are not particularly well off, and who have no private business into which they can draft their children, should ask themselves whether or not a public school education is worth the considerable personal sacrifice that will be entailed if their sons are to be sent to Wellington, Clifton, or Uppingham. 'We want to do the best for Tommy,' they say. 'But after spending £250 a year on him for five years what do we get in return? Tommy is not clever enough to pass into the civil service; he may get a mastership on a salary only slightly better than that of a Metropolitan policeman. Is it worth it?' When the head master to whom these doubts are carried, commences to enlarge on the moral qualities that are revealed and strengthened by 'the honest give and take of public school life,' the parent is still unsatisfied. 'Are you quite sure?' they say. 'Of course we know it's all exaggerated, but where there's smoke, you know, and one has heard....' Is it surprising that under such circumstances the mandarins of the public school profession should have erected a barricade of prejudice between themselves and criticism. Their maintenance is at stake. They have to persuade the parent that he is getting his money's worth. Otherwise he will send his son to a day school, or, worse still, to some pension in Rome or Brussels.

And so it has happened that any critic of the Public Schools is immediately driven into a false position. For so long the Public Schools have been accepted with an unquestioning reverence—for so long, that is to say, the authorities have been able to persuade the world that the goods they are selling are the best, in fact the only goods upon the market—that if any one breathes a word against them now he is labelled a revolutionary; it is assumed that politically he is a Socialist, that he wishes to substitute co-operation for competition, that he is a harbinger of red ruin, concealing a bomb intended for William of Wykeham's Tower or the green sward of Agar's plough; that his programme involves the complete destruction of the existing fabric, and that he proposes to erect about its ruins some bizarre construction of eugenics and modernity. Nothing, as a matter of fact, is further from the truth.

The majority of assailants are anything but socialists. They consider an enlightened oligarchy the ideal form of government, and their chief quarrel with the Public Schools is the absence of that enlightened oligarchy. No one wants to destroy the Public Schools. No one would be so foolish. But we do maintain that the public school system—a very old, a very magnificent, a very venerable mansion—stands in drastic need of repair. It is some years since the drains were attended to; electric light is more serviceable than gas; the tapestries are a little moth-eaten; the books in the library are dusty. The house wants to be spring cleaned.

It is easy, of course, to say that, but it is very difficult to know how to set about it. Our institutions are mirrors in which are reflected our personal imperfections. They can be no better than ourselves; and the merchants of panaceas take for granted a world which has left behind it envy, greed, malice, and desire. To that degree of perfection we shall never attain, but we can at any rate be honest with one another. And there is no side of English life about which rulers and ruled, fathers and sons, old and young have been so consistently dishonest with one another in the past as they have been about the standards and ideals of the English Public Schools.

It is the old trouble of the merchant and his goods, and though the English Public Schools do not insert double-column advertisements in the daily papers, they are at least beholden not to prejudice the value of their stock. The greengrocer does not inform you that, on the whole, his potatoes are not bad, considering that he bought them from a farmer with a leaking shed. A head master does not tell a parent that, if he is going to send his son to a Public School, his own school is not worse than any other. Yet the same man who views with grave suspicion eulogies of a patent medicine, accepts complacently the house-master's assurance that Tommy is improving enormously both morally and intellectually under his care. A schoolmaster spends a large part of his life boosting the value of his goods, and in time, of course, he comes to believe that every word of what he says is true. The commercial traveller of two years' experience will wink his eye: 'I spun him the tale!' But the commercial traveller of ten years' experience has a solemn countenance. 'People know good stuff when they see it.'

A few weeks ago I was staying in the country with some friends, and was taken over by them to the prize-giving of the Preparatory School at which their sons were being educated. The ceremony was enacted in the gymnasium. The staff sat at the end of the room on a raised dais, in the centre of which was a table covered with 'calf-bound mementoes of industry.' Behind this table stood the head master. He was a large, genial, middle-aged man, rubicund with a surfeit of golf, and he smiled down upon the school and upon its parents. 'Well, you boys,' he said, 'I want to tell you how pleased I am with the way you've backed me up this term. You've worked hard and you've played hard: I don't really know how long it is since we've had such a thoroughly satisfactory term: of course there are one or two young gentlemen'—and at this point a twinkle appeared in the corner of his eye—'who have been a little, well, shall we say, difficult; but that's past history, we won't say anything more about it; and, as a whole, as I've already said, I don't think I've ever had such a satisfactory set of fellows.' There were a few more remarks of mutual congratulation, and then he proceeded to the distribution of the prizes.

Afterwards I had a chat with one of the assistant masters, with whom I happened to be on fairly intimate terms.

'A wonderful fellow, the Head,' he told me. 'Do you know he's made that same speech at prize-giving for the last twenty years. Hardly a phrase different. He wants to send the parents away in a good temper. They'll get their account to-morrow. Of course he doesn't know that's why he's doing it. But it's the reason right enough. And how clever that bit is about the young gentlemen who've been a little troublesome. It makes every mother feel that her boy is better than her neighbour's.'

I suggested that such an opinion was likely to be revised under the influence of the terminal report. 'Not a bit of it,' he answered. 'All our reports are strictly censored. We write them out on a piece of foolscap and the Head gets them typed; but where we write "lazy and unintelligent," the parents read "moderate." You can take my word for it that the boy who gets "moderate" in his report from here is one of earth's best dunces.'

That was, of course, at a private school; but, even at the most prosperous Public Schools there is a tacit understanding that parents should be stroked down after the manner of refractory cats. The half-term report contains frequently enough a quantity of pungent critical writing, but the parental visit to the school is invariably the occasion for much conversational flattery. Freddie, unless he has become involved in any particularly unfortunate adventure, is the object of restrained, perhaps qualified, but still potential commendation. The father is assured by the house-master that everything is going on splendidly: 'A little low in form, perhaps, rather too boisterous at times in the day room, but a sound fellow at heart, the sort of fellow that the house will be proud of one day.' And the mother's qualms are put at rest by the house-master's wife. 'The tone of the house is so excellent, you see. No bullying at all, and Freddie's manners are so charming. Every one likes him.'

It is possible that if the house-master were taken to task in the privacy of his own study, he might be persuaded to confess himself a pragmatist. 'One has to keep them quiet,' he might say. 'The young rascal'll get on all right as long as they don't start meddling with him.' But it is hard to be honest with oneself. The schoolmaster cannot help regarding the parent in much the same way that the junior subaltern regarded the brigadier. We all know what happened when the runner brought the news that at such an hour the brigadier would visit Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements. Lieutenant Jones specially called the brigadier's attention to what he knew would please him. He put his smartest men on guard. He assured the brigadier that everything was going quite all right, that the men were perfectly comfortable and that the supply of rations was adequate; Lieutenant Jones did everything, in fact, to get the brigadier into the next trench as soon as possible.

Which was, of course, all very rational. The brigadier's interest in Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements was remote and theoretical, and either way was of small importance. But it is a different thing altogether when house-masters wave parents out of the way with comfortable excuses. It establishes at once a dishonest relationship. The schoolmaster does not trust the parent. He regards him as a nuisance that periodically has to be appeased. And, as long as things go smoothly, he is content to leave him in the dark. There is no co-operation. And that is absolutely fatal. It means that the two people who are chiefly responsible for the boy's welfare are working at cross purposes.

The trouble does not end there. For between the parents themselves there is frequently an incomplete mutual appreciation of the difficulties of school life. Women, in the nature of things, can only know about Public Schools what men choose to tell them. That is usually remarkably little. Many a husband encourages in his wife the illusion that before he met her his life was a vague, indeterminate, ineffectual thing, the incidents of which are unworthy to be recorded. And many others on such matters as public school life consider that a lie that saves friction is justifiable. It is so easy to see how it happens.

Husband and wife are sitting after dinner on either side of the fireplace. The wife has just finished reading The Harrovians, and she looks up with a puzzled, unhappy look. 'Harold, dear,' she says, 'it's not like that really, is it? If it were true I couldn't think of sending Freddie to such a place.' And what is Harold to say? He has read The Harrovians. He knows that substantially it is true, but equally well he knows that if he acknowledges this to his wife his domestic life for the next six years will be complicated by incessant arguments and anxieties. To begin with he will have to spend many evenings of discussion before he can persuade his wife of the advisability of sending Freddie to Rugby. And afterwards there will be constant uneasiness. His wife will fret. She will want to pay visits to Rugby, to interview the head master, to ask her son uncomfortable questions. His own life would become unbearable. And a lie smooths out so much. 'Oh, no, dear, quite unlike the Rugby of my day. An exaggerated picture of a bad house in a bad school, that's all it is.'

Such a situation must arise fairly frequently. And at least one instance of it has come within the circle of my own experience. While I was a prisoner in Germany I lent a copy of my school story, The Loom of Youth, to a fellow-prisoner, who had expressed a wish to read it. A few days later he returned it to me with such a flattering display of enthusiasm that, in a moment of unusual generosity I promised to send him a copy on our return. The sequel reached me a few days later. He had returned to his room and remarked that Waugh had promised to give him a copy of that book of his, 'the thing that's all full of oaths. I don't know what I shall do with it,' he said. 'I shall have to be jolly careful that my wife doesn't read it.'

If one may generalise from such an incident, and I believe that one may, for it has its root in the eternal indolence of human nature, then not only schoolmasters and parents, but fathers and mothers are working at cross purposes. And so the boy finds himself alone, stranded in a society the nature of which he has to discover for himself. He never regards his house-master as one working in co-operation with his parents for the welfare of his soul. Schoolmasters will be to him a separate caste. And although he will never reason this out with himself, he will appreciate it intuitively in the natural cunning with which he will exploit one or the other in the furtherance of his own ends. I do not mean that he is deceitful. But he may want to specialise in History, or to abandon German in favour of Greek, and he will think whether he would do better to approach his father or his house-master. There is a sort of dual monarchy, and if one sovereign is opposed to a favourite scheme, it is but natural to try one's fortune with the other.

His parents' interest in his school life must appear to him superficial. When his father comes down at half term, he has to answer innumerable questions as to his prowess on the cricket field; and very often indeed the chief pleasure that his athletic successes brings him is the thought of the delight that his father will experience. But the intimate side of his school life, his thoughts, his friendships, his troubles, his ambitions, do not enter into his relationship with his parents. In the same way his house-master's interest in his home life seems to him superficial. On his return to school he is asked a few questions about the theatres he has visited; whether he is in training for the football; has he done any private work? not a word of his intimate life. The boy ceases to regard his school life as a continuation of his home life. The two are entirely separate, and it depends on the temperament of the individual as to which of the two he will consider the more important. We hear a great deal of talk about the influence of the home; it is, indeed, the stock argument of the pedagogue who would shelve his own responsibility on to other shoulders, but I believe that its influence is greatly overrated. Home and school present to the average boy two watertight compartments. They are different lives, a different technique is required. And human nature has at least one property of the chameleon.

A schoolboy sets out, therefore, to discover school life for himself. He knows what his parents expect him to make of it; he has a fairly shrewd idea of what his schoolmaster expects him to make of it. It remains for him to investigate school life as his companions have made it. Naturally he does not announce his investigations. He lets his parents think what they like and his schoolmasters think what they like. He goes his own way. And it is thus that school life as it is, differs so enormously from the traditional concept of it. There must be always a gulf between the reality and the imagined idea. But in public school life the gulf is between, not the schoolboy reality and his idea of it, but between the schoolboy reality, and the confused idea of it that is held by parents and masters. It is two degrees from the truth. In consequence, when any one does attempt to tell the truth there is an outburst of indignant protest. And the worst of it is that it is an honest outburst. When head masters write to the Press and say 'these accusations are entirely false,' they honestly believe what they say. That is what makes everything so difficult. They have forgotten their own schooldays, and for so long they have been persuading parents of the value of a public school education that they have come to believe in their own advertisements. And yet what they have come to believe is far more remarkable than the truth. In sermons and addresses they assure the boy and his parents that school life is a miniature of the larger world; which is the statement of a fact: yet every subsequent act and utterance is in contradiction to this initial axiom. For, if that larger world did really resemble the official concept of school life, what a bizarre, what an extravagant affair it would be. It would be filled with high lights, with breathless escapades, with impossible heroics. It has been accepted as quite credible that a boy should be capable of the most extreme and loathsome brutalities, that a percentage of every school should spend its life in gambling and heavy drinking, that at least one prefect in every school should contract inconvenient liabilities at the Baron's Arms, and that to extricate himself he should forge his house-master's signature. Indeed, anything may happen provided that the course of life follows a simple process of right and wrong which leads to the triumph of virtue and the downfall of vice. It is something like a Lyceum melodrama. And, though we can all manage to enjoy for a couple of hours the fine sensationalism of The Beggar Girl's Wedding, we should hardly accept its values as a philosophical background for our daily life. And yet that has actually happened in the case of the Public Schools. Mr P. G. Wodehouse, in his delightful Mike, makes Psmith say to a new acquaintance: 'Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is led astray and takes to drink in Chapter Sixteen?' Such figureheads exist in the popular imagination. The world believes in bullies, in villains, in straight heroes and in the weak character who goes wrong, but is saved through the influence of either the hero or the head master, or the head master's daughter, or through the sermon of an occasional preacher. It is all very jolly, of course, and no doubt the world would be a far more comfortable place if it were possible to label and pigeonhole all our friends and acquaintances. But life cannot be simplified by any arbitrary process. We have our standards of conduct, but they are shifting and relative. They are the measures that each successive society arranges for what it considers to be its convenience. And we accept them for what they are. At a Public School, however, a traditional conception has formed a code of rules for the convenience of a society that does not exist. Which is confusing: and when Desmond Coke wrote in The Bending of a Twig a very entertaining skit on the behaviour of a boy who had read a number of school stories, and went to Shrewsbury expecting to find bullies behind every cloister, schoolmasters laughed over the book, but did not read into it any criticism of themselves.

And yet there is nothing that we need more than an honest facing of the facts of public school life. Facts are a solid neutral ground on which parents and boys and masters may meet to discuss their ideals and their difficulties. And, in the course of that discussion, they may discover, as likely as not, a way out of their troubles. The hope of this book is to provide that statement of facts. It does not set out as an educational treatise. It accepts the Public Schools as the system best suited to the material with which it deals. It suggests no new system of teaching. It does not advocate co-education. It does not advance any plea for Montessor methods. It will contain no discussion of the advantages of Greek over German. There will be no appendix with time-tables and suggested curriculum. For, as things are now, it does not matter whether Sanscrit is substituted for mathematics: the boy will learn equally little of either. It is intended as a human study of public school life, as an attempt to break down that conspiracy of silence, that relationship of evasion and deceit that exists officially between parents, boys, and masters; and from time to time it will suggest solutions.

It is, of course, only an attempt. For no one person can see more than a side of the truth. However impartial we try to be, we can see in a situation only what the limitations of our personality allow us. We are all at tether. During the last three years many public men have visited Russia; they have been honest men, and we know quite well that they went there with the firm intention of telling nothing but the truth. But, before they went, we could have told them exactly what they would say on their return. Yet the analogy does not quite hold good. For we, too, have gone, each of us, to a Public School with a preconceived idea of what school life would be, and each of us in turn has had that conception destroyed by actuality, and each in turn has had to create for himself his own picture. It follows then that there must in each picture be a certain measure of truth.

CHAPTER II

THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL

We hear much of the embarrassed misery of a boy's first week at school. And, certainly, it is pretty wretched. Mr Vachell compared it to the first plunge into an ice-cold swimming bath: the sudden shock, and, afterwards, the glory of a swim. But it is the inaction, the loneliness of the first week that is so difficult. It is more like standing on the edge of the swimming bath on a cold day waiting for the signal that will start the race. And yet the change must have been a great deal more difficult for our parents than it was for us. The preparatory school system is of more or less recent growth, and, when one considers how much one learnt at a Preparatory School, in esprit de corps, in patience, in sportsmanship, in the give and take of a communal life, one wonders how an earlier generation managed to survive the first term. School life by all accounts was a fairly barbarous business in the eighties, and by what strange roads our parents came to those rough waters. Some came straight from home, some from private tutors: the majority from the old-fashioned dame school. It is not surprising that the Preparatory Schools should have so increased in number and improved in quality.

For the Preparatory School fulfils a most important function, and it fulfils it extremely efficiently. It is what it sets out to be, a school that will take a small boy almost from the nursery, and train him in the course of four or five years to take his place in a large Public School. The task that the head master of a Preparatory School has to tackle is not, however, anything like so hard as that which confronts the head master of a Public School. For a Public School has to equip a boy for life; and life is vast, indeterminate, a swiftly moving river that is never the same from one moment to another. The Preparatory School, on the other hand, has only to equip a boy for a Public School, and the Public School is a fixed quantity. As regards curriculum, the task is simple. The required standard of education is known. A certain percentage in the common entrance examination has to be obtained. The school has not to discover the career for which its individual members are best suited. It has merely to decide which of them are good enough to be trained specially for scholarships. The main object of the Preparatory School, however, is to produce presentable specimens of society, boys who will do the right thing in the right circumstances. And this the Preparatory School does admirably well.

It is at a Preparatory School that boys learn manners, courtesy, the proper behaviour in the presence of ladies. But these things, you may say, a boy will learn at home. No doubt he ought to, but any preparatory schoolmaster will disabuse you on that point. How many small boys of seven who have not been to a school will, when they are handed a plate of cakes, take the one nearest to them rather than the one of which they fancy the appearance. How many small boys will think of opening a door for a lady, of offering her his chair when she enters the room, of apologising to his hostess if he arrives late for breakfast. These are the little things that a boy learns at a Preparatory School and that he will learn nowhere else; at all good schools a great value is placed on these points of etiquette; if anything, 'good manners' are rather overdone, and the precipitate charge of twelve or thirteen urchins towards a door handle is likely to prove embarrassing to the lady visitor who has risen from her chair.

At my own school, for instance, music lessons always took place immediately after lunch; so that, if lunch was a little late, the first boys were allowed to leave the table before grace. It was a rule, however, that no boy should ever leave the dining-room till he had asked the permission of the ladies. And many visitors were much perplexed by the repeated inaudible apologies of nervous small boys who came stumbling towards them between two close-packed tables. The good manners of a preparatory school boy are indeed slightly pedagogic. Their elbows are pressed into their sides when they eat, their wrists are raised above the table, and, in a precise voice, they request permission to trouble their next door neighbour for the salt. They are like the critics who insist that a sonnet is not a sonnet if the last lines of the sestet form a couplet. But it is a fault on the right side. For manners, as well as morals, relax in the greater freedom of a Public School, and at the age of fifteen one has managed to substitute ease for stiffness.

It is, indeed, impossible to say how much one learns at a Preparatory School. At the age of ten one has not the necessary detachment to view oneself as an objective reality. It is impossible, for instance, to remember where, or when, was learnt the spirit of comradeship and sportsmanship that is, perhaps, the most lovable quality of the old public school boy. It is hardly inherited. For the average small boy is greedy, selfish, and acquisitive; and, when one is given leg before to a left-hand round the wicket bowler who is turning the ball from the off, the temptation to protest against the umpire's decision is natural. The primitive man, indeed, would have uprooted a stump and walked to the other end of the pitch. Where does one learn to turn straight round and walk towards the pavilion? I think it is at the Preparatory School. A small boy knows that he has got to play cricket like a sportsman; he knows that a sportsman does not question the umpire's decision; and he is terribly afraid of doing the wrong thing in the presence of his schoolfellows. The first time he is given out caught at the wicket off his pad, a blind anger seizes him. His mouth opens to make a protest. The same thing happened last year when he was playing cricket in the garden with his brother and sister, and, when they insisted that he was out, he sat down in the middle of the field and howled till they told him he could continue his innings. The temptation to repeat the experiment is considerable. But he dare not make any exhibition of himself. He would be mercilessly ragged; and so he returns to his seat under the trees and contents himself with the announcement that Jones is a mean sneak who was trying to get a revenge for the kicking he got that morning. And of course the incident will be repeated. Umpires make mistakes in first-class cricket: small boys make them with a melancholy frequency on lower grounds, and few batsmen are satisfied with an l.b.w. decision. The young cricketer has many opportunities of displaying the Christian qualities of patience and restraint, and every time the temptation to sit down in the middle of the pitch and howl grows weaker. 'The monster custom is angel yet in this,' and, by the time he goes to his Public School, his features have learnt to assume a good-natured smile, and he says something about it being all in the game and that last week he had a decision in his favour.

I am inclined to think that in that example can be found the essence of preparatory school life; the habits of courtesy and sportsmanship are acquired till they become a second nature. We are told that man is a logical creature, that when he has been properly educated it will be possible for forty million people to live in one country without competition; that in an enlightened society there will be no need for policemen, for every man will instinctively appreciate what is right. It may be so. No one knows what the world will be like two thousand years hence. But, in the meantime, I think we do wisely to train small boys as we train an animal. We thrash our dog if he plays havoc in our neighbour's chicken run, and we rag the small boy who disputes the umpire's decision. The dog does not chase chickens again, nor does the small boy argue in the middle of the pitch.

It is a strange business, though, this acquiring of social habits, and, though preparatory school life has been only dealt with in a small way by educationalists and novelists, the process is certainly interesting. Everything, to allow for the subsequent relaxation at the Public School, is slightly overdone, and the small boy tends to become a prig. It is only natural that he should. By nature he is at that time a somewhat poisonous little beast. He is the victim of numberless petty faults and jealousies; and when he becomes reformed he is self-righteous. He would never think of sneaking, of course, but he would not hesitate to whisper just as a master is coming into the class-room, 'Oh, shut up, Jones.' He always enjoys putting some one else in the wrong, and Arnold Lunn has, in The Harrovians, an incident that provides an admirable example of this attitude. A member of the school has just died. He was not a popular boy; he was not distinguished in games or work. No one really minded, but the school felt bound to present a countenance of appropriate melancholy. A certain Clayford, however, had a set of stamps he wished to sell, and he accosted cheerfully a couple of boys who were discussing the last hours of their lost comrade. 'I say, you chaps, like to buy a complete set of Borneos surcharged Labuan?'

'Not to-day, thank you,' said Peter stiffly.

'We're not much interested in stamps to-day,' added Morgan.

It is a perfect picture.

And as there is no stricter moralist than the potential rake, there is no one with a more rigid code of honour than the preparatory school boy. 'Owning up' becomes a fetish. Popular opinion drives the wretched urchin into the head master's study. I remember once that on the eve of a school match a member of the eleven went sick with a headache. There was immediate consternation. Ferguson might not be a good bowler, his batting was indifferent and he missed his catches more often than not, but he was a distinct improvement on Evans, the twelfth man. The chances of a victory were prejudiced: and then some one recollected that that morning Smith had smacked Ferguson's head in the changing room. It also happened that, for the moment, Smith was extremely unpopular. Morison's people had just paid their half-term visit to the school, and when the Head had brought Morison's mother into the room, Smith had not stood up. It had been a direct insult to Morison's mater. Every one had said so, and none of us would listen to Smith's excuse that he had had his back to the door, and was filling his fountain pen, a combination of circumstances that rendered a sudden leap to the feet impossible.

'Don't argue, Smith; you're a cad.' That's what every one had said; and when it was remembered that Smith had punched Ferguson's head that morning, the fury of popular opinion knew no limit.

'You've lost the match, I hope you know; you'll have to own up, of course,' we said.

Smith was resentful. He did not see why he should.

'Because, Smith, that is what a gentleman does under such circumstances.'

Smith was still obstinate. He did not see why Ferguson should have got a headache just because of this. People had had their heads punched before without getting headaches. There was a murmur of contumely.

'But that wasn't an ordinary punch, Smith; you hit him with all your force.'

The suggestion that it was not an ordinary punch flattered Smith's pride. He, too, was inclined to think that there had been about that punch a certain something. He grudgingly admitted that it had been a pretty hard smack.

'Even so, though, I don't see how things are going to be made any better by my owning up.'

Such an attitude was opposed to every idea of preparatory school honour. There was a shudder of supreme contempt.

'Perhaps you don't, Smith.' And there the argument stopped. But for the rest of the day Smith's life was made miserable. Every time any one passed him they said: 'Owned up yet?' No one would talk to him at tea-time; when he joined a group afterwards the group dispersed and he was left alone. Finally, of two evils, confession appeared to him the less, and, after prayers, he pushed open the door of the head master's study and blurted out to the accompaniment of big quivering sobs that he had punched Ferguson's head in the changing-room and given him a headache, and, perhaps, lost the match.

A couple of years ago I went down to my old school, and, just before lunch, when the whole school was collected in the hall, the head master announced that he wanted the name of the boy who had left the tap running in the bathroom. There was a slight commotion in a far corner; one boy was being nudged and pressed forward. There was a whisper of 'Go on, Hunter.' All eyes were turned in his direction. There was no course for Hunter but to come forward into the open and confess.

And yet, as likely as not, some one else was the offender. It was the sort of offence that any one might commit. It is not easy to remember what one has forgotten. No doubt he thought he had turned off the tap, otherwise he would hardly have left the bathroom; yet he might very likely have done it. His companions told him that he had, and his faith in their loving kindness was not sufficient for him to have wondered why they had not repaired his mistake. If Hunter had not owned up he would have had to say definitely that he had not left the tap running, and that he could not truthfully have done. So he owned up.

The fear of being thought a coward very often makes the preparatory school boy confess to sins that he has never committed, and it is usually the ones who are most often in trouble who find themselves in this position. After all, if you are always getting into scrapes, are always engaged in some misadventure, it is very hard to tell whether, on a particular occasion, you are innocent or not. The head master comes into a class-room in the afternoon.

'Now look here, you fellows,' he says, 'you know I've told you that I won't have you running down that steep path to the football field. You are bound to fall down; you must walk. I've told you that a hundred times. Now the matron tells me that she saw one of you running down there this morning. I want to know that boy's name.'

What is Jones mi. to do? He has run down that path so often. Whether or not he did so that morning he cannot remember. He has had so much to think about since then. Yet, suppose he did run down the hill, and suppose that some one saw him. If he does not own up, he will be called a coward all over the school. Far better 'own up,' and receive some small punishment. Indeed, it may be said that the Jones mi.'s of the world form a rule for themselves, that they own up to every offence of which they are not dead certain that they are innocent. Head masters, like batsmen, have to have the benefit of the doubt.

It is equally difficult to acknowledge innocence in the midst of crime. At my old school there was an excellent rule that for half an hour after lunch we should sit in our class-rooms and read quietly. One afternoon this peaceful siesta was disturbed by a loud and fierce and general discussion of the superiority of Yorkshire cricket over that of Lancashire. The particular class-room unfortunately happened to be situated beneath the nursery of the head master's children, and the angry voices of the disputants roused from her slumbers a recent addition to the family. The complaints of a very indignant nurse forced a very busy master to disturb the repose of that restful half-hour after lunch. On this occasion the usual formula was reversed. He did not ask the names of the boys who had been talking, he asked for the names of the boys who had not been talking. Now, as it happened, I had taken no part in the argument. I am a Middlesex supporter, I had just received as a birthday present a bound volume of Chums, I was also, at the time, in popular disfavour. So I had seated myself in a far corner of the room and read steadily, with my fingers pressed into my ears. But I did not dare to say so. I should never have been forgiven. It would have been the action of a conscientious objector. No one would have believed me. I realised how hopelessly out of things I should feel while the rest of the school were receiving their punishment. Suppose a half-holiday was stopped—what on earth should I do with a half-holiday all to myself? I should be much happier working out theorems in a class-room. And it was also possible that I might have said something that some one had overheard—at any rate, I was not going to risk it. I sat silent at my desk and accepted meekly the common lot.

From the outside a Preparatory School looks very much like a miniature Public School. It presents the same features, the same routine, the same curriculum; there is even some attempt at a prefectorial system. Superficially they have much in common. But there the resemblance ends. The scale of values is altogether different. Indeed the Preparatory School is very like the Public School of traditional conception. Talbot Baines Reed is only read by boys of under thirteen; and boys of under thirteen have moulded themselves after his image. There are, of course, none of the high-lights, the heroism, the sacrifice. There are no nocturnal visits to ostlers; but otherwise it is not unlike The Fifth Form at St Dominic's. The smallest boys do resemble the 'Tadpoles' of that popular romance. In spite of frequent visits to the bathroom their hands and collars are continually smeared with ink; when they go for walks at least one of them falls into the ditch and cuts his trousers; they are all dog-eared except at meal times and at the start of the morning's work. And they have the same attitude to life. They are continually forming rival gangs; they are on the brink of feuds and jealousies. They side against one another. Each boy in turn becomes the object of general dislike. There is a certain amount of bullying, a great deal more than there is at most public schools. New boys, for instance, are subjected to an inquisition. They are asked what their father is, and whether they would rather be a bigger ass than they look, or look a bigger ass than they are. At a Public School only one boy in every twenty gets really ragged, and usually for obvious reasons. But at a Preparatory School every one has to put up with a certain amount of persecution. There is a good deal of sycophancy, and the independent learn many lessons.

But when all is said and done, the really big difference between the Preparatory and the Public School is the absence of the cult of athleticism. The scholar is entitled to and receives as much respect as the cricketer and for obvious reasons. The Preparatory School has to contend with a far more competitive system than the Public School. Schools have their ups and downs. Numbers rise and fall, but a Public School that has a name can be always certain of the support of its old boys. It has a firmly established tradition. Only a few Preparatory Schools, on the other hand, possess this questionable advantage. The name of only a few are familiar. None of them would justify the journalist in the employment of his cliché 'a household word.' The Preparatory School depends largely on the energy and personality of one man, and the scholars are, after all, his exhibition blooms. He may produce cricketer after cricketer, but the Public School will take all the credit. We speak of Hedges and Chapman and Stevens as products of Tonbridge, Uppingham, and U.C.S. respectively. We do not know where they learnt the groundwork of the game. The scholar, however, comes into prominence while he is still at his Preparatory School. The name of the school is put after the name of the successful candidate. It is the scholar, not the cricketer, who advertises a school. If the head master of a Preparatory School told you that seven of his old boys were at that time playing in their Public School Eleven, you would not feel that he was entitled to any extravagant credit. If, however, he told you that in one year seven of his boys had won scholarships you would be considerably impressed. The boys themselves naturally, of course, are more interested in cricket than in Greek, but they appreciate that scholastic triumph has a marketable value, and the school officially is prouder of its Winchester scholar than of its slow left-hand bowler. The small boy who goes home for the holidays knows that he can impress his uncle by the announcement that Hughes got the second Eton scholarship, but that the statement that they beat Southdown by 100 runs and that Evans took seven wickets for twenty-three will elicit only a polite 'really.' It is exactly the opposite at a Public School. The new boy will proudly announce that the captain of his house had played for Notts. There is a standard by which one can judge public school cricket and football; there is no more a standard for the performances of preparatory school athletes than there is for the startling figures of the village fast bowler. Naturally there is more excitement when a new boy shows an uncanny apprehension of the theorems of geometry than over a new boy who brings the ball back naturally from the off. As a result the preparatory master is inclined to push the clever boys on too fast. It is the one real mistake that the Preparatory School makes, and it should be noticed. For it is serious.

A boy of eighteen can stand the strain of systematic coaching; a boy of twelve cannot. The preparatory scholar is more often than not a hot-house product. He has drawn on his reserves too early; his mind has been forced into a groove at the start. He is trained like a pet Pomeranian, and he is kept in blinkers; he is not allowed to explore bye-paths that are of interest to him. That would be prejudicial to his chances. He has to keep on the straight road of scholarship. He may get his scholarship; he probably will, for such Preparatory Schools are specialists at the game, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The boy has been forced too soon and he is stale by the time he gets to his Public School.

It is very interesting to note how often, in the course of a year or two, boys who did not get scholarships are higher up in the school than their successful rivals: a man who starts the half-mile at a hundred yards pace leads at the end of the first lap, but he does not win the race. And the preparatory school master is inclined to forget that, while a Winchester scholarship is the whole race for him, it is only the first lap for the boy. He naturally wants the credit of the scholarship for his school, but on the other hand he has to be unselfish. He has to ask himself whether, in the long run, it is not better for the boy to carry on with the general routine and take the scholarship examination in his stride. If he succeeds well and good; if not, there is plenty of time. And the wise parent will insist on this.

The boy himself, however, realises that his world is that of the green leaf and the bud. It is a time of sowing. And the fruits will show elsewhere. He knows that his career will only start when he reaches his Public School. The fact is always being forced upon his attention. 'This sort of thing is all very well here,' his masters will tell him, 'but it won't work at your Public School.' In the same way the commandant at Sandhurst used to adjure us in his speeches, 'to keep always before you the thought of the day when you will join your regiment.'

There is the fear and the attraction of the unknown future. And, for the sake of it, a boy will work far harder than he would otherwise have done. He looks beyond the rewards and position that his own school offers. It is not enough to be in the highest form, not enough to be in the first eleven. He must improve himself so as to be able to take a high place in the next stage of his career. A public school boy, on the other hand, regards the honours that his school has to offer as an end sufficient in themselves. In occasional addresses he is adjured to think of the day when he will have to step out of that cloistered peace into the rush and traffic of life; but that day is distant. He has little ambition beyond 'a ribboned coat' and a seat at the high table. His horizon is contracted, and his behaviour is that of those who do not believe in a survival after death. He places an undue value upon the immediate and the present. The preparatory school boy always looks ahead to a future stage of life. And so it is that, when the last day at school comes, he is not the victim of the surprised sentimentality that overcomes the public school boy. He has begun to feel that he has outgrown his surroundings. He has chafed at the restraint of childhood. He has felt that success or failure is of little importance: so soon he will be making a fresh start. He has lived in the future. He has spent long summer evenings reading the history of his new school. He has studied photographs of its buildings; he has pored over old numbers of the school magazines, and has formed a romantic conception of the giants of whose prowess he has read. The future opens before him with limitless opportunities, and he can face it with an eager confidence after his five long years of discipline. How long they have taken in the passing, and yet in retrospect how flat they appear, how colourless, how tiresome. Nothing has happened; day has followed day. Ah, well, that is over now. Life is to begin. The new boy sets out hungry for experience. On the last day at his Preparatory School he is addressed, in company with the other boys who are leaving, by the head master. His egotism is flattered by the assurance that the honour of his old school lies in his hands. He is told that he will need a firm upper lip and a stout heart. He listens to a recommendation of honesty, truthfulness, and courage—all this he has heard before. He has read so many school stories. And then, suddenly, he is startled by a warning against temptations, the nature of which he imperfectly understands. His curiosity is roused. He learns that if he yields to these temptations his career will be spoilt, his health and brain will be ruined. How this fate is going to be brought about he is not certain, but he agrees with his head master that it is a fatality at all costs to be avoided. He asks a friend for enlightenment and receives a superior answer of: 'Oh, don't you know!' which makes him think that his friend knows even less about it than he does. At any rate this particular temptation has not yet presented itself, and the acknowledgment of its existence fades from his contemplation of a golden future.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW BOY

Alpha and Omega are the most widely known letters of the Greek alphabet. And the first and last weeks of a public school career have inspired more essays and sermons than the other two hundred and fifty weeks put together. Yet in neither the beginning nor the end is to be found the essence of school life. The last week is a period of agreeable sentiment. The first of embarrassed loneliness. The new boy feels that he has no part in the life of the school. On that first afternoon, when he has said good-bye to his parents, and turns to walk away from the station, the school buildings, chapel, studies, cloisters, assume in the mellow September sunlight the prospect of a distant city that one day he may be privileged to enter. At present he is outside it, as he stands at the edge of the courts, forlorn in his black tie and wide brimmed straw hat, while the stream of boys in bowler hats and gaily coloured ties pours up from the station. On all sides he hears shouts of welcome, snatches of eager conversation. No one takes the least notice of him. He is an unrecognised foreigner.

During supper, he sits silent and nervous among the new boys at the day-room table. From time to time he casts hesitating glances at the raised table where the prefects sit. What giants they seem. He wonders which is Featherstone, the head of the House? Is that imposing figure with the black hair brushed back from his forehead, the G. O. Evans, who made 121 in the Public School's match at Lords? Can it be possible that he and they are members of the same society?

A prefect rises from the high table and leaves the hall. Immediately forms are pushed back and the long narrow passage leading to the dormitories is filled with sound. The new boy is taken with the stream. What will happen to him now, he wonders? He has always understood that most of the ragging takes place in the dormitories. Will all new boys be subjected to some common lot? In a way he almost hopes that they will. He may thus be given an opportunity of showing his courage. He will be marked down at once as 'a bit of a sport.'

But nothing happens. He walks timidly into the large airy room with its bare boards, its row of wash-hand stands and red-quilted beds. He sees his bag lying in the middle of the floor. Three hours earlier when he and his parents had been shown round by the house-master's wife, he had placed his bag on the corner bed. It had seemed to him a good idea to reserve that particular bed. He would then be open to attack only on one side. Memories of Horatius Cocles had stirred his imagination. But some one else is already undressing there. He picks up his bag, and is about to place it on the bed nearest him when a warning voice informs him that Jones has bagged that bed. He looks round him in dismay. There are only two vacant beds. 'May I have that one?' he asks. The boy with the warning voice looks surprised at being questioned. 'I should think so,' he says, 'unless Hughes wants it. He had it last term.' The new boy does not know whether or not he dare begin to undress beside the bed that Hughes may possibly commandeer. He stands irresolute; then decides to take the risk. There is nothing to choose between the two positions, and Hughes would probably prefer a change.

He begins slowly to undress. No one takes the least notice of him. No one evinces the slightest inclination to test the courage of the new man. No hardened bully enters with a blanket. It is possible that two blasé young gentlemen from another dormitory will stroll in 'just to have a look at the new men,' will make a cursory examination, and having expressed their disgust at 'such an appalling crew,' will seek better fortune elsewhere. That will be all. The inquisition of preparatory school terrors is a myth. This generation is not more timid than its predecessors, but it is more subtle. The boy who has just ceased to be labelled 'new' wishes to impress his importance on the new boy. Forty years ago he achieved this object by putting the new boy on a chair and throwing boots at him. The appeal to physical force was not, however, invariably successful. Sometimes the small boy retaliated, and there is no reason why a boy of thirteen should not be a match for one of fourteen. At any rate the 'year older' has accepted the twentieth century doctrine that the easiest way to impress a person is to ignore him. And so the boy of a year's standing assumes an air of Olympian superiority. The new man is beneath his notice. He prefers to lean in the doorway of the dormitory, and talk of the days when 'Meredith had that far bed, and Johnstone had the wash-hand stand beneath the window.' He will casually let fall the names of the mighty and note their effect on the young. In the daytime he is probably quite an insignificant person, low in form and a funk at football. He can only appear great in the presence of his juniors during the quarter of an hour between supper and lights out. He therefore takes enormous pains to secure the admiration of those whom he affects to despise.

It is the same everywhere. At Sandhurst, on the first night of each term, the seniors used to cluster round the piano and sing till 'rooms' with incredible violence and discord. It was done entirely to impress the juniors, and on the whole I am inclined to think it was successful. The junior is a shy person, and the din has on him an effect not unlike that of an intensive bombardment. As the junior sits in a far corner of the anteroom, cowed and unhappy by an exhibition that is being conducted, though he does not know it, entirely for his benefit, so does the new boy lie back in bed on his first night, wondering what it is all about.

The jargon puzzles him; the attitude to life puzzles him. The boy with the warning voice is lamenting that he has got his 'budge.'

'Rotten luck,' he says. 'I should like to have stopped in old Moke's for at least a year. I did just well enough in each paper to avoid being bottled. Fourteenth I came out, and now they've started a new form, so we've all got shoved up.' The rest of the dormitory express sympathy. Then some one wonders whether Davenport will turn 'pi' now he's a 'pre'; the opinion is expressed that Ferguson will find himself pretty lonely now that Wodehouse has left. A lot of people have apparently been waiting a long time to kick him with impunity. Some one says, 'Let's make up the Fifteen,' and the rival claims of Bradshaw and Murray are carefully weighed. And all the while four wretched new boys listen in silent, confused wonderment.

The conversation gradually becomes spasmodic. There are longer and longer pauses between the conclusion of one topic and the introduction of another. 'Well,' says the senior boy, 'about time we were going to sleep. Good-night all.' There is a murmur of 'good-night': silence: and then again the warning voice. 'Oh, but I say, Stewart, what about the new men's concert?' There is immediate interest among the senior members. Of course, they had forgotten that ... the new men's concert.

'Too late now,' says Stewart. 'Let's have it on Sunday.'

'Hear that, you new fellows; you must all have a song by Sunday. Good-night.'

But there is little sleep for the new boy. Where is he? What has happened to him? Such a little while ago he was secure, garrisoned, sheltered by his home. Only twelve hours. He begins to wish that he had not been so anxious to leave his prep. Why hadn't he stayed on there another year? He would have been head of the school. At this very moment if he had not been so absurdly impetuous he would be turning over to go to sleep, having wished his dormitory 'good-night.' Just as Stewart had done. The thought of the concert terrifies him. He is a bad singer. Will they make him stand on a chair? will they throw boots at him if his voice quavers, or if he forgets the words? It will be a long-drawn agony.

And for a couple of days he is made wretched by the prospect of this ordeal. It allows him no peace of mind. In form, on the football field, as he walks up to the tuck shop, the disquieting thought descends to torture him. But in the end it is a very tame affair. It takes place after lights out, and new boys, as well as lovers, win a strange courage of the darkness. Moreover, the object of the concert is to amuse the senior members of the dormitory, and bad singing amuses no one. Myself, I remember being stopped before I had completed one verse of 'The British Grenadiers,' whereas the boy next to me, who had an agreeable treble voice was made to sing, 'Put on your ta-ta, little girlie,' every other night for the rest of the term.

The concert is practically the sole direct ordeal that a new boy has to face: yet it is probable that he would, on the whole, prefer the old-fashioned methods. It is better to be ragged than to be ignored. And he spends most of his first week wondering whether he has done the right thing. It is especially difficult if he finds himself placed high in the school. The lower forms are mainly composed of new boys, companions in calamity, and the master in charge of the second is lenient during the early days. It is different for the boy who finds himself in the Lower Fifth, or Upper Fourth. As likely as not there is only one other new boy in his house in the same form, and, when he cannot find that particular boy, there is no one to whom he may turn for advice. He soon learns that it is not wise to carry his troubles to his seniors. He may find himself in his house-master's study, waiting to hand in the list of books he will require, and suddenly he remembers that he has forgotten to put down his Latin prose book on the list; he has also forgotten what Latin prose book his form uses. He casts a despairing eye round the room and recognises, leaning against a bookcase the languid, supercilious figure of Watney. What luck, he thinks, Watney has been in the Upper Fourth two years. He is sure to know. The new boy edges towards him. 'Please,' he asks, 'what Latin prose book do we use?'

His query is met by a look of amazed, outraged disapproval. Watney looks him up and down. Then at last: 'Who are "we"?' he says. The experiment is not repeated. The new boy arrives in form without his Latin prose book and is threatened with an imposition.

The geography of the school is very puzzling.

No new boy could be expected to gather much help from the information that his class-room is 'under the library, up on the right, next to Uncle Ned's.' For at least a week he is always entering the wrong form room. In the lower forms it is customary for the master to glance round the class, see that five boys are missing, and send the senior member in search of them as a matter of course. Indeed the first week of term is very pleasant for the senior member of the lower forms. He spends most of his time searching for lost lambs, and he is in no frantic haste to complete his task. But that is in the lower form, and, in the middle and upper schools, form masters do not care to have their time wasted. The absence of Jones mi. is not regarded as a joke.

Nicknames are confusing.

The new boy does not realise that 'Crusoe' and Mr Robinson are the same person. And, when he finds himself a quarter of an hour late in Mr Robinson's class-room, his excuse that he thought he had to go to 'Mr Crusoe' is not an official success. He is always on the brink of a mistake.

Probably his life is further complicated by the fact that he is playing Rugby football for the first time, and, for at least a month, his performances on the field can give him little satisfaction and less amusement. In the course of two or three puntabouts he is taught by his house-captain how to pack and how to take a pass. He is then drafted on to pick ups and house-games to fare as best he may. He fares extremely badly. He hangs about on the edge of the scrum. He catches hold of his opponents when they are dribbling and attempts an Association barge when they are running. For a long time he never touches the ball with his hands at all, and on the rare occasions when he discovers it at his feet, he takes a terrific rout at it and is contemptuously informed that he is not playing soccer. He is playing with boys older and heavier than himself. He has little chance of acquiring self-confidence: no footballer is really any use till he has scored a try, and that day is slow in coming. The new boy's chief anxiety on the field is to avoid the notice of any house caps that may be on the touchline. At half-time he will rub worm-casts on his knees to present an appearance of muddy valour. He is terribly afraid he will be reported and beaten for slacking. This fate rarely, as a matter of fact, overtakes a small boy. A beating for slackness is usually reserved for the boy about half-way up the house who has committed no definite offence, but has been making a nuisance of himself generally. Slackness on the field is the excuse for an official reprimand, and its effect is usually salutary. This, however, the new boy does not know. Games, when the house-captain is on the touchline, become a misery. During his first term he looks forward to the First Fifteen matches chiefly because on those days he will not himself have to play.

But it is in his spare time that he most acutely feels himself outside the general life of the school. He is oppressed by liberty. He does not know what to do with it. At his Preparatory School an elaborate time-table was posted on the notice-board, and every moment of his day was pigeonholed. A boy had no excuse for not knowing at any given time what he ought to be doing, and where he ought to be doing it. There was constant supervision. But, at a Public School, provided a boy answers his name at roll-call, and fulfils his social engagements in the form room and on the football field, no one worries much what he is doing during the rest of the time. He can search for plovers' eggs, or hunt for fossils, or develop photographs, or overeat at the tuck shop. He is his own master, and this the new boy cannot understand. When he has changed after football on a half-holiday he asks himself: 'What ought I to be doing now?' The answer is, of course: 'Nothing in particular. Whatever you like.' A disconcerting answer, for there is nothing in particular that he wants to do. The day room is inhospitable. The big chairs round the fire are occupied by the mighty. The library is only of less interest to him than the museum. The tuck shop at such an hour is full of bloods in whose presence he feels embarrassed. He wanders disconsolately round the courts. All the other new boys seem to have found something to do (a common delusion this). In the end he succeeds in finding some one equally lonely with whom he goes for a walk: and a walk, unless one is a botanist, is such a strange way of spending an afternoon, that I have since wondered whether any one after his first term ever goes for a walk at school without an ulterior motive, except when he is in training.

It is a strange business that first term, and its importance is, I think, overrated. It is not public school life. It is composed of the hesitations, the reactions of a novice. School life is on the other side of it. The new boy sees that life in fragments. It puzzles him. He tries to fit it into shape with the scale of values he acquired at his Preparatory School. And fails. The Preparatory School belongs to childhood, the Public School to adolescence. The new boy understands little of what is going on round him. Indeed there is no person whose testimony can be less relied upon than that of the new boy of four weeks' standing. He never knows what he should, and what he should not, believe. The new life is so strange to him that he is prepared to accept any absurdity for the truth. The veriest nincompoop can pull his leg.

The following story is true.

It was the custom in my house for the matron to put out clean underclothes for each boy on Saturday evening. On my first Saturday I noticed that no clean pants had been put out for me. I asked an elder boy why this was. 'Oh, don't you know?' he said, 'we only have clean pants twice a term.' I believed him. The matron thought that I, in common with many others, did not start wearing pants till well into the winter. In consequence I wore the same pair till the second week in November. It is the same with regard to the more serious issues of school life. Mischief is often caused by the mistaken ideas that new boys give their parents of what does and what does not go on in their house.

I was provided the other day with a good example. At a certain house in a famous school it was the practice of the house-master's wife to sit at the day-room table for lunch. The idea was admirable. The house-master's wife was a sympathetic woman who wished to recall to the small boys the regenerating atmosphere of their homes. The results, however, were unfortunate. The small boys became communicative. In their innocence they repeated stories of which the true significance had escaped them. In their ignorance they misinterpreted stories of which the nature happened to be direct. In neither case did the reputation of certain light-hearted sportsmen on the Va. table rise in the official esteem. Indeed of that particular house there was composed a limerick, the exact wording of which has more humour than propriety, to the effect that the house reports of the Sixth Form table were written by the fags. Few parents, however, would accept this explanation.

Officially the first term is usually an unqualified success. The new boy is not distracted from his studies by the stress of house politics nor by the ambitions of the football field. The weekly form order is his chief excitement. And it would be surprising, considering the qualified enthusiasm with which the majority of the form welcome this occurrence, if the new boy did not soon find himself in the running for promotion. There is, indeed, little else for him to do. He lives in a world of his own. He sees a good deal of new boys in other houses, and the usual question in break on Saturday morning is: 'Where were you this week?' His offences against discipline are inconsiderable. It is 'side' for a new boy to rag in the day room, in the changing room, and in the dormitories. That is the privilege of his seniors. He is not hardened enough to rag in form. He still regards work as important. I remember once seeing a very small and inoffensive scholar crumple up a sheet of paper and fling it at the head of his chemistry master. He maintained, however, that he was aiming at the waste-paper basket, and, though the excuse was not accepted, the offender's subsequent performances on the cricket field have inclined me to think he spoke the truth. At any rate this is the sole piece of audacity on the part of a new boy that I have witnessed. Indeed the new boy who does not return home with a thundering good report is a well-placed candidate for expulsion. Most of us start well. How many public school boys would have to confess that they won their only prize in their first term. The new boy returns home as from a Roman triumph. The indulgent father is prodigal of largess and theatre-tickets. His secretary is instructed to type out the report and send copies of it to aunts and uncles and his former head master. It is a great occasion, and we do well to make the most of it. It does not come twice.

The change begins, I suppose, on the first evening of the second term, when the novice, clad appropriately in bowler hat and coloured tie, is accosted by a member of the form into which he has been promoted and informed that he will be expected to do the 'con' for them that term. There is no threat. It is merely the announcement of an arrangement for mutual help. The old stagers who have slowly moved up the school, with the danger of superannuation camping on their trail, consider that their last terms should pass in a soft tranquility. They expect the newcomer to provide them with that peace. 'Here,' they say, 'is a smart lad who has got his promotion straight away; he can be of great service to us.' It is a form of practical communism of which the scholar is particularly the victim. There is a general conscription of intellect. Scholars are expected to do the work of the bloods. 'You are paid to come here,' say the great men, 'you must prove yourselves worthy of your hire.' Arnold Lunn has described how the captain of his house used to hold an educational raffle. Slips of paper on which were written: 'Greek Prose'; 'Latin Prose'; 'Essay,' were placed in a hat and the scholars took their chance of drawing a blank. I can still hear the voice of the school fast-bowler shouting over the banisters to a wretched goggle-eyed youth, 'No. 69, Becke, and shove it in my study before prayers.'

But the scholar is an exceptional person, and the novice who is accosted in the courts has an easier fate. He does not have to do other people's work. He merely has to do his own out loud. He is, moreover, a privileged person. He does not have to look the words up in a dictionary. That is the task of another member of the combination. He is spared the hack work of translation. It is for him to discover the sense. At a first glance it would seem that this arrangement would be to the advantage of the new boy; certainly it will ensure his industry. There is no chance of his scamping his work. The fate of others depends on his efficiency, and it does not pay him to guess at the sense. I remember once translating Remotis arbielis, surrexit e lectulo, 'having kicked off his bedclothes he rose from his bed.' No one questioned the interpretation, so I proceeded to the next sentence. None of us luckily was put on to translate that passage, but I can recall now the icy looks of the other members of the combination when the sentence was correctly rendered. I made a bolt for it afterwards, but they caught me. I did not guess again.

The form interpreter is never able to say to himself: 'I went on to con yesterday, and I went on the day before, there's not the least likelihood of my being put on to-day. I shan't prepare it.' He has to labour for the general good, and probably, by the end of the term, he knows the Latin and Greek books pretty well. But he has not only learnt the correct rendering of certain obscure classical passages; he has learnt also, through contact with older boys, the correct public school attitude to work and the relative importance of football and mathematics.

This is what he learns.

It is the business of the school to win their matches and to produce first-class footballers and cricketers; it is the business of the house to win their house matches and to produce as many colours as possible. It is the business of every individual member of the school to subscribe to this creed. The value of scholastic achievements is relative. It is a feather in the cap of a double first to be privileged to wear the dark blue ribbon of the Sixth. But it is not a necessary achievement. Scholars, on the other hand, should work. They are no use to the school at games. It is for them to do what little lies within their power; a scholarship has its value. The school likes to get scholarships. It is a side show, of course, but a creditable side show. And the Fourth Former, after recounting the feats of Lewis in the big school match, comments on the fact that Bevan won a Balliol scholarship in the same way that the village greengrocer will say: 'Oh, yes, sir, we have a drapery department, too.' Real brains are accorded a sort of grudging admiration. They are entitled to respect. A Fellow has done his job well. It may not be an important job, but he has done it. Our Fourth Former remembers the parable of the talents. The Balliol scholar has converted his one talent into two.

The boy, however, who, without being a scholar, shows unusual signs of industry, is a swot. Valuable time is wasted. The school is divided into two parts: the scholars and the rest. The rest brings to its work whatever energy is saved from its more arduous activities. No one thinks any the less of a man for being low in form. Slackness on the football field is anti-social. In the long category of an unpopular boy's offence the final evidence of worthlessness is the statement: 'He doesn't even work.' Even that resort, 'that last infirmity,' is denied him. What purpose has his existence? These are the articles of faith; these are the conventions. And the new boy who is ambitious, who wishes to win the respect and admiration of his comrades realises that athletic prowess will win him a position that is beyond the reach of the liveliest intellect. He begins to look on his work as a side show. It does not particularly matter what happens to him in the class-room. It would be nice to reach the Sixth. There are agreeable privileges. But it is not of first importance.

No sooner has he decided this, than he discovers that his form work is intolerably dull. Of course he does. He brings no enthusiasm to it. The masters who can inspire the indifferent are rare. And the mind wanders from the inky desks, the hunched row of shoulders, and the far voice of a master droning monotonously, to the swimming bath and the cricket field. Will Butler get the cricket cup? Did Frobisher get his firsts because he was worth them, or because he was in the Captain's house? These topics offer inviting prospects; speculation follows speculation till suddenly the tired voice breaks into the day-dream: 'Will you continue now, please, Dunkin?' There is a scuffle as Dunkin collects his books and thoughts. There is a whisper of: 'Where's the place?' 'What does crates favorum mean?' And the delinquent begins to stumble through his lines in a fashion that may, or may not, result in an imposition. To the unresponsive the atmosphere is one of intolerable listlessness.

He makes another discovery, namely, that during his first term he did far more work than was strictly necessary. That he should discover the idiosyncracies of certain masters was a matter of course. Sooner or later he would have been bound to learn that in Old Mouldy's he could pin the repetition on to the back of the boy in front of him, that the Moke's mathematical class provided him with an admirable opportunity for writing the imposition that his house-master had given him the evening before. A good batsman soon sizes up the opposing fieldsmen; he knows whether he can risk a single to cover, or whether there is one for a throw when the ball goes slowly to third man. That is part of the game. The new boy makes more important discoveries than that. He comes to understand the intricacies of the set system by which the middle and upper schools learn French, German, Science, and Mathematics.

For the days have passed when a boy learnt only Latin and Greek and a little French grammar. A liberal education is supposed to give him a general idea of a wide number of subjects. A choice of subjects is allowed, and it is hard to arrange a fair system of marking that will bring the boy who does German into line with the boy who does Greek. Each school tackles the situation in a different way, but each system probably leaves a loophole for the idle. It could hardly be otherwise, and it is enough to describe one system and the tactics that are adopted to cope with it.

This particular system works as follows: It is accepted that the only universal subjects, that is, the only subjects that are studied by the whole form under the same master, are Latin and English, and, under English, are to be included History, Literature, Geography, and Divinity. On the marks earned in these subjects the form order and promotion depends. All other subjects, Greek, German, French, Science, and Mathematics are treated independently of the form order and are taught in sets of varying standards. It would seem to be a very sound scheme. A boy, for instance, may be a bad historian and a poor classic, but a fine mathematician. If all subjects were included in the same order he would be kept back by his bad English and Latin and would have to do algebra that he had long outgrown, yet at the same time his mathematical ability would place him in a form where the English and classics would be too difficult for him. Under the set system it is possible for the boy to reach the highest set in the school at mathematics and yet remain in the Shell or Lower Fourth.

During his first term the new boy worked with equal industry at form and set subjects. During his second term he realises that he is wasting his energy. Proficiency in Greek will not help him to secure his promotion into the Lower Fifth; whereas, if he takes things easily at Greek, he will be able to spend more time on History and Latin. Indeed, it might be said that the wily one 'makes a book' in form and set subjects. He appreciates the need of reserve strength. He ought always to have a little in hand. He casts his eye down his time-table. There is no reason why he should not spare himself during the hour in the laboratory. The time might be so much more profitably devoted to his Latin 'con'; and at the time, of course, he will not consider the possibility of allowing such an arrangement to divert in any way his classical activities in 'prep' on the previous night. Far from it. He will have an opportunity to revise. He again studies his time-table. French with 'Bogus.' A little relaxation there is possible. Greek with 'Crusoe,' however, presents difficulties. Crusoe is something of a martinet; he expects lessons to be prepared, and he has a way of remembering what impositions he has set. He will have to work hard for Crusoe. Indeed it would be as well if he tried an honest, or the equivalent for an honest term's work for Crusoe. Is not the next set conducted by the Moke on admirably communal grounds. In the Moke's every one helps every one. There is no haste, no envy, no striving for position. A few scholars hurry through on their way to Balliol scholarships. They do not matter. They are only ripples on the surface of that calm, deep pool.

Sometimes 'the book is made' the other way. A member of the school eleven has at last reached the Lower Fifth, and is content for a term or two to rest upon his achievements. He decides to do just enough work to avoid being bottled. He realises, however, that it will be as well for his father's peace of mind if a few single figures appear after his name in the report. And so he devotes himself to Chemistry and French. Two subjects appear on the time-table for each evening's preparation. And it is a bad day when it is impossible to dismiss at least one of them in a quarter of an hour.

Examinations present difficulties. And it is here that the new boy, at the end of the summer term, makes his first serious compromise with the rigid code of ethics that he has brought with him from his Preparatory School. Why should he not crib in set subjects. They are unimportant. Promotion does not depend on them. He is not taking an unfair advantage of any one else. He will only do just well enough to avoid having to do the paper again. Why should he have to spend hours sweating up a useless subject. It is absurd. Besides, cribbing is rather an exciting game. It is a daring feat to smuggle the principal parts of the irregular verb, into a waistcoat pocket. It needs courage to open a French dictionary beneath the desk. He will be able to talk about it afterwards, and fellows will say he is a sport. It is the first step, and afterwards the compromise becomes increasingly easy.

He returns home at the end of his first year fortified with a deal of worldly wisdom. He looks forward to the next year hopefully. He knows where he is now. He has learnt the tricks of the trade. It is all going to be splendid fun.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND YEAR

And it is splendid fun. Let us make no mistake about that. It is splendid fun. For the ordinary boy, for all those, that is to say, who have not been designed by nature for the contemptuous entertainment of their companions, nothing is much better than the second and third years. It is a light-hearted, swash-buckling period. The anxieties of the fag have been forgotten, the responsibilities of the Sixth Former are still remote. The second yearer can rag, and his ragging is not taken seriously. At the end of the term house-masters do not address him solemnly and appeal to his better nature. They beat him, and that makes it a square fight. He knows where he is. He has to remain on the right side of the law. If he passes the limit, he knows what to expect. Later on the issue will be complicated by his position: for a while he can afford to be an irresponsible free-lance.

It is a happy time of eager unreflecting action. There is a good deal of noisiness and 'showing off.' But it is harmless. A boy has just begun to find himself. He is free at last. At his Preparatory School he was always under the eye of authority. His freedom was enmeshed by a network of regulations. His first year at his Public School his freedom was fettered by nervousness and prejudice. That is over now. I sometimes think that we love Charlie Chaplin so dearly because he does all the things we have not the courage to do ourselves. When a waiter hurries past us with a pile of plates, how delightful it would be, we think, to drive our feet between his legs; who would not love to hurl a brick at a retreating foe; who is not tempted to crook his walking-stick round the ankles of the pompous. We never do these things; not as we should like to do them. But we come as near as we ever shall come to the attainment of this desire during our second year at school. On a small scale it is permitted us to destroy furniture. We can pull chairs from beneath an unsuspecting foe. The strings of a hammock have been cut to the discomfiture of the occupant. The terminal bill for breakages is often considerable, but no one is ever really hurt.

For what little bullying exists nowadays the second and third yearers are in the main responsible. The effect of a new-found freedom is intoxicating. And there is always a boy in every house who is an irresistible butt. There is a compound German word that means 'face-that-invites-a-box-on-the-ear.' And such a physiognomy is the invariable possession of at least one scholar; in its own way the magnetic influence of such ugliness is as irresistible as the charm of a pretty woman. One has only to see that particular brand of face to want to heave a boot at it. One refrains seldom. It used to be held that every house contains one bully. It would be truer to say that every house contains one boy who is bullied. Most boys go through their schooldays without being subjected to any bullying, but most boys indulge in a little spasmodic bullying themselves. It is a sort of bull baiting, and it is in the main good-natured.

Four or five fellows are sitting in a study after tea. There are still twenty minutes before lock-up, and the conversation has grown desultory. They all feel a little bored. One of them suggests that they should go and see how that ass 'Sniffy' is getting on. It is a popular suggestion, and a raid is made upon Sniffy's study. Sniffy is discovered working. This is considered to be a disgrace to the house, and Sniffy is informed of the fact. He invites his guests to get out. 'But, my dear Sniffy, what hospitality! Surely you are going to offer us a chair! No? Then we must teach you manners!' Sniffy's chair is suddenly jerked from under him and Sniffy is flung forward on to his table. He jumps up and lets fly at one of his assailants. It is no fun ragging some one who does not retaliate, and proceedings are soon less cordial. In the end Sniffy's study is pretty effectively wrecked. This happens about once a fortnight, but, beyond this, I am inclined to think that, except in a bad house, there is very little bullying now in Public Schools.

The tone of a house changes far more quickly than the tone of a school. And, in every school, there is usually a thoroughly bad house. As a house-master grows old he tends to leave the management of the house more and more in the hands of his prefects. As long as his prefects are efficient all goes well; but, sooner or later, a weak head is bound to come, and then the swash-buckling element gets out of hand. One of the houses when I first went to school had got into this state. The head boy was easy-going, and there were in the day room two members of the First Fifteen who had in school failed to reach the Lower Fourth and who were thorough 'wrong 'uns.' Terrible tales of refined torture used to be repeated in the upper dormitories, and I can well believe that life there was pretty wretched. But I always distrust second-hand accounts. Nothing is more easily distorted than the story of atrocities, and, for my part, I have neither been a victim, nor the witness of any serious bullying. The only case that reached official notice during my time savoured strongly of the ludicrous.

A parent had complained that his son had been ill-treated, and all the house prefects were summoned into the head master's presence. The offenders were leaning nervously against the wall; their victim was enduring tortures of self-consciousness; the head master was fingering his pen, and the avenging father blocked up the entire fireplace. There was a dead silence. We were all hard put to it not to smile. The offenders looked so much smaller than the prey. At last proceedings were opened by the boy's parent. He followed the traditional line. He had been a boy. He knew what boys were. He knew the public school code of honour. He loathed sneaking. His boy had not sneaked. The confession had been dragged out of him. What he, the father, wanted, was not punishment, but the assurance that such a thing would not happen again. 'And now, John,' he concluded, 'show the head master that bruise upon your arm.' Very sheepishly the boy drew off his coat, rolled up his sleeve and revealed a bruise, certainly of extensive proportions.

'How did they do that?' asked the chief.

'By flicking him with wet towels, head master,' said the parent.

A simultaneous denial came from both offenders. 'We didn't make that bruise, sir.'

'But did you flick him?' asked the chief.

'Well, sir; yes.'

'Then how on earth can you tell that you did not make that bruise?'

There was a moment's silence, during which the smaller of the offenders surveyed the wound with an almost envious eye.

'It couldn't have been me, sir,' he said at last. 'I can't flick well enough to have done that.'

I hope I may be pardoned for retelling this story, which I have already told elsewhere. But it seems to me to interpret perfectly the attitude towards bullying that exists in most houses. No doubt there was a great deal of bullying fifty years ago. And people think that what was true of the Rugby of Tom Brown's Schooldays is true of the Shrewsbury of to-day. They still think that the three chief sins of a Public School are bullying, stealing, and midnight escapades into the town. But those days have passed. In Desmond Coke's The Bending of a Twig the new boy who sought for bullies behind every cloister quickly won the nickname of Don Q.

It is usually during the course of his fourth term that a boy first begins to swear. For swearing is, on the whole, confined to members of the Middle School. It is side for a fag to swear, and an oath, except on rare occasions, is considered beneath the dignity of a blood. He is supposed to dwell in an Olympian fastness beyond the reach of inconvenience, where the need for violent language is infrequently presented. For the second yearer, however, life is full of emotion that demands to be registered forcibly.

I can never quite see why so many people refuse to believe that a schoolboy's conversation is punctuated with 'damns' and 'bloodys.' We employ the idiom of our surroundings. A boy does not swear at home; at school he does. And there is no particular reason why he should not. An oath means little to him. He knows that some indecency is implied. But the meaning of the word is not defined by his use of it. He rarely employs it appropriately. He recommends the most contradictory performances. A powerful expression is needed. He wishes the world to know that he has been moved powerfully either to anger, or to delight. That is all. Any word that would have this effect would suit him, and I remember a dormitory captain insisting that the only expletive to be used in his presence should be 'daggers'; this crasis satisfied every one. The language a boy uses is no index to his character. Swearing and 'talking smut' are very different things.

It is also in his fourth term that a boy who is anything of an athlete begins to discover himself on the football field. He finds himself scoring tries in home games. He is noticed by the bloods as a coming man. He makes friends among his seniors. He is no longer outside the life of the school. The road of ambition lies clear and straight before him. It is marked out in distinct stages. He learnt, of course, during his first term that a house cap may put one hand in his trouser pockets, that a seconds may put both, that a first may walk across the sixth form green in break; but these facts were distant in the imagination like the ritual of a mediæval court: they now become realities. In a year, he reminds himself, he will be in his house fifteen. The year after he should get his house cap. In four years he should be a first. It might, indeed, be maintained that the blood system is at the same time the magnet and the expression of the second yearer's ambition. The blood would not value his performances so highly were he not encouraged by others in the belief that he is of supreme importance. And, at fifteen, one idealises the future. It seems splendid to be a blood, to play for the school against Blackheath, to saunter across the courts with one's hands in one's pockets, one's books stuck under one's arms; to be on terms of friendly intercourse with masters, to be beyond the reach of punishment. And, because the future seems so glorious, the second yearer idealises the dwellers in it. In the same way that in Chelsea the latest poet or draughtsman can disregard the social laws of property and of propriety, in the eyes of the junior the blood can do no wrong. His voice is hushed when a blood passes him in the cloisters. If one should speak to him, he blushes and stammers and feels proud of it for days. The blood naturally endeavours to realise the popular conception of himself. He owes his position to it. For the higher up the school we go, the less important the blood appears, and, when our time comes to sit at the high table, we can hardly believe that we are occupying the same chair that Meredith sat in four years ago. It is absurd. How the house must have come down. To think of that little ass, Barton, being a prefect. How short a time since he was playing in junior house games and getting cursed for funking. And for ourselves—it is only yesterday that we were trembling, a diffident new boy, at the far corner of the day-room table. We cannot but believe our generation to be vastly inferior to those that have preceded it, and we do not think otherwise even when we win the senior cricket cup, although in Meredith's year the house was beaten by an innings in the first round. It is not in our nature to desire, or even value highly, what we possess. The last year is often a disappointment.

No such foreknowledge mars the enjoyment and anticipation of the second yearer. It is indeed hard to imagine a more fortunate combination of circumstances. From an agreeable present he surveys the prospect of a delightful future. The days may pass slowly, or swiftly, as they will…their passage will be a long enchantment.

It is during this period that a boy gets through the majority of his ragging in form. Now the ragging of masters is a very specialised art. The master holds all the cards. He has behind him the marshalled forces of the law. He can cane, he can give lines. He has every implement, physical and moral, for the preservation of order. He ought to be able to keep order. Yet the boy usually wins. Indeed, I often wonder how a master, who has once begun to be ragged, can ever hope to regain order. He is fighting a confident foe. The new boy learns during his first week that 'one can do anything one likes in Musty's.' Musty stands no chance. He enters the form room nervously; he is on the lookout for trouble; he is afraid to turn his back on the class when he is working on the blackboard. For ten minutes there is silence, a suspicious silence, perhaps, but still a silence. Musty tells himself that if any one attempts to break that silence he will make him sorry for it. He will punish the first whisper: that is the only way. And then, suddenly, from the back of the room, comes an ominous sound. It is not a cough: it is not a sneeze: it is a hideous nasal and vocal croak that Musty has learnt to recognise as the prelude to rebellion. He observes that some one is cramming a handkerchief into his mouth, and is choking in the subdued manner of one who is unsuccessfully stifling a laugh.

Musty decides on action. 'Jones, take that handkerchief out of your mouth immediately, and you'll spend the afternoon doing me a hundred lines.' Jones withdraws the handkerchief from his chin, and his face assumes an expression of outraged innocence. 'But, sir…' he begins.

'A hundred and fifty lines,' snaps Musty.

At this point the democracy of the class feels that its independence has been violated. There is a murmur of disapproval. And a tall, cadaverous youth rises from the front desk.

'Please, sir…'

'Silence, Evans.'

'No, sir, but really,' Evans persists, 'I must explain to you, sir, that the younger Jones is suffering from a very severe cold.'

'Yes, sir, I am,' blurts out the victim. 'And the matron said I was not to play football this afternoon.'

At this point Musty should, of course, be firm.

'I am sorry,' he should say, 'but, at the same time, that will allow you, Jones, to do me two hundred lines instead of a hundred and fifty. And perhaps you, Evans, will do me a hundred and fifty. Thank you. We will now proceed with the lesson.'

Such tactics might succeed. But Musty hesitates; for a moment he wonders whether Jones is telling him the truth. And the delay is fatal. Already other members have started to produce testimonials to Jones mi.'s integrity and disease. 'He really is awfully bad, sir. My study's next door to him, and he was coughing all last night. He made such a noise that I was only able to do you three problems instead of six!'

A general conversation begins. Members cease even to address the chair. When Evans assures Musty that 'Jones would never tell a lie,' Power retorts that the other day Jones sold him a watch as new which went smash at once. 'Dirty little liar, I call him!' 'You wait till afterwards,' is Jones's reply. And, by the time honour has been vindicated, there is no chance of restoring order that day. The class is already out of hand. Jones mi. has the general permission to sneeze as often as he likes, a permission of which he generously avails himself.

Such a disturbance should have been quelled by a firm hand. Masters have to run the risk of being unfair. There is, of course, the possibility that Jones's cold may have been genuine, but his previous record should preclude it to a 100 to 1 chance. At any rate, it is unlikely that Jones would be anxious to carry the case to the head master. Criminals avoid Bow Street.

It is not usually, however, so easy to distinguish the preliminary manœuvres. When, for instance, a boy walks quickly up to the master's desk and says that he thinks there is a peculiar smell in the room, the master is taken off his guard. He assumes interest. He walks to where the boy was sitting and sniffs. A polite boy rises and asks respectfully if anything is the matter. 'No, nothing,' says the master, 'Jones thought there was a curious smell where he was sitting.' The interest of the form is quickened. There is a general sound of sniffing. 'Well, sir, now that Jones comes to mention it, I do seem to recognize—I don't quite know what it is, sir.'

'Come, come,' says the master, 'that'll do.'

'No, but really, sir, I don't know if it's quite healthy. Do you think the drains are all right?'

The information is hazarded that there have been several cases of typhoid recently in the town.

'It must be the drains.'

Then some one suggests that it may be the gas. The school custos is notoriously careless in these matters. The suggestion is welcomed. At any rate it deserves investigation. And such investigations, when conducted by twenty clumsy boys, whose clumsy feet are shod with heavy boots, are a long and noisy business. Books fall with a clatter on to the floor. The hindquarters of the inoffensive are accidentally kicked. Smith endeavours to jump from one desk to another, misses his footing and crashes on the desk. Musty is lost.

He stands in the middle of the room. He says 'Come, now!' a great many times. He varies it occasionally with 'That'll do.' He asks Smith whether he considers that what he is doing 'is really necessary.' At last a piping unrecognisable voice rises from the far corner. 'It isn't the gas. It must be Musty himself. He never washes.'

In most schools there are at least two masters who are the continual victims of such treatment. Such ragging, however, is too simple to content the truly adventurous. The Mustys of the scholastic world are objects of contempt, and we prefer to respect our enemies. It is far more entertaining to rag a disciplinarian. One has to guard oneself. The master has all the weapons. Among other things the ragster has to work. If he is unexpectedly put on to con, flounders through a couple of lines and breaks down completely at the third, he has played into his opponent's hand. He has deserved the imposition that he will most certainly get. The ragster must prepare his work. That is part of his defence. He cannot say to himself: 'I have been on twice running. I shall not go on to-day.' If he makes a cheeky remark in form, the master's just retort is: 'Jones, you seem to like talking. I think you had better translate the next passage.' And, if Jones translates the passage successfully he feels that he is one up. Such ragging is very different from the general rag of the complete incompetent. It is a free-lance affair. It is an art. The majority of masters meet it in some form or other. It is only a few who are subjected to displays in which the whole form take part.

Yet it is a puzzle to find out how exactly this ill-fortune selects its particular victims. Personality is limited. There are only a few who have a real genius for teaching. The majority are merely competent. And competence must fall before invention. Why is it that some are ragged and others not. The ragged master may be an excellent fellow. He may be good at games; he may be just as exemplary a member of society as his colleagues, and yet he is selected for this refined torture. There are some masters for whom one never works hard; one does enough and no more to avoid being bottled. One sits in the class-room for long, sultry, tedious hours; the insipid sunlight moves across the wall. One watches a fly crawl up the window-pane. One writes 'is a fool' upon the desk after the inscribed name of an enemy. One sticks a compass into the back of the man in front. Perhaps one revises the next hour's lesson. It may be that there is an imposition to be completed. The minutes pass slowly; one longs for the strike of the clock. And yet no one attempts to enliven the hour with some geniality. The few attempts that are made are spasmodic and unsuccessful.

We had a master who was nicknamed, I never knew why, Marchand. And, one day, a boy who was doing translation paused at the French word marchand. 'Please, sir,' he said, 'I don't know what marchand means.' There was no laugh, not even a titter. We were all too surprised. The master's face did not alter. 'It means merchant, Smith,' he said, 'and you will stay behind afterwards and speak to me.' He received six of the best. And it was, no doubt, such a master who made the historic retort to the boy who, during an hour that was devoted to the discussion of Old Testament history, inquired what 'harlot' meant. 'A harlot, Jones,' the master answered, 'is a lady who finds herself in unfortunate circumstances, and you will take two hundred lines.'

If such an answer had been made by Musty, the boy would have expostulated freely; other members of the form would have interested themselves in the cause of justice. As it is, Smith gets his half-dozen and Jones his two hundred lines, and the world says 'silly ass!'

There are certain masters who inspire neither industry nor insubordination, and yet I suppose that once they, too, had their hour of trial. So much depends on the first impression. Arnold Lunn has recounted in The Harrovians the story of one Crabbe, who was so unmercifully ragged that he had to leave at the end of his first term. 'He went on to another school where his reputation had not preceded him. He opened his first lesson by setting a boy a hundred lines for sneezing. After having successfully established a reputation for unbridled ferocity, he was able, by slow degrees, to relapse into his natural kindly self.' It is typical of much. The master who has once allowed himself to be ragged is lost for ever. He may beat, he may line, he will never restore order. His only chance is to try elsewhere.

The ragging of prefects is of very much the same order. There is less of it, because the head of the house has a way of jumping suddenly on the turbulent. 'I hear you were ragging Beetle last night in hall. You've got to stop it—see? and you're going to get six as a warning!' The head of the house has more authority than an assistant master. If a boy felt that an assistant master was unjust he might very well complain to the head master. But no boy would care to appeal against a boy—that would be sneaking. A good head of the house sees to it that none of the prefects are indiscriminately ragged, but there is always one of them for whom the rest of the house has but little respect, and to whom the taking of prep is always an anxiety. He beats and lines more than the rest of the prefects put together. But it has small effect. Indeed the second yearer acquires a hardened hide. Punishment is no deterrent to him; it is merely a pawn in the game.

CHAPTER V

ATHLETICISM

By this time the new boy may be truly said to have reached the inner circle of a public school philosophy. He knows to what gods he must bow the knee. And he serves dutifully before the altar of the god of sport.

The cult of athleticism has been for a long while the target at which the enemies of the Public School have launched their abuse. And until this cult is understood, it is impossible to understand the standards and the scale of values of a Public School. Every community must have a religion of sorts, a faith to which all faiths are subservient, a service which makes the first demands. A man, when called to decide between two claims, must be able to know which way his duty lies. He may not follow the claim of duty, but he should be able to distinguish which it is. In some communities it is the observance of social custom, in another the making of money is all important, in one the honour of the regiment, in a second the teaching of the Scriptures. At a Public School it is athletic prominence.

The position of a school is decided by its performances on the field. If two men in a club are discussing the merits of a certain school, the first consideration will be athletics. 'Oh, yes,' they will say. 'Fernhurst stands very well just now. It beat Tonford and Merton last season, and it's got two fellows in the Varsity eleven.' The social status of a school is judged, not by the number of Balliol scholars it has produced, but by the quality of the schools it plays. 'Oh, Marestone can't be much of a place,' you will hear said. 'They only play a few grammar schools.'

This fact the new boy realises at once. His father's friends are impressed when he can tell them that his school has beaten Haileybury. They display a mild interest at his casual reference to Bennett's scholarship. The new boy reads in the daily papers enthusiastic articles on the performances of the school eleven, and he learns that Haslett is being watched by the county authorities. There is an air of publicity about every school match. There will be reports in the newspapers. The new boy feels himself to be participating in a function of considerable general interest. All over the country people will be wondering what will chance in this particular encounter. He is on the spot. The Press accentuates his keenness. How could he, in the face of such a testimony, doubt the supreme importance of athletics. We believe in the goods that are most widely advertised. Who ever read an article on the prospects of the various competitors for a certain exam. Who has read in the Times that 'enormous interest is being taken in the approaching scholarship examinations. Clifton has several promising scholars. Marston may be poor at unseen, but he is very deft in his handling of Latin prose, and he has a good ear for hexameters. Haileybury, on the other hand, place their faith in Johnson, a steady, industrious worker who can be trusted to perform consistently in all subjects....' Yet, two or three times a week, we can read in the Sportsman that Fernhurst has a vastly improved side and that with Evans back again in the three-quarter line, is hopeful of emerging triumphantly from the approaching contest with Tonford.

Public School sport is awarded at the present moment a preposterous amount of publicity. It is bad for the schools; it is bad for the boys themselves, and, as far as one can gather, it has not helped English sport to any appreciable degree. It encourages in schools the belief that games matter more than anything else. Very often it makes boys swelled-headed, certainly it makes them think they are bigger than they are, and is preparing for them a big disappointment. It is so easy to appear a giant among pigmies. In my own short experience I can remember more than one player who was described while at school as being an England batsman in the making, and who now experiences a difficulty in getting into the county side. Every summer we know by name a whole host of public school cricketers that are never heard of afterwards. They have averages of sixty during their last term; their exploits are described in fervid journalese. They go up to Oxford, fail to reach double figures in the Freshmen's match, and are quickly submerged in college cricket. Others go up with enormous reputations, making centuries in the trial match, and then find that there is a difference between club and county cricket. They just get their blue with a batting average of twenty-five; they play for the county during August and do nothing exceptional. They are just average cricketers, useful members of a side and nothing more. In the meanwhile the journalists are shrieking of the natural offbreak of a sixteen-year-old Rugbeian. This particular type of writer resembles the literary critic who hails every new poet as a 'second Keats,' and every new novelist as 'a second Hardy,' but loses interest in his discoveries after the appearance of their fourth book.

There is no need to dive back into past history. We can find enough examples in post-war cricket. N. E. Partridge in 1919 had a batting average of 43, and took 71 wickets for under 12 runs each. He had a magnificent press. Next to Stevens, and perhaps Hedges, he was the most discussed boy cricketer of the year. On the strength of this boosting he very nearly received an invitation to play for the Gentlemen at Lords. As a matter of fact, I am not certain that he did not actually receive an invitation, and that his head master refused to let him go—but on that point I am not certain. At any rate his claims were seriously advanced by a great many reputable judges of the game, among whom I think Sydney Pardon has to be included. He went up to Cambridge with a tremendous reputation; he did only moderately. At one time, indeed, it seemed improbable that he would get his blue. Last season he did nothing exceptional for Warwickshire. I may, of course, be misjudging a cricketer whom I have never seen play, but everything would seem to suggest that Partridge will develop into nothing more exciting than the average county cricketer.

We could also take the example of L. P. Hedges. I spent the summer of 1918 in a German prison camp; but even to that distant city came news of the brilliant Tonbridge batsman who was greater even than Hutchings. During the summer of 1919 the assiduous student of the Sportsman heard much of him. Every week appeared the score of some fresh triumph, and, to crown it all, came that brilliant 163 at Lords. It was a gorgeous show. I was thankful not to be fielding at coverpoint. But, let it be whispered gently, the bowling did not look particularly difficult, and, though Hedges's innings was dazzling, a quite ordinary batsman should, off the same bowling, have been able to help himself to a generous allowance of fours.

That particular innings marked, I suppose, the height of Hedges's career from the point of view of press publicity and popular esteem; the height had been reached, that is to say, before his qualities had been placed on the open market and tested by the stress of three days' cricket and the accuracy of professional bowling. We do not hear much of Hedges nowadays. He has played useful cricket for Oxford and for Kent; but he has done nothing sensational. And yet, when I saw him last summer make a 50 against Middlesex at Lords, I could not help feeling that he is a better bat to-day than he was in 1919, and that that 50 in an important match, against confident bowling, and while Woolley was scratching uncomfortably at the over end, was in every way a finer performance than his 163 of two years earlier. He drove Haig and Durston through the covers as easily as in 1919 he had plastered the ring with boundaries. And yet the pressmen remained calm.

It is vain and it is unfair to attempt to form a judgment of a person whose wares are not upon the open market. No one can tell who is, and who is not, going to prove a test match cricketer. Equally it is impossible to tell from public school form which boys are potential cricketers. Who, for example, who saw in 1910 F. H. Knott and D. J. Knight batting in the Public School's match at Lords realised that Knight was going to develop into an incomparably greater batsman than Knott. And yet sportsmen continue to write about boy cricketers with the seriousness that they devote to Hobbs. They draw the most ridiculous comparisons. I discovered last summer in one of the most influential daily papers the following passage in the account of the Public School's match at Lords: 'There is probably no cricketer, with the exception of R. H. Spooner, who sees the ball more quickly than J. L. Guise.' Now anything much more ridiculous I can hardly imagine. It is like the literary critic, who shall be nameless, who described the work of a minor poet, who shall be also nameless, as having given him more pleasure than anything since the first flights of Swinburne. It is preposterous to speak of Guise, who is an extremely promising cricketer, as seeing the ball more quickly than any batsman except Spooner. It all depends on what manner of ball he is seeing. In the Eton match he, no doubt, saw Allen's deliveries with considerable speed. Spooner, however, was in the habit of seeing in this manner the deliveries of Cotter, Tarrant, and Schwarz. Speed of eye is relative to the quality of the bowling. I should hesitate to call myself a batsman, but there is a type of ball that I can see with incredible rapidity. It is bowled to me, alas, too occasionally, in village matches. It is medium paced, it pitches on the middle stump, a little more than half-way down the pitch, and it turns away ever so slightly towards the leg. Any one can look a good bat who is opposed to bad bowling. And I maintain that it is no sort of sense indulging in wild panegyrics about schoolboys who have never been tested by first-class bowling.

If a boy seems promising the county authorities should give him a trial, and, if he does well, then let the pressmen get busy. Every one is so terrified lest a good man may be overlooked. But how unlikely that is if the county authorities are at all keen. Trial matches can be arranged. Visits can be paid to schools. There is no need for this hectic discovery of twenty Spooners every season. The school figures of players like Stevens and Chapman and Hubert Ashton would have been quite sufficient to ensure a proper trial for them. And the fact remains that in spite of this press work amateur cricket is at a lower ebb now than it has ever been before. The Gentlemen and Players match has become too one-sided to stimulate interest in anything save individual performances. Very few amateurs are good enough to play for England. Douglas is; and he was not one of the marked men of cricket articles. His entrance was as untheatrical as his batting. D. J. Knight, is on his form of 1919, the second best batsman in the country; Stevens, at his best, is a great match-winning factor; Tennyson and Fender are useful players. But it is impossible to maintain that there are to-day any amateur batsmen comparable with Maclaren, Spooner, Fry, Stoddart, and Jackson, than the cricketers, that is to say, who passed unheralded on their merits into first-class cricket. The low standard of amateur cricket cannot be argued away. And this trumpeting of the press could only be excused, could it be proved to further the interests of amateur sport in England. Instead of furthering those interests, it works against them. It makes games at a Public School too much of a business and too little of a sport. It introduces professionalism. And I am prepared to wonder how far one really enjoys one's games at school.

One is frightfully excited about them; one is very pleased when one does well and depressed if one does badly. One works oneself into a state of nervous misery before a match, and one of hysterical excitement after it. Victory and defeat mean a great deal. And it was with a real surprise that I realised a few months ago at the end of a very pleasant season that, although I should continue to play football for another ten years, and cricket, I hope, for another forty, I should never again really care whether the side for which I am playing wins or loses—care, that is to say, as I cared at school about a house match. In club cricket and football one asks for a good game in pleasant company, and victory is incidental. While one is playing, of course, one is keen, but one will not brood afterwards over one's mistakes,—not as one does after a school match. There is, I suppose, no public school man under the sun who does not now and again on some winter evening drop his paper on his knees and curse himself because, fifteen years ago, he missed a catch at an important crisis—that is one of the things one never ceases to regret. That awful moment when one picks up the ball with tingling fingers and tosses it back to the bowler; it is for all time a vivid memory. One does not feel like that about an ordinary catch in an ordinary club game. One is annoyed with oneself; one is sorry for the bowler; one apologises to the captain, but one remembers that one is out, after all, to enjoy oneself.

That is the difference between school and club cricket. At school one is not out to enjoy oneself. It is a business, this getting of runs and taking of wickets. There are cups for house matches, and there are cups for batting and bowling averages, and it is a sin to miss a catch. There are few worse things than the anxiety attendant on those who play on the fringe of a school side. Not only is one worried about one's own performances, but about one's rivals. If one has made a duck oneself one cannot, in spite of one's patriotism, be anxious for a particular rival to retrieve the fortunes of the side with a century. A first eleven cap is valued far too highly for such unselfishness. It is equally little fun to be a member of a bad fifteen. One is subjected to a series of complaints and recriminations. One grows sick of the whole business. And I can remember during the first winter of the war the relief with which we learnt that the Tonbridge match had been scratched. We had a poor side. We knew that we should be thoroughly trounced, and that, for the next week, the lives of those who had not distinguished themselves would be made wretched. We never for a moment questioned the justice of this tyranny. The Lord our God was a jealous God. We had to serve him. But we were not sorry that an occasion for his wrath should be removed. I very much doubt whether the actual playing of games was as pleasant at school as it is outside it.

The intensity and rapture are irrecoverable. There is nothing to compare with the elation that follows a victory over a stronger side. But in the long run I find cricket more enjoyable to-day than I did six years ago. It is less complicated. One takes a day off from one's work and spends it in agreeable company. One can field out all day and never take a wicket, miss a couple of catches, and then crown everything by making a duck, and yet thoroughly enjoy oneself. At school that would have been a rotten day, and one would have spent the evening in deep despondency. Yet everything is in favour of one enjoying one's game at school. It is so simple. One strolls down after lunch in a leisurely fashion to the field. One changes one's boots in the pavilion. A hot bath is waiting for one afterwards. But, in order to play football after one has left, one has to rush off to catch impossible trains from impossible stations. One has no time for lunch. The train always seems to start at 1.18. There is as likely as not a long walk from the station. One changes in a converted army hut; one is more than a little tired before the game starts. There are no proper baths afterwards, and one has to hurry, or one will miss the only train to town: for it is amazing the number of football fields which are on loop lines with trains at hourly intervals. And yet, personally, I enjoy my football now a great deal more than I ever did at school.

It would not be just, however, to lay the blame of this professionalism to the account of the sporting press. Journalists are rarely responsible for anything. They do not lead public opinion. They follow it or, if they are clever, they anticipate it. Had not the worship of athleticism been already firmly established in the schools themselves it would never have occurred to them to run it as a stunt. The journalist spends most of his time searching for a town of blind men over which he, with his one eye, may rule. And the journalist discovered that the Public School had enthroned an unofficial king who had not received his due of public recognition. The journalist decided to officialise his position. To this king was paid extensive homage; and, as there is no more pleasant reading for ladies-in-waiting than court gossip, he commenced a column of court news. But he did not set up the court, or crown the king. He is only a herald. And we must regard these tiresome articles as a proof, but not a cause of this peculiar ritual. The trumpeting of the herald adds certainly to the glamour of the court, but his absence would not start a revolution. If not another article appeared on public school sport, the cult of athleticism would still continue; it would continue because as things are at present there is no other focus for the enthusiasm and partisanship of a boy of seventeen. There is really little else about which a schoolboy could reasonably become excited.

Indeed it is hard to see what other results could have been expected from such a combination of circumstances. Four hundred boys are divided into ten houses. They are encouraged to feel an intense loyalty for their house and for their school. They are told that it is up to them to make their house the best house in the school, and their school the best school in the country. They set out in all good faith to accomplish their task. In what, they ask themselves, does the goodness of a house consist. It is not much sense to speak to them of the moral tone of a house or school. They desire a tangible manifestation of virtue, 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.' And the only available outward and visible sign is the row of silver challenge cups on the dining-hall mantelpiece. It is natural to assume that the house which has the most cups is the best house; a school can only prove its superiority over another school by victory on the football field. Scholarships are an indirect form of competition. For the best boys from one school may not come into touch with the best boys of another. But a victory by 30 points is a direct statement of a fact. The victorious school is superior to the defeated school. It is in athletic contests alone that a house or school can express a united will, can become indeed one person. The loyalty of a boy for his house or school is a fine thing, but it renders athletic worship almost inevitable. Were there not this intense house and school feeling individual boys would cultivate their individual tastes; forty boys would be grouped together for convenience of boarding—that is all a house would be. But as soon as a boy comes to regard himself as a member of a fine community, he feels a natural pride and loyalty in its performances and in its welfare. There is no other focus for partisanship: form work is uninteresting. Boxing, fives, the corps, and the gymnasium are side shows. Cricket and football are what count. A boy must have a religion of sorts. He must have some ideal to which the demands of his own temperament may become subservient.

On this worship of games is based the scale of social values. The ethics of cribbing, for example, are based entirely on the assumption that a success in form is of inconsiderable importance; it is permissible for a boy to crib in order to save his energies for worthier causes. The blood system is built on an intense admiration for those who are upholding the honour of the house, and is an expression of the small boy's longing to reach such a position himself. The attitude to morality on the part of masters is intimately connected with athletics, and on the boy's part, the belief that a member of a school side is, ipso facto, an invaluable asset to the school, allows the blood to do very much what he likes; as long, in fact, as a boy can satisfy his companions and himself that he is exerting all his power on the football field, he can amuse himself in other ways as he thinks fit.

There is no other criterion for a boy's worthiness, or unworthiness, as a member of a house, and the half-bloods consider that a very big responsibility has descended on them. They have to keep the house up to the mark. The big men cannot bother themselves about individuals. But the half-bloods who are, as it were, emissaries between heaven and earth, can investigate closely the behaviour of the coming generation. They can notice who is showing signs of slackness. They individually give themselves enormous airs. They form a sort of improvement society.

I remember that, in the course of one term, our house lost every challenge cup that it had possessed. This was considered a disgrace. And several of us decided that it was for us to reform the house. We did not consider ourselves to stand in any need of improvement. But we used to wander round the studies between tea and hall inquisitioning fags and scholars, asking them what use they thought they were to house or school, and informing them that they would be well advised to make more strenuous efforts. It was, I suppose, a form of bullying; or rather perhaps an aid to vanity. What we really needed was for some one to kick us hard. No one did, however. It seemed to occur to no one else, any more than it did to us, that there were objects of a public school education other than the acquiring of caps and cups. You might as well expect an Indian priest to doubt the omnipotence of Buddha.

CHAPTER VI

THE TRUE ETHICS OF CRIBBING

The boy who thus exhausts in ragging the residue of energy that the football field allows him, has, it follows, to be careful not to burn the candle at both ends. He has to spare himself, and to spare himself he abandons the spasmodic cribbing of his first year's summer examination for sustained, systematic methods. Now the true ethics of this subject are as little understood as those relating to any other sphere of public school life. Cribbing is generally regarded as a dishonest practice to which only the ignoble few have regular resort. The habitual cribber is as morally lost as a thief. For what, after all, is cribbing, say our aunts, but the stealing of marks from your companions. 'When you crib,' they tell us, 'and say that you are not stealing, you argue from the standpoint of the housemaid who would return conscientiously the sixpence you have left on your dressing-table, but would not think twice of filling a medicine bottle with your best brandy and handing it over to her young man.' While we are at our Preparatory Schools we are inclined to agree with this. We ourselves would never think of cribbing. At a Preparatory School it is not done. But at a Public School we learn otherwise. To the public school boy cribbing is not dishonest. It is not wrong, because it is not anti-social. There are no doubt somewhere, if we could discover them, fixed immutable standards of righteousness. But we have not found them yet. In the meantime we are content to frame conventions that alter with each generation to safeguard what we consider to be our comfort. We put a thief in prison because we are anxious to protect our property. His actions are anti-social. They are only anti-social, however, because we happen to value our property. We should not object if he took from us what we did not prize. It is thus indeed that the dustman earns his living. And the public school boy does not usually set much greater value on his marks than the housewife on her egg-shells.

I remember reading several years ago a short story that appeared in The Captain. It was about an American who came to an English Public School. On the result of a certain examination depended the position of head boy in the house, and the American broke into the head master's study and extracted the examination paper. The theft was, however, discovered, and the American summoned to the head master's study for an interview that was the certain prelude to expulsion. This fact was made known to him. 'Waal,' he said, 'I guess that's fair. My father often said to me when a big bluff fails, it's down and out for the guy that misses.' The head master was surprised. He appreciated the difference between a big bluff and a piece of calculated deceit. He saw that the American had, because of the atmosphere of business in which he had been brought up, a standard different from his own. The American had honestly believed himself to be attempting 'a big bluff.'

Now, in the world at large, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If it were, law court procedure would be infinitely complex. At school, however, the intention matters more than the result. The means are set before the end. The head master in the story realised that the American's offence was actually far less serious than it appeared, and the American was not expelled.

In this case, of course, the theft of the examination paper was definitely anti-social. It was a real theft. The American was endeavouring to acquire a position that others valued through means not at the disposal of his competitors. But this story, which appeared in a paper the moral tone of which has necessarily to be above suspicion, establishes officially the principle that the seriousness of an offence depends largely on the attitude adopted to it by the offender. And therein lie the true ethics of cribbing. What public opinion approves cannot be anti-social. Only a few recognise the distinction between the immoral and the anti-social. And public opinion is, on the whole, inclined to condone cribbing.

Every boy is anxious to be a power in his house; he wants to be a prefect, he looks forward to the day when he will be safe from authority, will be, indeed, authority itself. But he knows that, without unduly exerting himself in the class-room, he will be able to achieve prominence through success at football. A house cap has to sit at the Va table: as a second, probably, and certainly as a first, he will be raised to the dignity of the dais; thence the process of seniority will carry him quickly to his prefectship. It is assumed that by that time the same process of seniority will have carried him to the Upper Fifth. (It is hard to avoid being promoted once a year.) The hours spent in the class-room are a dull setting for the vivid hues of the life that lies outside it. Occasionally the setting is relieved by a bright patch of colour—an ingenious rag, a successful piece of cribbing—but, on the whole, it is dull and monotonous. A boy works spasmodically, sometimes to get a promotion, sometimes to secure the good-will of a master he admires, sometimes to reach a form where it will be only rarely necessary for him to prepare his work. And he cribs more or less consistently out of laziness, to avoid being bottled, to save himself trouble, to be able to devote as much of his evening as is possible to more sympathetic forms of employment. He does not consider he is doing anything wrong. He knows that, if he is caught, he will be punished. But then he sees the relationship of boys and masters as a long, intermittent struggle, a game played in good faith, with fixed rewards and penalties. He does not expect his conduct to be condoned officially. His form master has set him so many lines of Virgil to prepare. It is assumed that he will take an hour to prepare those lines properly. However, with the help of Dr Giles's translation, he has managed to prepare those lines satisfactorily in twenty minutes. He has gained, therefore, forty minutes; naturally the master demands, and exacts, a reparation. But his companions do not mind. And he regards as anti-social only what will offend them. If he were a thief it would be in their eyes that he would be guilty. But a theft only becomes criminal when the injured party has taken proceedings against the offender. In this case no proceedings have been taken. He has not been reported to the head master, nor has he been kicked round the cloisters. He considers himself to be innocent. Indeed, popular opinion is far more likely to be directed against the boy who is scrupulously honest. His behaviour may be anti-social.

There was a form, for instance, in which it was the custom for the boys to correct their own papers and give up their own marks. They would pass their papers to the next boy but two. The answers would be read out and the marks awarded. When all the answers had been given the marks would be added up. 'Any one over 90?' a couple of hands would rise. 'Any one over 95?' one of the hands would sink. 'Right,' said the master. 'Divide all marks by 11.' The names of the boys would then be read out in turn, and the marks earned by each would be delivered by the corrector.

Now the correction of exercises and the addition of marks entails a measure of labour, and no one does unnecessary work. It had become the custom, therefore, to doze pleasantly while the answers were being given out, to insert various hieroglyphics in the margin, and to return at the conclusion an average total. The system had been in existence a long while, and it was known that the top mark usually lay somewhere between 100 and 90; a top mark of over 110 or beneath 80 would rouse comment, perhaps inspire investigation, and that was, of course, the last thing the form desired. So that, when the form master said any one 'over 90' some one on the front bench raised a hand. It happened in rotation more or less; at the end of the term there was little to choose between the top ten in the marks for those particular exercises. Certainly whatever difference there was could be easily counteracted by superior proficiency in some other field.

All went well till a certain Miller was promoted into this particular form. Miller was a prig: he came from an undistinguished house. He was excessively industrious. He had the prude's morality. He was desperately honest. He corrected the papers passed to him accurately and gave up the right mark.

During his first week in the form, when the top mark was 91, Miller gave up 63. The form master was surprised; Miller had corrected the paper of quite a senior member of the form. 'Really, Jones,' he said, 'I'm surprised.' Jones also was surprised. After the lesson he expressed his surprise with a well-aimed kick that landed Miller at the foot of the second landing. He considered that no further explanation was required. He was wrong.

The next day, when the top mark was 103 he received 57. On the occasion of this second essay in originality the whole form decided to interest itself in Miller's welfare. There was an informal meeting at the end of the hour, in which Miller was given to understand that on this system exercises had been marked in the Middle Fifth for upwards of twenty years. Tradition had approved the system. The form was conservative. It meant to uphold that tradition. In earnest of its intention it proceeded to demonstrate what defensive method it would adopt. Miller made no answer, but the next day he not only returned Jones's paper with 65 at the head of it, but when a certain Burton announced that the paper he had marked was worth 103, Miller said something to the effect that the maximum was 93.

Such a thing had never happened before in the Middle Fifth. It was an orderly form, but there was very nearly a popular demonstration. Burton's honour had been questioned. The form master agreed that such an imputation had not been made upon a boy during the five-and-twenty years that he had sat in that class-room. 'We'll go through the questions one by one and see what the maximum is.'

Now, luckily for Burton, the master had not kept a check upon the marks. He had gone through question after question, saying after each: 'Now let me see, I think that should be worth 10,' or 'that 15.' So that, when he went through the questions again, he appealed, on each occasion, to the head boy of the form. 'How many did I give you for that, Evans?' And, on each occasion, Evans was generous.

Once Miller timidly suggested that for Question 6, 15 marks and not 30 had been the maximum, but there was a complete unanimity of opinion among the rest of the form. 'Thirty, sir, certainly it was 30. It must have been—I've got 23 down to Firth for that, sir.' Miller was overruled.

The maximum was finally discovered to be 130. 'So you see, Miller,' said the master, 'you've not only questioned Burton's word, but you've been inattentive during the lesson. You will do me 200 lines, and if you will hand me up Jones's paper I will correct it myself.' With this generous addition to the maximum Jones received a heavy mark.

After such a disaster the form felt certain that Miller would bow to the convention; but there is no limit to the obstinacy of the martyr: Miller continued to mark according to order. He was kicked, but kicking was of no avail. His own paper was undermarked. This, too, was unavailing. Finally the form decided to accept him as an inevitable affliction. They ceased to kick him. Each of the ten top boys took it in turn to sit two places away from him so that no one person should suffer unduly from the general evil. And the one who sat two places on the other side of Miller had instructions to over-mark his paper so that he should be got out of the form as speedily as possible. At the end of the term Miller was promoted; and the Middle Fifth relapsed into its placid communal existence.

Now Miller's conduct would no doubt appear worthy of the most intense approval. He had behaved like the hero of the school sermon. He had done what every new boy is adjured to do. He had taken a firm stand against a dishonest practice. He had been bullied, but he had remained firm. His honour had withstood the shock of his opponents. Such a splendid example would shine like a candle in a dark cathedral, and from this simile the preacher, as a runner reaching the straight, can stride into the rounded periods of his peroration. 'If only others of you would light your candle from that flame; if only in that large cathedral there were a hundred burning candles instead of one, how soon would not the whole building be filled with light. The beautiful tracery of the roof would emerge from shadow. A soft glow would be shed on the strong carved pillars. The brasses would glimmer on the wall. The splendid architecture of the building would be plain. So is it with the human soul.'

We have heard that sermon many times. Miller is a splendid handle for rhetoric, but his behaviour remains anti-social. If it is wrong to place oneself in a position of inequitable advantage, it is equally wrong to place a rival in a position of inequitable disadvantage: and that is what Miller had done. Jones had done his work as thoroughly and as conscientiously as the others, but he had received lower marks for it, because Miller had chosen to apply to it a standard that was not imposed on that of his companions. It is not unfair in a hundred yards' sprint to start a second before the pistol is fired if you know that the other runners are going to do likewise, but it is hard lines on the one runner who is compelled to wait for the proper signal. True morality plays an insignificant part in business and competition. We all have different ideas of what is sport. If W. G.'s much-criticised running out of Jones in the Test Match of 1880 had taken place at a house match at school, we can assume that W. G., whatever his batting average, would not have been invited to play for the school again. What is moral and what is anti-social become practically synonymous terms as long as every one starts fair and plays the game by the same code of rules. No one must be allowed opportunities that are not at the disposal of his opponents. And, in the case of the Middle Fifth's corrections, the rules of the game ordered generous marking and no great gulf between the first and last. Miller played the game by different rules. The form was righteously indignant. It is doubtful even whether Miller's immortal soul drew sustenance from the conflict. It was probably confirmed in its priggishness. Certainly Miller became, in the course of time, a highly officious prefect. I do not know what fortune the 'romance of destiny' may hold in store for him, but I can imagine that he will occupy some post of prim, precise officialdom. He will create nothing. Whereas Evans's opportunism is largely responsible for the rapidly increasing market for Messrs. ——'s patent cookers.

The schoolmaster asserts that between himself and his form there exists a compact of square dealing. But the signature of the form has not been obtained, and it is an agreement every clause of which is very clearly to the advantage of the schoolmaster and to the disadvantage of the form. The form does not recognise the treaty. It refuses to commit itself, and indeed in this singular document the true nature of cribbing has not been defined. The exact line between cribbing and co-operation has not been drawn. We are safe when dealing with 'con,' that is to say, the translation of Greek or Latin into English. We know, for instance, that boys are allowed to prepare their work together. Two brains are better than one. Well and good. But, if two soldiers have to dig a trench one uses the pick and the other the shovel. So it is with Latin 'con.' One boy looks up the meaning of the words in a dictionary; the other unravels the sense. That means that the boy who looks up the words never brings his mind to bear on the translation of the text. Yet such a combination is accepted as fair by any master. And, once this combination has been accepted, a master's position becomes logically impossible. For it must be remembered that a schoolboy has a fairly sound grasp of consecutive reasoning. He studies the theorems of geometry. He struggles with the dialectic of Plato. He is capable, that is to say, of following out to their logical conclusion such lines of argument as will, in the end, assuage his conscience. He could construct, for instance, an imaginary conversation between Socrates and his form master.

Soc.: You object, Mr. Featherbrain, to the cribbing that is prevalent in your form?

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: Now, as I am inexperienced in this matter, never having been myself to a Public School, perhaps you will be so kind as to make me better acquainted with the methods adopted by these members of your form.

Mr. F.: Certainly. Some of the boys use English translations with which to prepare their Virgil and Homer. Others copy the Greek prose of their more clever companions, inserting, from time to time, certain gross errors that they expect will throw me off the scent.

Soc.: I understand. Now, in this matter of English translations: you expect each boy to prepare his Virgil by himself, and to produce in form the results of solitary unaided labour?

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: If, therefore, you discovered one boy asking another to explain to him a difficult passage, you would punish him severely?

Mr. F.: No. You have misunderstood me. I should not.

Soc.: But how is that? Have you not just told me that each boy must produce in form the results of solitary, unaided labour?

Mr. F.: Certainly, but we allow boys to prepare their 'con' together.

Soc.: I understand. On the assumption that two brains are better than one, you permit two boys to unravel the sense together.

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: Now, if two people attempt a certain task, what procedure would they follow? Would they not divide the task into two portions. If two men are building a house one man stands at the top of a ladder and lays the bricks that his companion, who is standing below, throws up to him.

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: Time would be wasted were each man to do the same work: that is to say, were two ladders to be placed against the wall and were the two men to descend and ascend the ladder carrying bricks to the top?

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: Therefore, we may assume that in all tasks that are undertaken by two persons, the work is divided into two duties?

Mr. F.: But I do not see, Socrates, that this line of reasoning has any bearing on the subject we are preparing to discuss.

Soc.: That may very well be, for, as I have told you, I am ignorant of these matters and have come to you for guidance. It does seem to me, however, that in this matter of translation, which is the discovery of an unknown thing, the unknown may be divided into two parts.

Mr. F.: How is that?

Soc.: When a boy reads over the passage that he has to translate, two things are unknown to him: the general meaning of the passage and certain words in the passage. That is so, is it not?

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: Then do you not think that two boys, before setting out to translate a passage, would make some arrangement by which one of them should be responsible for unravelling the sense, while the other should look up the unknown words in a dictionary.

Mr. F.: It is possible.

Soc.: And to which of the two would be entrusted the task of unravelling the sense.

Mr. F.: To the cleverer, undoubtedly.

Soc.: Therefore the less clever would do the drudge work: that is to say, he would never bring his mind to bear upon the passage: and the imaginative work would be done for him by his companion.

Mr. F.: It would seem so, Socrates.

Soc.: Yet the system is approved as an honest one by the authorities and the work of the drudge is accepted as solitary and unaided labour.

Mr. F.: That is so, Socrates.

Soc.: Now, is this task of translation limited to the co-operation of two persons, or may three or more persons take their share in it?

Mr. F.: As many persons may take their share in it as may conveniently be crowded into a study measuring eight feet by four.

Soc.: I understand. Suppose now that three persons are preparing a passage together. We have agreed, have we not, that this work can be divided into two duties only?

Mr. F.: That is so.

Soc.: Then what share of the work will the third partner take?

Mr. F.: He will act as a reserve and will bring assistance to either party when it is necessary.

Soc.: But, to whom have we allotted the task of unravelling the sense: to the cleverest, have we not? If the help of the third party, then, is only requested when the cleverest finds himself in difficulties, does it seem to you likely that the third party will succeed where one cleverer than himself has failed?

Mr. F.: It is unlikely.

Soc.: And, if this third party is higher and more important than the second party, it is unlikely, is it not, that he will content himself with what we have admitted to be the drudge's work of looking up words in a dictionary?

Mr. F.: It is unlikely.

Soc.: Then the third party will do nothing save profit by the industry of his two companions, and the work that he will produce in the class-room next day will, strictly speaking, be not his at all, but theirs.

Mr. F.: It would seem so, Socrates.

Soc.: Now, let us take a further example. For I am anxious to discover at what exact point the work that a boy produces in form will cease to be, in the official eye, the result of solitary and unaided labour. Suppose that the third party is a member of the Eleven, who has various social duties: it is possible, is it not, that he would prefer to spend over his translation less than the three-quarters of an hour that his two companions require?

Mr. F.: It is possible.

Soc.: Then, is it impossible that he might arrange for the cleverer of the two to come to him after breakfast and explain to him in twenty minutes the meaning of the passage?

Mr. F.: It is possible.

Soc.: And such an arrangement would be accepted by you?

Mr. F.: I do not see that I could object.

Soc.: Now let us suppose that the cleverer of the two finds that he will have to clean his corps clothes during the twenty minutes between breakfast and chapel. He will feel himself bound in honour, and also by fear, to translate the passage to the third party, but he will obviously be unable to do it in person. Is it not likely, therefore, that he will write out the meaning of the passage and hand it to the third party? Would such conduct be unacceptable to you?

Mr. F.: I do not know, Socrates.

Soc.: But, surely in your own mind you have clearly defined the line that separates what is honest from what is dishonest. Surely that is your profession—to teach the young to distinguish between what is good and what is not good?

Mr. F.: That is so, Socrates.

Soc.: Then do you see any real difference between hearing a translation and reading a translation? Is there any difference between a meaning that is apprehended through the ear and a meaning that is apprehended through the eyes; for are not both eyes and ears channels through which meanings are carried to the brain?

Mr. F.: It would seem so, and, when you put it that way, I can distinguish no essential difference.

Soc.: Very good: then we have established that it is fair for a boy to come to his study after breakfast, find in his hand a written translation of his Virgil, and, with that written translation, prepare in twenty minutes his morning's lesson.

Mr. F.: It would seem so, Socrates.

Soc.: If, however, he were to take from his drawer a printed translation of Virgil, and with that prepare his morning's lesson, you would consider him capable of dishonest behaviour and you would report him to the head master.

Mr. F.: Most certainly, Socrates.

Soc.: In what, then, lies the essential difference between the printed translation and the one that was copied out for him by his companion?

Mr. F.: But that is surely obvious.

Soc.: It is not to me, and it is for this reason that I seek enlightenment of you. For to me it seems that the work produced in form by the boy who has studied the printed translation is every bit as much the result of solitary and unaided labour as that which is informed by the study of a written translation. But is it that you appreciate a difference between the written and the printed word?

Mr. F.: Perhaps that is it, Socrates.

Soc.: Then would you allow a boy during the holidays to copy out one of Dr. Giles's aids to the classics?

Mr. F.: Most certainly not.

Soc.: Then it is not between the written and the printed word that the difference lies?

Mr. F.: It would seem not.

Soc.: Then where does it lie?

Mr. F.: I do not know, Socrates.

Soc.: Then we must surely assume that there is no difference; and we must further add that you have not dealt honestly with your form in so severely punishing them for conduct that you, yourself, are not able logically to condemn.

Mr. F.: As ever, Socrates, you have succeeded in making me say what I did not mean to say.

Soc.: Then, in order that you may extricate yourself, let us consider this question of the prose.

Mr. F.: Certainly. For, here at least, my position is impregnable.

Soc.: I, too, am certain of it, and, in order that I may know the true nature of the offence, you will, I hope, permit me to ask you certain questions. You say that the more stupid members of your form are in the habit of copying the exercises of their more clever comrades?

Mr. F.: That is so.

Soc.: Now is it a rule that a boy may not give another assistance in his Latin prose?

Mr. F.: Certainly.

Soc.: The position is not the same as that of the Latin translation, where two boys were permitted to co-operate?

Mr. F.: Certainly not.

Soc.: I presume that you have explained to your form the essential difference that exists between the nature of Latin 'con' and Latin prose.

Mr. F.: How do you mean, Socrates?

Soc.: Why, surely, if in the preparation of Latin 'con,' which is the translation of Latin into English, two boys are allowed to co-operate, and, if in the preparation of Latin prose, which is the translation of English into Latin, they are not allowed to co-operate, it follows that there must be some essential difference in the nature of the two studies.

Mr. F.: It would seem so, Socrates.

Soc.: It would certainly seem so, and this difference you have, no doubt, made clear to your form, for, at present, I must confess myself unable to discover in what it consists. The exercise of Latin prose as of Latin 'con,' for each study is the translation of a language and the correct rendering of the idiom of that language into the language and idiom of another tongue, is no doubt intended to train, inform, and quicken the intelligence. Each would appear to be branches of the same study, and for each the same method of instruction should be employed. You tell me, however, that there is between these two branches an essential difference.

Mr. F.: You are right, Socrates, and, though I cannot explain the difference in so many words, its nature is plain to me.

Soc.: Of that, Mr. Featherbrain, I am certain. I understand that you apprehend this fine distinction as you apprehended the fine distinction between the written and the printed 'crib.' We should consider, though, whether this distinction is equally plain to your form. Such intuitive knowledge may be denied to them, and, if they sin through ignorance, their sin is slighter than if they sinned through knowledge. Tell me, now, whether, if you overheard one member of your form say to another on the way to chapel: 'I'm absolutely tied up with that piece of prose. Shall I put it in O. R. or O. O.?' would you immediately report that boy to the head master?

Mr. F.: I should not.

Soc.: You would no more report him than if you had overheard him asking his friend to make clear to him a passage of Virgil that had puzzled him.

Mr. F.: That is so.

Soc.: Do you not think, therefore, that the boy who knows he is allowed to ask for help in his Latin 'con,' and who does not know for what reason he is not allowed to ask for help in his Latin prose, who has never, that is to say, been able to apprehend the fine difference between the nature of the two studies, is likely to consider that the same technique is permissible for both branches, and would not that third party of whom we spoke and who is in the habit of getting his Latin 'con' done for him by his friend, consider himself morally justified in accepting the same assistance in his Latin prose?

Mr. F.: But I have told him that it is not allowed.

Soc.: Certainly, but good can only come from a reasoned knowledge of what is good, and you have not explained to him in what his fault consists. Moreover, if you have granted him permission to seek advice in small matters, you must tell him at what exact point the thirst for information becomes dishonest; a line must be drawn between what is good and what is bad. Is a boy responsible for a percentage of his prose, and, if so, for what percentage. Have you made these things plain to him?

Mr. F.: I have not, O Socrates.

Soc.: Then how do you expect the unformed mind of a boy to draw this line for himself. It would seem to me, Mr. Featherbrain, that you are not training the youth as it should be trained, when you order its conduct not by the results of logical deduction but by arbitrary ruling. For if in your own mind you are not certain at what exact point the good becomes the bad, and indeed are not certain of what the bad consists; what confusion must you not expect to discover in the minds of those that are taught by you. You must remember that on the football and cricket field a boy is under orders which he accepts, but of whose moral nature he is ignorant. He knows that if he is offside in football a free kick is awarded to the other side; he knows that if he knocks the ball forward with his hands a scrum is given. He has made a mistake. He has committed a tactical, but not a moral offence. The rulings of the Rugby Union are arbitrary and subject to frequent alteration; whereas the rulings concerning what is good and what is bad are fixed and irradicable. Is it not likely, therefore, that a boy will come to regard your rulings in these matters of cribbing as arbitrary rulings that may be altered. His life is a game, you must always remember that, and it is on that basis that he accepts it. He knows that he will be punished if he uses a crib; he knows that you appear to apprehend a distinction between the written and printed word; he knows also that you have discovered a difference in the nature of the studies of translation and prose, and that while you will allow him to ask advice on certain points you will not allow him to seek advice on the whole, though at the same time you do not define the point at which these same certain points cease to be certain points and become sufficiently part of the whole to be called the whole. Can you expect him, then, to regard such a system as anything but the complicated rulings of a game played between you and him. And can you expect him to attach to these regulations any moral significance. On the cricket field he places his leg in front of the wicket and tries to hit a short length ball over square-leg's head. If he misses the ball he is leg before, and goes to the pavilion. In his study he prepares his translation with a crib; he is discovered by his house master; he goes to the head master. And it is in this spirit, Mr. Featherbrain, that your form deceives you. You have to make clear to the young many things before you can expect them to attach a moral significance to what has no logical proof.

There may be flaws in the argument, for the Socratic method is insidious, but I have not, myself, been able to discover them. The ethics of cribbing from the master's point of view are illogical. The exact point where co-operation starts and cribbing begins is not fixed.

Cribbing goes by form and houses. Its activities expand and contract according to the demands of popular opinion. It is always communal. There is a conscription of intellect and knowledge. No boy would prejudice his chances of winning his house cap; but most boys would assist their most dangerous rivals in promotion. We hear in chapel sad stories of the large and brutal bully who cribs steadily throughout the term and wrests the prize from the pure innocent who looked up every word in a large Lewis & Short. But it rarely happens like that. No one cribs for a prize, because few really want a prize. Occasionally cribbing wins a prize, but it is usually through a fluke.

A boy is particularly nervous about the results of a certain paper. He takes elaborate precautions to make sure that he will not have to spend the last Saturday of term rewriting the paper, and, in consequence, unexpectedly discovers himself at the head of the list. I recall one such instance in particular, and, because it seems to me so singularly appropriate, I may be pardoned, I trust, for retelling a story that I have incorporated elsewhere.

Divinity in the army class was a casual affair; a knowledge of the Old Testament not being considered a necessary part of the intellectual equipment of a subaltern, the Sandhurst authorities did not examine candidates on the subject, and both the form and its master regarded the hour's lesson on Sunday morning as a pause in the exertions of the week. The yearly divinity examination always occasioned, therefore, a measure of panic among the soldiers, for the form master, when confronted with irrefutable proofs of his own indolence, was in the habit of punishing not only the form but himself by keeping in for two hours on the last Saturday those of the form who had failed to score an adequate percentage. During the preceding days feverish and spasmodic attempts were made to cope successfully with the complicated relations of kings and prophets. One year, however, the form was fortunate.

A certain Mallaby, while searching in the class-room just before lock-up for a book he thought he had left there, saw lying among the papers on the master's desk, the rough draft of the questions for the divinity exam. In surprised delight he copied them all down. According to the popular conception of schoolboy honour, Mallaby, being a potential thief, would have kept the information to himself. Being a boy, however, he imparted it to his companions. The form entered the examination room in a mood of quiet confidence, and left it in a mood of deep content. Two days later, however, it was announced that this year the annual interest of a bequest would be devoted to a series of divinity papers throughout the school. The next day Mallaby learnt that he was head of the army class in divinity.

His conscience was fluttered. He could not, he felt, take a prize which he would have won through cribbing. It would be dishonest. It would be stealing. He announced his intention of explaining matters to the chief. This announcement was not, however, received with the enthusiasm that should have welcomed the imminence of so noble, so disinterested, so sacrificial a performance. The form was indeed seriously perturbed. It explained to Mallaby that, if he went to the chief, he would be queering not only his own pitch, but theirs as well, and that there were certain members of form who did not stand well enough in the eyes of authority to be able to risk such an addition to their score of discovered crimes. 'And, after all,' they said, 'why shouldn't you take the prize? We all knew the questions; you took the trouble to prepare them. You worked hard, and prizes are the reward of hard work. You've worked for the prize, harder than we did. Therefore you deserve the prize. And let's have no more of this nonsense about confession.'

In these matters each form and each house works out its own salvation. In some houses cribbing is not general, and in some forms cribbing is not general; and, in such cases, cribbing is anti-social. It might be urged that boys from houses that do not crib find themselves at a disadvantage in relation to boys from houses that do. But life usually manages to adjust itself, and a boy's position in form is chiefly important as regards the relation it bears to that of the other members of his house. It does not matter much to a boy in the school house if he is passed by a boy in Buller's. It will not affect his seniority in his own house, and it is his seniority in his own house that matters. Only a very few are concerned with the specialised rivalry of the Upper Sixth that decides who will be the official head of the school. Scholastically the ambition of few passes outside their house. In games it is different. But then the eleven is not a fluid body like the Sixth; it is a close corporation, and once the reputation of being the best slow left-hand bowler is lost, the chance of a ribboned coat grows distant.

I remember once a parson from the East End preaching a sermon in the school chapel, in which he intimated that in comparison with the loathsome atrocities that had for setting the Mile End Road, a schoolboy merely played at sin. This was reassuring to certain genial sportsmen who had hitherto been unable to view with any confidence the prospect of immortality: and the phrase 'playing at sin' passed into the vocabulary of the school. To such an extent, indeed, that the head master was forced to deliver a special midweek address, in which he pointed out that the degree of sin was relative to environment, and that the moral offences of a man who had been nurtured in surroundings of bestiality and filth were less grave than those of the boy who had spent his childhood in the clean atmosphere of a decent home. The complacence of the aforesaid sportsmen was broken. Not only were their offences as serious as those of their less fortunately placed brethren, they were actually more grave: a disquieting reflection. But I have often felt inclined to question, not the irrefutable logic of the head master's sermon, but the truth of that original contention about 'playing at sin.' Are, that is to say, the vices of the lower orders actually more startling than those of Mayfair? Are they more startling? I wonder: a higher standard of civilisation refines our pleasures, quickens our powers of appreciation, makes us more subtle, more complex; does it not also sharpen the edge of misbehaviour? It is a point on which perhaps Casanova would be able to enlighten us. But, certainly, in the matter of cribbing, the methods of the lower forms are clumsy, unimaginative, bourgeois in comparison with those of the Fifths and Sixths.

A master who expects to discover in the Third the guile of the Fifths will be disappointed; and, equally, the master who has successfully combated the guile of the Lower Second may discover himself completely outwitted by the Middle Sixth. In the Lower School the use of the actual crib is rare. It is easy for the Sixth Former to possess himself of a translation. The Everyman series contains excellent renderings of Thucydides and Plato. The Loeb library is not useless. Gilbert Murray may be a poet, but his translations of Euripides have proved of assistance to many a harassed student. Jebb's version of Sophocles is to be found in the shelves of the school library. It is a different job to find a crib of Ovid and Livy. Dr. Giles has done some excellent research work, but questions are apt to be asked about bona fide students; an address such as 'The School House, Fernhurst,' is likely to wake suspicion, and the Third Former has not read enough French novels to appreciate the value of the poste restante. He considers that a crib is more trouble than it is worth. And what is cribbing but laziness! Moreover, he has a distrust of cribs. He is naturally stupid or he would be higher in the school, and he knows that when a boy gives the right meaning to the wrong words there are unpleasant investigations. He prefers to rely on the inspiration of the moment: as a result the offences of the Lower Second are trivial. They rarely reach the green baize of the head master's study. One boy looks over another's paper, another is prompted during 'con,' there is a strange similarity between two Latin proses, an unusual mistake is repeated in several exercises. The offender is beaten afterwards, and no more is heard about it. As a matter of fact there is less cribbing in the Lower School than in the Upper. Opportunities are rare and the example of hardened criminals is absent. The second yearer only becomes a practised deceiver under the influence of his seniors, and there are not many third yearers in the Lower School. Higher up it is different. But it is to be doubted whether the effects of cribbing are as serious as they are depicted.

The case against them comes under two main headings: (1) The moral issue; (2) The expediency issue. With the moral issue I have already dealt. Most boys crib at school, but the public school man is straighter in business than the self-made man and the American. Nearly all men will boast in their clubs of the way they bamboozled 'old Moke,' of how they pinned up the rep. on the back of the boy in front, and of how they used to strip off the cover of the translation book and sew it round one of Dr. Giles's publications; but the man who has forced a young inventor into a hard contract remains silent. It is a matter that he prefers to keep to himself. I do not believe that cribbing saps the moral sense.

The expediency issue is more complicated. And, on the surface, it does seem that the use of a crib is the very worst thing for a boy who hopes to win scholarships and fellowships. It is a short cut. He does not need to use his brain. His thinking is done for him. That is true, but there are points on the other side. He is set fifty lines of Virgil to prepare. If he comes into form next morning with those lines half learnt he will derive little benefit from the hour's lesson. The whole time he will be worrying at the sense. He will not be able to give his full attention to the points of grammar and history that will arise in the course of the hour. If, on the other hand, he is free from the anxiety of failure he is able to give his full attention to what is perhaps the more important part of the lesson. Also a boy remembers what he has worked out for himself; and a crib used intelligently provides just enough struggle to impinge the result of the effort on the memory. And the wise do use a crib intelligently. They not only want to know their 'con' for the next day: they also wish to be able to remember it for the examination. They, therefore, read a sentence over first in the original. Some one wonders what a certain word means. The word is looked up. Then a shot is made at the sense, not a very serious shot perhaps, and speedy reference is made to the crib. The English is read out loud. 'Now, how does he get that out of it?' some one asks. There is a minute of tussle and explanation—then all is clear. And the next sentence is read out loud.

That is the way to use a crib. And if one has worked out for oneself, even if it be with the aid of a crib, the meaning of a long passage of Virgil, one remembers that passage. I have forgotten now nearly all my Greek and Latin, but I can still read currently and with pleasure the Eclogues, for which I used a crib. Whereas the memory of other books, through which I struggled honestly, but less successfully, has faded altogether. For the average member of the Sixth I believe the intelligent use of a crib is to be recommended. A greater number of lines could be prepared at one time, and there would be leisure for acquiring that knowledge that comes to us indirectly from the classics. Plato is a window through which we see the gymnasiums of Ancient Greece. But it will be shuttered for those to whom the struggle is ever with correct rendering and syntax.

The real scholar, whose life will be spent largely with the classics, must avoid short cuts; he should glory in difficulties that will quicken his wits: he has his whole life before him. He does not have to pass, as the rest of us do, swiftly into a world of politics and business. And, indeed, the real scholar realises this. I can recall few instances in which a boy with a really fine brain has deadened his perceptions by the use of translations. The scholar, when he reaches the Sixth, and is no longer forced to write the proses and prepare the translations of his less clever comrades, prefers to work alone, if not in the company of boys who are equally brilliant.

But the real scholar is the exception. This book is written for, and about, the average schoolboy. I know that in the matter of cribbing I am pleading a lost cause. Cribbing will always, of course, be a forbidden thing; therein lies its charm. But it is important that master and parents should realise in what light these questions appear to the boy. A boy is frequently misunderstood. He is accused of dishonesty. He resents the accusation, but he is unable to explain why his offence does not deserve so stern a label. He is tempted to lose heart, to console himself with the reflection that 'they don't understand,' and so further estrange himself from sympathy and mutual understanding. The boy stands before the house master and lets the wind of words flow over him. What use is it for him to attempt an explanation. If he argues his punishment will be increased. It is better to assume contrition; to say, 'Yes, sir, I hadn't seen it in that light before,' and to be more clever another time. It would be far more just were the master to regard cribbing as a boy regards it: as a game, to be punished effectively when discovered, but not to be associated with the welfare of the human spirit.

If school authorities wish, however, to find a lasting cure they have in their own hands the remedy. They will not achieve their ends through increased vigilance; that will only make the boy more clever. They should make work more interesting. There is little cribbing in form where boys are interested in what they are learning. Boys are not anxious to learn what a master is not anxious to teach. Laziness begets laziness, and cribbing is a form of laziness.

Systematic cribbing will not disappear till popular opinion regards as important success or failure in the class-room. Success at games is considered important; games are, in consequence played fairly. But, as popular opinion sets no value on school work, it does not seem to matter much what happens in school hours. Success in form needs to be brought into some sort of relationship with success at football. Athletic prowess will always, naturally, and perhaps rightly, be rated more highly than intellectual achievement. But that is no reason why intellectual achievement should be disparaged in the case of all save the brilliant few whose feats are received with a mild enthusiasm. At Sandhurst we used to have weekly examinations, and, as far as I remember, there was no cribbing at all in these exams. To a certain extent promotion depended on one's performance in them, and each G. C. was anxious to work out the problems for himself so as to be able to judge how much, or how little, progress he had made. This did not mean that we were more interested in topography than late cuts, but that we realised that, at this stage of our career proficiency in topography would be of service to us. I believe that a similar state of affairs would exist at a Public School were the social values to be readjusted.

Cribbing, like so much else in public school life, is a side-shoot of athleticism.

CHAPTER VII