CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION

Were the moral question to be tackled sensibly, and were the reduction of the age limit to modify the 'blood' system, and insist upon the fact that school life is only a prelude, I believe that athletics would occupy their proper place in the life of the school. The social force of religion depends, to a large extent, on the appreciation of the importance of what will follow the 'here and now.' During the war, when the future was insecure, and no one could see anything certainly beyond the limits of a fortnight's leave, the country plunged recklessly in search of pleasure. No one looked ahead. No one paused to consider what would be the harvest of their sowing.

The eyes of the preparatory school boy are fixed upon the future. He knows that the successes and failures of the moment are unimportant. He knows that a strenuous contest lies in wait for him. In consequence there is at a Preparatory School little of the fanatical devotion that colours the fabric of public school life. I remember a house master once saying that it was impossible for a member of a house side to do much work while the house matches were in progress. And, as the house matches covered a period of six weeks, this was a pretty generous allowance. At the same time the house master only spoke the truth: it was practically impossible to do much work during the house matches term; we could think of little else. Every evening we would discuss at considerable length the afternoon's punt-about and the morrow's match. We would devise schemes for the better outwitting of our opponents. We would discuss the weakness and strength of individual players. And the majority of masters, certainly of house masters, shared this fervour. It is true that a certain house master, when presented with the excuse for an indifferent prose that house matches were too exciting, remarked: 'I don't know whom they excite, they don't excite me.' But this assertion was belied by his subsequent behaviour on the touchline. During house matches there is an educational moratorium. In peace time the energies and interests of a nation are directed into a thousand different channels, but in war time every interest is secondary to that of war. And, while house matches are in progress, the atmosphere of a house is not unlike that of a nation that is at war. Individual members may have their private troubles, but they realise that these troubles are of small account at such a time. And, though it is no doubt admirable for the individual to feel himself of less importance than the community, it will hardly be conceded that self-negation in such a cause is likely to prove of any very permanent value to him.

Now there are those who will urge that boy nature cannot be altered, that it is natural for a boy to worship games, and that you cannot expect him to be otherwise. But that I shall never believe is so. For myself, I know that I play cricket and football as keenly as I did seven years ago, that I spend a great many evenings with a Wisden in my hands; but that I manage to get through a fair amount of work between each January and December. That is not in itself a fair argument. One cannot arraign the enthusiasms of sixteen before the enthusiasms of twenty-three any more than one can arraign the enthusiasms of twenty-three before those of forty. There is no more fallacious argument than the 'when you have reached my age, young man.' At different stages of our life we are vexed by different problems. At twenty-three our sexual life is of vast importance; it stretches before us, a wide field for courage, enterprise, adventure. In the man of forty, curiosity has been satisfied. He has settled many of the problems that perplexed him when he was a young man. And he says: 'My dear fellow, all this that is worrying you does not really matter.' But he is wrong. It does matter to a young man of twenty. And nothing is trivial that has ever exercised deeply the human spirit.

In a world that is in flux the permanence or impermanence of any emotion is of less matter than its intensity while it lasts. Sooner or later everything must desert us. Is the brain a useless possession because it will one day soften. Are teeth less efficacious now because one day they will decay. Is a young man of twenty going to listen to the impotent man of sixty who mutters: 'Young man, the charms of woman are a snare and an illusion. When you have reached my age you will be no longer moved by them.' For that is where the 'when you are my age, young man,' argument finally lands us. And it is not fair to say to a boy of seventeen: 'This mad excitement about games is absurd. In six years even you will have outgrown it.' It is for us to decide whether this mad excitement is the natural expression of a boy's temperament, or whether it is the peculiar growth of a peculiar environment.

I will take as an example Sandhurst as it was in the autumn of 1916. It was composed almost entirely of boys straight from the Public Schools, and I should imagine that the average age of a company was about eighteen, the age, that is to say, at which most of them would have been about to start on their last year. They brought with them the standards of public school life. One would have expected them to establish their standards at Sandhurst. They did nothing of the sort. There was nothing that bore the least approach to a blood system. There were seniors and juniors, that was all. There was no fierce cult of athleticism. The G.C. who scored tries in company matches was not granted a general permission to drive his bayonet through college furniture. In the daily life games played a prominent part. Indeed, the under officer whose company did not make use of the ground allotted to it would have had to face an unpleasant half-hour with the commandant. But games never became the business of life. They were played for their own sake. They were untouched by professionalism. If a three-quarter missed a pass five yards from the line he did not bury himself in a far corner of the anteroom, apart from the gaiety of his companions. The average company side played just as keenly as a house fifteen at school. While we were on the field we were as desperately anxious to win. But we did not spend the morning in a state of nervous irritation, nor did the issue of the contests drive us to deep despondency, or to hysterical elation. A certain intensity had passed. Yet I do not think that ever before had I derived such pleasure from the actual playing of the game as I did at Sandhurst.

One would not, of course, hold up a military institution as the model for an educational system. But, from the point of view of athletics, the Sandhurst that I knew in the winter of 1916 and the spring of 1917 possessed all the merits and none of the faults that one associates with the average Public School. And yet that Sandhurst was composed of the same boys that a few months earlier had, at their Public Schools, rigidly observed the exacting ritual of the great god of sport.

Reasons for this change are not difficult to find, and it may be noticed that they are in line with the improvements suggested in an earlier chapter. There is no blood system, because there is little disparity of age between the G.C.'s. Juniors belong to a lower caste than the seniors, but they inhabit that lower world without worrying much about what is happening in the superior world. Contact between the two is not established. There is a hard dividing line. A junior may not sit on a certain side of the anteroom. There is no social fluidity. One is one thing or the other. Athletic worship in school was due largely, I suggested, to the absence of any other focus for a boy's enthusiasm. At Sandhurst several such focuses were provided. To begin with, the work was interesting. The morning was not a mere succession of tiresome hours relieved by a quarter of an hour's break. The G.C. did not listen to lectures and tactics with the listless condescension that he had paid formerly to the Greek syntax; he realised that the knowledge of the subjects he was studying would be of practical value to him at a later date. He was anxious to be a good officer. He was, therefore, interested in his work. He was also at Sandhurst for a very little while. He regarded Sandhurst quite definitely as the anteroom to a career; he never imagined it to be anything else. In a few months he would have joined his regiment. The honours he won at Sandhurst would be of little value in themselves, and were only worth the gaining in as far as they would enhance the reputation which he would take with him to his regiment. A Sandhurst cadet was always looking beyond the present.

Nor did the officers in charge of companies feel any compunction to prescribe athleticism as an antidote to immorality. In the first place, they were not responsible for the G.C.'s moral welfare, nor was there, indeed, any occasion for alarm. The amount of immoral conduct between G.C.'s, if there was any, must have been extremely small. Such conduct is essentially _faute de mieux_: women were abundantly available for those who wanted them. And in a town such as Camberley there were endless opportunities for innocent romance.

The three main causes for athleticism were removed, and in consequence there was no athleticism. Now it is obviously impossible for all these conditions to be introduced into a Public School. There must be a disparity of age, schoolmasters must feel some anxiety about the morals of the boys that are to be entrusted to them. But, if we can show that the complete removal of certain conditions of public school life can entirely remove certain evils, we can only assume that the modification of these conditions would cause considerable improvement. The smaller the disparity of age between the eldest and the youngest boy, the less intense will be the blood system. The shorter the period that a boy spends at school, the less will be the tendency to regard school life as the complete compass of his life. The supply of another focus for a boy's enthusiasm will diminish the strength of his athletic ardour. The greater the honesty in tackling the moral question, the less will masters feel themselves forced to recommend athleticism as an antidote to immorality. And these changes are, I believe, possible without altering appreciably the principle of public school education. The supply of other focuses may, at first glance, seem a highly difficult job. It may, indeed, be advanced that were there another focus, athleticism could not exist in its present state, and that there would be no need for a reduction of the age limit. But I am inclined to think that it would be hardly possible to run any school which contained boys of thirteen and boys of nineteen and not have a blood system and an athletic worship. The forces of a natural inclination are too strongly entrenched behind the barricade of six years. The masters do not stand a fair chance. But the weakening of one force means the strengthening of another. A lowering of the barricade by a couple of years would give the other side a chance of contending equally. The moment a boy realised that the prizes of school life had only a temporary value, he would question his blind devotion to the religion of athleticism. He would wonder whether other things were not worth while. His allegiance would be divided.

But the passing of regulations cannot in themselves effect a reformation. They can be of great assistance; they can support and they can protect. They cannot build. And, in the study of public school life, we have to return in the end to the point from which we started. Boys and parents and schoolmasters must meet on a common ground and discuss their mutual welfare. They can do nothing till they are honest with each other, till they face the facts together. When they had once done that they would not find the road hopelessly barricaded. The solutions that I have, from time to time, suggested in these chapters, would, I believe, prove beneficial. But it is as a statement of facts, an analysis of certain conditions, tendencies, and lines of thought, that I would chiefly submit this book to the consideration of parents and schoolmasters and those others who are interested in these questions. For nothing can be done till the conspiracy of silence, the policy of evasion and self-deception, the diplomacy of the merchant and his goods is broken down, till, that is to say, parents and schoolmasters meet on the common ground of co-operation, till they can look each other in the face and say: 'Things are so, and it is for us to find a remedy.'

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Old England BERNARD GILBERT

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A God's-Eye view of a village. This book is unique in English literature both in conception and treatment. The author presents a whole community to the reader, taking for his subject our largest social unit--an English village--where everybody knows everything about every one. He has taken a typical village during one day of the war and given a camera obscura presentment of the multitudinous intrigues, ambitions, desires, disputes, relationships, and interests which thread its fabric so closely. There is no hero or heroine, for the author presents some hundreds of characters, each all important to himself. These speak their own thoughts, throw startling sidelights on their neighbours; and from the whole, a picture of a village community takes definite shape. The author has snapped his village at one instant on one day, so that there is no 'action.' The village is frozen motionless whilst the reader inspects each inhabitant. There is no sentimentalism, no 'kailyard' gloss; the villagers expressing themselves with immense force from the Earl to the mole-catcher. Mr Gilbert has done intensely for the English countryside what Balzac did for his nation on a great scale. Not only is each of the great array of characters set forth vividly, but the larger problems of the countryside are illuminated from various angles. A map of the village shows every cottage, some fifty genealogical trees explain the relationships of the villagers, and a 'Who's Who' gives full information about each inhabitant. The author has taken three years to write this book, and it is the fruit of a life-time's close observation. All who were born in the country or have any interest in rural life and problems must be interested in _Old England_.

The Carpenter and His Kingdom

DR ALEXANDER IRVINE

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Dr Irvine has already secured a very high place in the affections of the people of this country through his books, _My Lady of the Chimney Corner_ and _The Souls of Poor Folk_. _The Carpenter and His Kingdom_, as the name denotes, is a Life of Christ, a re-interpretation of His life as seen by a very simple yet very subtle, very human yet very wise idealist and Christian. No writer on social tendencies after the war has failed to point out the great loss of prestige suffered by the Churches. Speaking broadly, they are regarded with a disinterested tolerance almost amounting to contempt by the great majority of people, and this attitude has as its general effect a marked decrease in 'belief' in Christianity. Dr Irvine's book may prove a very real antidote to that progressive agnosticism, for he still believes that the Life of Christ is the greatest example mankind has ever been given, and that the influence of His message is vastly greater than that of any other single influence in history. But to show that he has to draw a new picture of Christ emphasising His Humanity as well as His Divinity, and make His teaching intelligible to a Society still hardly approaching convalescence after a prolonged and virulent disease. It is an original, beautiful, and timely book.

A London Mosaic W. L. GEORGE

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Captain Evans was second in command of the British Antarctic expedition commanded by Captain Scott, and took over Captain Scott's position as leader after his death. It will be remembered that, during the war, Captain Evans was in command of H.M.S. _Broke_, which, together with H.M.S. _Swift_, engaged six German destroyers, sinking two and torpedoing a third. It is an interesting, intimate, racy, and absorbing account of the expedition compressed into a comparatively small compass, and fully brings out the intense difficulties the expedition had to face, the heroism displayed by every member of the party, and the magnificent scientific results obtained.

Labour: The Giant with the Feet of Clay

SHAW DESMOND

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The Island of Youth EDWARD SHANKS

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_The Island of Youth_ is the fourth volume of verse by a poet whose powers have been steadily maturing. Two years ago Mr Shanks's _The Queen of China_ won the Hawthornden Prize, and the present volume contains all the poems he has since written. It contains one long poem, a beautiful idyll in blank verse, and a number of short poems. Mr Shanks's language is refreshingly pure and his rhythm refreshingly musical, in an age which has made many attempts to glorify gibberish and raucous discord. He is, as all good poets must be, at once original and in the stream of national tradition, and in no respect more traditional than in his affection for and knowledge of the English landscape which has breathed its fragrance into so much of our great poetry in all ages. Those who know his previous books, or the selections from them in _Georgian Poetry_, do not need to be told this, and those unacquainted with Mr Shanks's previous work can be most emphatically assured that they will not be disappointed in _The Island of Youth_. It is one of those books familiarity with which breeds an ever deepening admiration and love.

Ibsen and His Creation JANKO LAVRIN

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From Waterloo to the Marne COUNT PIETRO ORSI

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This is a book which should be read by all those who wish to arrive at an accurate knowledge of the causes and condition which led up to and provoked the Great World War of 1914-1918, and are responsible for the world unrest of to-day. The author, the well-known Italian Professor of International History, describes in this book, clearly and logically, the rise, the ebb and flow of the international democratic spirit which floods the world of to-day. He shows the nexus which unites all races and nations of the world into one coherent whole, and traces with admirable clarity the birth, life, and struggles of that desire for popular liberty which first penetrated into every corner of Europe with the armies of the great Napoleon. It is a compendium of the history of each country of the world, and should be read by each student who not only wishes to familiarise himself with the history of the last century of his own country, but desires also to gain a solid acquaintance of that of the remaining countries of the globe. The arrangement of the book is excellent and original; the libraries of every nation have been ransacked for its compilation, and the work, without being in the least degree scrappy, gives all the salient points of universal history. This historical encyclopedia should be in the hands of every thinking man.

The Riddle of the Rhine VICTOR LEFEBURE

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A History of English Furniture PERCY MACQUOID, R.I.

With plates in colour after Shirley Slocombe, and numerous illustrations selected and arranged by the author; in four volumes:

I.--THE AGE OF OAK II.--THE AGE OF WALNUT III.--THE AGE OF MAHOGANY IV.--THE AGE OF SATINWOOD

£21 net per set, or £5 5s. net per volume.

Size, 15 in. 11 in.; bound in red buckram, gilt.

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The subject has been divided into four periods, the first dating from 1500 to 1660, comprising furniture that can be attributed to the Renaissance, and its evolution from the Gothic. The second from 1660 to 1720, when the change is varied by the Restoration and Dutch influence, followed by a distinctly assertive English spirit. The third period covers the introduction from France of fresh ideas in design, clearly marking another change, lasting from 1720 to 1770. The fourth, 1770-1820, which was inspired by an affectation for all things classical. While the book only purports to deal with English furniture, it is obvious that reference is freely made to foreign styles in order to keep the matter in perspective.

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