even the most wilfully blind of us recognises that one great effect of this war will be an immediate demand for a thorough cleansing of all Augean stables, whether in economics, politics, or education.

Though we pursue from week to week the even tenour of our way, as aloof from the conflict as Jane Austen, Byron, and Scott were aloof from the Napoleonic struggle of a hundred years ago, there lurks the thought that we are in as great danger of failing to grasp the trend of modern ideas which will certainly, willynilly, after our whole system as we were of breaking down under the strain of concentrated idealism in the early days of the war. Never was moderation or a wide, sane outlook so required as they are at the present day.

We have to remember that there is coming a day when this war will be over, when Art, Literature, Science, must all come into their rightful heritage again; it is therefore of the very first importance that we should realise that now we should be preparing for that time. We are, at present, too near the event to be able to judge aright of the relative importance or necessity of war; but boys ought now to be taught by level-headed masters that the aggrandisement of arms is not patriotism, and that the "glory of war" is virtually a contradiction in terms. I cannot help but think that the boy of to-day stands on the edge of a very dreadful chasm; having by suffering and endurance groped his way up to the heights, his fall will be trebly disastrous if he is not very carefully guided through these troublous days. Several incidents that have happened this term occur to me which bear out this hidden fear within me.

In a debating society recently one master of high ideals and perspicacity proposed the unpopular motion that "The evils of war far outweigh its advantages," a brave theory to produce before an unthinking mob, but sufficiently obvious, one would have thought, to a set of senior boys in a large public school which was passing through a phase of Renascence. The debate, as it turns out, threatened to become historic on account of its rowdiness and bad taste. The proposers of the motion were persistently "barracked" and refused a fair hearing; the result of the vote-taking was 57-3 against the proposition. It sounds almost like Germany-and yet we are said to be fighting against militarism. Not in our public schools altogether, I am afraid. But this is not the only instance of back-sliding. We see athletic houses, again as of old, caring absolutely for nothing but the glorification in the games of their own house; oblivious of the outside world, of the need for work, of any of the myriad interests that lie round about their path on every side. We hear of the same old undisciplined boy, unable to restrain his ardour

!

for conflict, coming into contact with all his authorities just as
commonly as before the war; and knowing this, we are not sur-
prised to hear the entire collected school behave outrageously to
a war lecturer (admittedly very incapable) who upset their
susceptibilities.

It is distressing, but true. Christmas saw us like a weeded
garden ready to spring forth with most unexpected yet glorious
blooms; instead of which in among the flowers we are finding
the rankest weeds which we thought to have been eradicated by
the harrow of August, 1914. Insidiously old evils have crept in
again; the hope is that they may not yet have taken root; we
are, as one writer says, after all, in "mid-channel"; the end is
not yet in sight, the flourish and blare of trumpets with which
we entered on this conflict have died down; it is all now mere
drudgery, but not, therefore, less dangerous.

There is creeping over the public schools an ineffable boredom, a tedium bordering on disaster. Boys are resenting the incentive that is held out to them, to work, to play, because to do so "will help them in some trenches" which are beyond the bounds of possibility for them (at least in their eyes). These boys know well enough that when the time comes they will act with the same courage that their elder brothers have shown, and are showing, but with some truth they claim the same right to be careless, free, and merry; there is a grave danger lest the growing tendency all over the country to deprive men and women of their legitimate and very necessary amusements should spread to the public schools. It is of all fallacies the most insidious that the stern, silent, morose men are the most to be counted upon in crises; the gay and the debonair are just as capable in the time of action as the Puritan whose zeal has eaten his natural inclinations up. The sixteen-year-old must not be bereft of all his old gods, for if he is so bereft he will become the callous "atheist," without interests, without jollity, without those recuperative faculties which alone can keep a nation from going to pieces while undergoing a great strain like the present. The Corps work will be all the more effective if it is kept interesting and not too obtrusive.

The standard of work will be maintained much more by the incentive of interest than by any ulterior motive that it "may be useful in the trench"; games will be played with more keenness and vigour if they are not always held up as motives "to keep fit for warfare." At present boys are war-ridden. They would give their eyes to be out at the front, and do not wish to be reminded of that fact at every turn and phase of school life. They want to play their house-matches as house-matches, to

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work for whatever reasons they have ever had for working of old, to sleep, to eat as normally as possible, and not to do everything "for the glory of war."

Our aim in education at present ought rather to lie in the direction of the inclination of humane, generous, and liberal ideas than in the development of those faculties which make for success in military strategy and tactics. On all sides the cry is, "And afterwards, what then?" To answer this cry in the best possible manner for the ultimate good of the commonwealth is the business of all thinking men who wield any influence on our rulers of the future. Boys must be made to see that war is no solution of a nation's difficulties. At such a time as the present it is only too easy to see and to lay stress on the many obvious advantages that war brings in its train; it is our duty rather to impress on the growing generation the manifold blessings of peace, side by side with the temptations and snares incident thereto.

There is little fear of England becoming slack, of patriotism, that precious inborn love of the very earth on which we build our homes, dwindling; of honour, love, virtue, endurance, and humanity ceasing to kindle their divine flames within our hearts; we are having, have had, our lesson writ in unerasable characters upon our souls; immensities are recognised as immensities, the ephemeral is no more likely to be mistaken for the eternal in our time—but boys are queer cattle and want most delicate handling. They are almost uncanny in their quickness to detect hypocrisy, insincerity, the fallacy in the argument; obtuse as they are in so many ways, in this matter of our relation to the times in which we live they are, like the Psalmist, wiser than their teachers. They can feel, almost unconsciously, that we are wrong when we dwell too much on the absolute importance of details, of tangible successes and failures in Flanders, in the Dardanelles, in East Prussia, in the North Sea.

Now is the time to throw our whole weight on the side of ideals, to make them realise the myriad-hued beauty of life in which lies all truth, all appreciation of nobility, all religion and depth of character. Patriotism must include not only these woods and fields of Wessex, but all fields, all woods, the sea, the sky, the air, the downs and vales, all the glorious exuberant growth of Nature who has so lavishly, so wantonly splashed her gorgeous gifts on to the canvas of life; patriotism means a realisation of all that is best in Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Burke, Dr. Johnson. Patriotism means a sure criterion by which we may test the values of things, by which we may spurn the glitter and tinsel, and hold on to the real, the true

metal, a touchstone of purity, of ceaseless endeavour, of right thinking and high living. It is not in our newspapers or periodical magazines, in our expensive war maps, or intricate martial theorising that we shall find all this. Our minds and souls have been purged of all unhealthy, loose thoughts; how much more noticeable, how much more awful will be the result of it all if we allow them again to be besmirched. From henceforward there must be no blot on our 'scutcheon; no dark places in our lives, no skeletons in our cupboards.

Theorists, far-sighted and lofty in their outlook, emphasise the importance of this and that special vice that must disappear from our national life after the war; slums must go, poverty must be reduced, chicanery and jobbing in politics must disappear, and

It is not less necessary to insist that the public schools must move with the times; large-minded parents have inveighed against the mistaken outlook of the public schools, and hold up their hands in horror at what they call "the average product of the great schools." It is our part to see to it that this "average is changed, that when boys leave us they will do so, really educated, full of a noble determination, so far as in them lies, to right the wrong, not to acquiesce in evil because it has existed for so long, but to bind themselves in a great brotherhood to master the problems that compass them about, and really leave the world more civilised, more humane for their having lived in it. All this is going to be terribly difficult, more difficult than ever now that we have to work short-handed in the absence of our finest masters, who have decided that their part lies in actual fighting; the age of the temporary master is not one in which we should expect to see the most auspicious results, yet so magnificent has been the determination of these old men who have returned to keep things going while their sons go to the war, that their influence is already beginning to make itself felt. The sudden, untimely deaths of our nearest and dearest have done more than all else to teach some of us the lessons we so sorely needed; in a less degree the many letters home from the trenches, the presence in our midst of Belgian boys, homeless orphans, yet steadfast, full of courage and determination, the constant coming and going of the wounded, the splendid heroic response of the women already taxed to the limit of their powers, all these and a thousand other features of our life to-day are palpable signs which cannot fail to rouse in us a sense of our personal responsibility, our own obvious duty in the matter. I look forward to a not far distant future as the outcome of all this time of distress, of pain, and of horror, when the public school

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boy shall be what we each of us in our inmost hearts, if we ever take the trouble to think, always meant him to be: upright, pure, honourable, truthful, full of a divine, restless power, which will make for the amelioration of the lot of mankind over whom he will have sway. I look forward to a time when snobbery, the mad pursuit of wealth, the incessant search for transient pleasures, undue athletic prominence, slackness of aim, brainlessness, blindness to beauty, tacit consent to pain, bullying-all these and a million other present-day vices shall be wholly eradicated from our system, and in their place be substituted generosity, æsthetic appreciation for whatever things are honourable, pure, and of good report, indulgence and compassion towards the weak, the encouragement of the intellectual, a real understanding for the things that matter, and a turning away from the things that matter not.

In short, my boy of the near future will fulfil that ideal of Huxley's and be "one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." This time I know to be coming, but it rests with us, the public schoolmasters of 1915 (and a stupendous responsibility it is) to say how soon such a millennium shall arrive. "They also serve" is a trite and hackneyed maxim, but it is none the less true for that, and there is work, colossal work to be done in England to-day if we are to gain from this war what providentially seems the obvious good that we were meant to gain from it. It will need the best brains, the staunchest hearts, the most inextinguishable optimism coupled with calm serenity, irresistible, unchangeable force, and an almost superhuman love to bring this about, but from the little that I have seen in a small out-of-the-way corner of England since last August, I am as certain of the result as I am that such a revolution has been only too long needed in what is called the higher education of this country.

S. P. B. MAIS.