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.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] The proofs of this book were corrected in April. Should anything
unforeseen change during the cricket season, before its appearance, I
can only plead the fallibility of the prophet.

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

MORALITY AND THE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP

It is at this period, also, of a boy's development that the moral
question assumes a definite significance. There is no phase of school
life that is more generally misunderstood and misrepresented, and there
is no phase that a writer tackles with greater misgiving and
disinclination. He is confronted with the barricaded prejudices of a
vested interest, with the tremulous ignorance of mothers who seek to be
deceived, with the conspiracy of silence that exists between boys,
parents, and masters, and, last of all, with the wilful jealousy of the
yellow press that is only too ready to decry the value of what it is
pleased to call the 'trades union of snobbery.' There are times, indeed,
when it seems better to acquiesce in that conspiracy of silence rather
than to give those speculators in contention another opportunity of
mud-slinging. There are times when it seems hopeless to attempt to
explain the nature of public school morality to those who have not
themselves been to a Public School. It is like looking at a
stained-glass window from the outside. One reminds oneself that for many
years, without, perhaps, any very disastrous results, we have muddled
along in contented ignorance and self-deceit. Why not leave things
where they are? Why stir up trouble? And yet the moral question is such
an essential part of school life, it exercises such an influence on the
development of the boy; indirectly it colours so considerably the
attitude of the master to every other phase of school life, that it is
impossible to omit all reference to it in a detailed study such as this,
and, if it is impossible to avoid mention of it, it is fatal to content
oneself, as one may very well do in a novel, with stray suggestions and
inferences.

A novel is an abstraction. One compresses into a few pages the action of
several years, so that one has to suggest rather than to state. One can
withhold one's own opinion, one is under no compunction to generalise
from the incidents one selects. One is telling a story or interpreting a
personality. Only rarely is one constructing a thesis. In a novel it is
not difficult to deal with the moral question. Most good school stories
have touched more or less indirectly on some side of it. Ivor Brown and
Compton Mackenzie have both dealt subtly with an intricate relationship.
Hugh Walpole, if less originally, faced the same situation more
courageously, while Arnold Lunn in _Loose Ends_ has interpreted the boy
as opposed to the official attitude to this issue with extreme
effectiveness. The novelist is constrained to discuss only that part of
the question that affects the action of the story. That is one of the
great charms of story-telling: one can touch lightly without need of
explanation on the most delicate situations. One can say only as much
as one wants to say, and say it, what is more, obliquely. In a book such
as this, however, one must deal with the subject thoroughly if at all.
One must tackle every side of it. One is bound to follow one's thought
through to the end. And that is a thing that no one cares to do in
public. It was said of a certain intrepid Rugby player that he had not
the brains to be afraid. It is certainly true that many soldiers lost
their nerve after they had been once wounded, and that few soldiers were
really frightened till they had seen what a shell could do; it may well
be that at twenty-three one has not sufficient experience of the world
to realise what risks one runs through honesty.

The first difficulty, especially for those who, without having been to a
Public School themselves, are the fathers of present or prospective
public school boys, is to start investigations with a clear mind. This
feat the majority never manage to accomplish. For the moral question in
schools is concerned with the relationship of two members of the same
sex. Now such a relationship is counted in the world at large an
unmentionable and unforgivable sin. It is regarded with horror by the
average man. It is a penal offence. The man who enters into such a
relationship is abnormal, and, as such, is considered a menace to
society. But the same standards are not applicable to school life.

A man was intended by nature to marry at eighteen. The average villager,
clerk, pit-boy, work-boy begins 'walking out' with a girl at the age of
fifteen or sixteen; the public school boy has no such opportunities of
courtship. Three hundred boys are spending three-quarters of their lives
in a monastic world; from the beginning of the term to the end the only
women to whom they have the opportunity of speaking are the matron and
the house master's wife. They have never any chances of seeing girls of
their own class and of their own age. At a particularly susceptible
period, therefore, they have no natural object for their affections. The
youngest boys are only thirteen, the eldest are between eighteen or
nineteen.

In such circumstances it would be surprising if there were no
uncomfortable complications. The public school system is, in this
respect, unnatural; one must expect unnatural results. The trouble is to
discover what those results are. For, although people speak glibly
enough of immorality in Public Schools, it is extremely doubtful whether
they realise of what exactly that immorality consists.

It is a convenient phrase, but beyond it there is the conspiracy of
silence. Schoolmasters prefer to deal with straight issues. They dislike
the subtleties of action and character which are of such charm to the
psychologist. They like to say, 'This is an offence.' Finer shades of
meaning trouble them. At least that is their official attitude. And so
it has come to be generally accepted that public school morality
resolves itself into one main issue: that is, the corruption of a small
boy by a big one. To protect the new boy from this danger elaborate
precautions are taken. It is on this point that a boy is given advice
before he goes to school. He is warned never to make friends with boys
bigger than himself; it is against this danger that the majority of
school sermons are directed. And, of course, this is a very convenient
attitude for the schoolmaster to adopt. The offence is obviously so
grave that there can be no cause to withhold complete official
condemnation; it is also so rare that the head master is able to assure
prospective parents of the excellent tone of the school. For I am
convinced that the deliberate seduction of a smaller boy is an extremely
rare occurrence. There are, of course, certain houses--probably there is
one at every school--in which a good-looking boy stands very little
chance of remaining straight. But I have not been in such a house and I
can speak with no authority. I have heard, certainly, some astonishing
stories of what can be tolerated in a really bad house; but, second-hand
reports, especially on such matters, can only be accepted with reserve.
Certainly in the average house cases of corruption are very rare. Few
boys have the nerve, the assurance, or the adroitness to attempt such a
task. A man of twenty-five will set out deliberately to seduce a
housemaid, but the schoolboy in such matters is a novice. If a senior
boy is casually attracted by the appearance of a smaller boy, he asks a
friend lower down in the house to make inquiries as to the morals of the
small boy. If the 'go-between' discovers that the small boy is
'straight,' the elder boy lets the matter fall from his mind. There are
others who are not. If, on the other hand, the attraction is more than
casual, the chances of seduction are even more remote. It is unlikely
that the affection will be reciprocated. And, if a boy is really fond of
another boy, the last thing he would wish would be to subject his friend
to unwelcome advances. When a boy first falls in love with a girl the
thought of sexual intimacy is, often, unattractive. It is only when his
love is returned that he really desires it. It is fatal to confuse the
processes of life at large with the processes of life in a monastic
system. Because young men seduce young women with regrettable frequency,
it is assumed that much the same sort of thing is happening at a Public
School. And, parents believing this, are reassured; they are certain
that their dear child when young will be strong enough to resist the
passive temptation; they are equally certain that their dear child when
nearly a man would not, for one moment, consider the possibility of
active sin. And this amiable delusion schoolmasters encourage. It saves
them a lot of trouble. They say one thing in public and another in
private. But the Jekyll and Hyde business breeds confusion. They forget
what they should believe and what they should not believe. They are
agreed only on this: that any attempt at criticism, at explanation, at
interpretation shall be counteracted with a concerted unanimity of
opinion. They will deny hotly the prevalence of any such practices,
they will make slighting references to the bad house in the bad school.
They will complete their defence by asserting that for what faults there
are the parents are alone responsible in that they had not sufficiently
warned their sons of the evils of a Public School--evils, be it noted,
that they had previously assured the parent did not exist outside the
perverted imagination of the critic. And yet it is amazing what these
same apologists will be prepared to believe about any institution other
than their own.

Six years ago Sandhurst had an extremely bad name. Every kind of debauch
was rumoured to flourish there. Sobriety was only more unpopular than
purity. The G. C.'s secreted whisky beneath their beds, and actresses
within them. The glittering temptations of St Anthony allured the unwary
in the tea-shops of Camberley. And I remember being shown, before I went
there, a letter that had been sent to the parents of a prospective cadet
by his head master. 'I hope,' the letter ran, 'that Arthur is aware of
the temptations to which he will be subjected. Concupiscence seems to be
the chief topic of conversation and the sole Sunday afternoon amusement
of the cadets.' It all sounded fearfully exciting. But it proved very
tame. Indeed I am inclined to think that, on the whole, fewer
temptations presented themselves to me during the eight months I spent
at Sandhurst than during any other period of my time in the army. A
fellow could do what he liked. No pressure was put on him to drink or
gamble, or pursue loose women. He was none the less respected for being
straight, nor the more admired for being crooked. A community such as
this which exerts pressure on the individual in neither direction, I
should be prepared to call as moral as any that is likely to be found
this side of heaven, yet this head master, who would, no doubt,
repudiate hotly the least suggestion that immorality in his own school
was anything but a spasmodic and occasional phenomenon, was ready to
believe that Sandhurst was a cesspool of all the vices that flourished
so gracefully in the days of Petronius Arbiter. In our investigations we
are not likely to be helped far by schoolmasters. They are constrained
by the laws of exchange and mart to vindicate the quality of their
wares.

It is generally assumed for the purposes of dialectic that there are two
classes of persons: the normal and the abnormal, and that all normal
people follow the same process of development from birth to death. To
disprove this Havelock Ellis collected at the end of certain volumes of
his psychology authenticated histories of men whose development he
claimed to be normal, but whose histories were as different from one
another as apples are from plums. In the face of such evidence it is
dangerous to dogmatise on the gradual discovery of the sexual impulse by
public school boys during adolescence. The most one can say is that the
majority of them come to a Public School innocent and ignorant, and
that they leave it certainly not ignorant and with a relative degree of
innocence. This at least is sure--that between the years of thirteen and
nineteen the impulse will have become powerfully defined and that each
boy will have had to come to terms with its direction and control.

Now the important point seems to me to be this: the sexual impulse is a
force on the proper direction of which depends, to a large extent, the
happiness of a man's life; and marriage is the course into which it
should be directed. No one, I think, will deny that. We may talk of the
liberation of the sexes, of greater facilities for divorce, of the right
of each man and woman to repair a mistake caused by the first surprise
of a newly-awakened instinct; but there can be no questioning the
assertion that monogamy is the ideal, and that while nothing can be more
wretched than an ill-harmonised relationship, in the lifelong devotion
of man and woman is to be found the surest happiness. That is the
standard by which public school morality should be judged. But it is not
the standard by which it is officially, and indeed generally, judged. A
Public School is only a phase, a prelude in the sexual development of a
man. Head masters are inclined to mistake it for the completed rhythm.

In the same way that the head master of a Preparatory School specially
coaches a boy for a scholarship, not realising that what for him is the
whole race is for the boy but a first lap, so the head master of a
Public School regards the preservation of innocence between the years of
13 and 19 as the entire battle. As far as I can make out this attitude
is adopted by nearly every unscientific writer on the subject.

If the matter ended there it would, of course, be simple. Rigid
policemanship and supervision and a system of spies would probably be
effective. They might stamp out impurity to a large extent; they would
also destroy the discipline of independence, of trust and of authority
that one learns at a Public School. The matter is far less simple. The
public school system is unnatural. Through unnatural channels,
therefore, a natural impulse has to flow into a natural course.

Let us see, more or less, what happens.

We have assumed that an ignorant and innocent boy arrives at his Public
School at the age of thirteen, and, to simplify the matter further, we
will assume that the boy is not particularly good-looking, and is not,
therefore, likely to win the patronage of his seniors. For the first
weeks everything is so strange that he lives in a world of his own
fashioning. Later on, as he begins to enter the life of the school, he
is puzzled by references to an offence the nature of which he does not
understand. He hears some one described as being 'smutty.' He does not
in any way connect this with the elaborate address that was delivered to
him on the last day at his prep. Indeed I knew of a new boy who informed
his parents on a postcard that a rather decent chap in his house had
been nearly sacked for 'smut.' 'Is this,' he asked, 'anything serious?'
He received in reply a reassuring letter telling him that he need not
worry about such things just yet.

It is the fashion nowadays to demand open discussion of all subjects;
there must be no secrets. Parents are told that they are guilty of
criminal negligence if they do not instruct their sons and daughters in
the physiology of sex. And, no doubt, it will be maintained that at this
point the father should have written his son a long letter explaining to
him the nature of the temptation to which he would be exposed. That is
the fashion nowadays. No doubt the Victorians suffered from an excessive
reserve. We have gone to the other extreme. We are trying to reduce love
to an exact science.

On the whole, I suppose that the instruction of children by parents
depends entirely on the individual case. But at such a time it would be
very easy for the parents to become embarrassed and lose the boy's
sympathy. The number of boys who learn from their parents more than a
vague idea of motherhood is probably small. And at a Public School it is
the physiology of fatherhood that occupies the boy's attention.

We are given to understand that in the first place a boy must be
corrupted by another boy. But this is not generally the case. A boy
usually manages to corrupt himself. He has overheard the conversation of
older boys, he has discussed different problems with his companions;
the atmosphere of school life with its continual references to
immorality in sermons and addresses, have made him precociously curious.
He evolves for himself the practice of private immorality.

A boy's knowledge of sex necessarily is very fragmentary, and on many
points he is actually misinformed. He has a preposterous idea, for
instance, of the effects that this habit will have upon his health.
Syphilis is not more dangerous. His hair will drop out, he will go
blind, his brain will soften. Probably he will go mad. Numerical
considerations mean nothing to him: once a thief always a thief. The
idea of restrained disorder does not occur to him. He suffers from the
misery of an incommunicable grief. He is apart from his fellows. If he
told them his secret, he thinks that they would despise him. He becomes
morbidly introspective. He makes vows to break himself of the habit,
fails, and despises himself. He begins to search for the symptoms of his
approaching physical and intellectual collapse. If he makes a duck at
cricket, misses a catch in a house game, or fails badly in his
repetition, he tells himself that the process has begun. There are times
when he wants to steal away by himself like an animal that is sick.
There are others in which he wishes at all costs to mix with his
companions, to take part in any rag that is afoot; to this cause can be
invariably attributed the mingled rowdyism and moodiness of certain
boys. The idea that such practices are physically injurious is
encouraged by the master. It appears to him the most sure preventative.
There are, indeed, occasions when masters are so misinformed that they
actually believe in these terrible vengeances of the body. For
schoolmasters who, of all people, ought to know most of hygiene and
physiology, are, for the most part, woefully ignorant of them. It would
be indeed interesting to discover what percentage of public school house
masters have read any serious medical writing. They are only too willing
to believe that such habits have the disastrous results they prophesy.
And of course it has not, unless it is practised to excess and unless
the subject is particularly feeble. It is foolish to throw lighted
matches about the place, but the habit only becomes dangerous when the
matches are flung on inflammable material.

It so happens that the greater part of active immorality in schools
takes place between boys of fifteen and sixteen; not, as is more
frequently imagined, between junior and senior boys. Such relationships
are usually of brief duration. They pass with the dawn of the romantic
friendship. And it is here that I feel most acutely the difficulty of my
task. It is almost impossible to explain to some one who has not been to
a Public School the nature of one of these romantic friendships. In a
book called _Pleasure_ I published a story dealing with such a
friendship. The majority of old public school boys who read it seemed to
like it. But none of the men who had not been to a Public School could
make head or tail of it. They told me in their reviews of it that it
was absurd, mawkish, and unhealthy. It may be so. It may be that I wrote
the story badly. I can only repeat that old public school boys liked it.
And indeed it is a difficult thing to explain. For what is a romantic
friendship but the falling in love of one boy with another. Such a
relationship seems preposterous. I can only repeat that the public
school system is unnatural, and that one must expect unnatural results
from it. What, after all, is to be expected?

A boy of seventeen is passing through a highly romantic period. His
emotions are searching for a focus. He is filled with wild, impossible
loyalties. He longs to surrender himself to some lost cause. He hungers
for adventures. On occasions he even goes so far as to express himself
in verse, an indiscretion that he will never subsequently commit. And
what focus does a Public School provide for this eager emotionalism?
There are the fierce contests of the football field, but they are, when
all is said and done, the business of life, the cause for his existence.
They are an enthusiasm he shares with three hundred others. He longs for
something more intimate, more personal; he is, in fact, in love with
love; he does not see a girl of his own age, of his own class, from one
end of the term to the other; it is in human nature to accept the second
best.

In this environment there is nothing unnatural about the attraction
exercised by a small boy over an elder one. A small boy is the nearest
approach possible to the feminine ideal. Indeed a small boy at a Public
School has many of the characteristics that a man would hope and expect
to find in a woman. He is small, weak, and stands in need of protection.
He is remote as a woman is, in that he moves in a different circle of
school life, with different friends, different troubles, different
ambitions. He is an undiscovered country. The emotion experienced is
genuine, and usually takes the elder boy by surprise. In a man's love
for a woman there is often a degree of premeditation. A man looks at a
woman and wonders if he could ever come to fall in love with her. As he
walks homewards from her drawing-room he asks himself whether or not he
is in love with her. He analyses his emotions; very often he persuades
himself he is in love with her when in reality he is not. Either way he
is prepared.

But the schoolboy is taken off his guard. He has not realised it is
possible that he should fall in love with another boy. He has no
previous experience which will enable him to recognise the symptoms. He
has heard older boys spoken of as being 'keen' on some one or other, but
he has associated such an assertion with the references in sermons to
the corruption of a young mind. He does not, therefore, know what is
happening when he finds himself becoming increasingly interested in some
quite small boy. He has noticed him playing a plucky game on the Lower
and has congratulated him. They have happened to meet on the way up from
hall and have walked across together to the studies. They have smiled
when they passed each other as they changed from one class-room to
another in break. The elder boy is surprised: he is still more surprised
when he finds himself frequently walking into the smaller boy's study on
no very necessary errand, to borrow a book he does not want or to return
a book he has not borrowed; and that he should stop there to talk for an
indefinite period. The day on which he has not seen or spoken to his
small friend is empty for him. He does not understand his increasing
wish for the company of an admittedly inferior person. But it is all
very delightful. He is desperately anxious to appear in his best light.
He makes strenuous, and often successful, efforts to abandon certain
habits he had contracted. He may even work harder in form, and certainly
he will make superhuman efforts on the football field, feeling that
success will render him more attractive. He wonders what the small boy
thinks of him, and persuades one whose social position lies midway
between the two of them to make inquiries. The growing intimacy is a
rich enchantment. He becomes curious, and, in a way, jealous of the life
that his friend is leading; their standards, their environment, their
friends are so different. He knows instinctively that one has more in
common with one's contemporaries than with those who lie outside the
circle of one's immediate interests, and this knowledge distresses him.
There are times when he feels intensely miserable, others when he feels
radiantly happy. At any rate he is living more intensely and less
selfishly than he did before. He is on a distinctly higher plane of
emotional tension.

Indeed in its beginnings such a friendship is certainly good for the
elder boy and probably for the younger one; at any rate there is the
comfortable knowledge that he has an elder friend to whom he can turn
for sympathy and advice; and he is protected thus from many of the
dangers to which his good looks might otherwise expose him. The
environment of school life does not allow, however, the friendship to
retain its first freshness. It becomes conscious of itself. It is
noticed by other members of the house: 'Hallo, Jones,' they say, 'seen
anything of Morrison this morning?' Jones, being the elder, is
embarrassed by what seems to him an accusation of weakness. Morrison is
flattered to think that others have recognised and perhaps envied the
patronage. Jones begins to make inquiries of his friends, and a series
of confidences convinces him that he has reached the condition of being
'keen' on Morrison. This conviction places his friendship on an entirely
different and, to a certain extent, official basis. If he had been left
alone it is not improbable that he would have made no such discovery. As
Morrison would never have more than liked him, his feeling for the
smaller boy would not have become defined. Their friendship would have
remained in the strictest sense of the word, platonic. But so frail a
flower could not hope to flourish for long in the rigid atmosphere of a
Public School. Everything in a Public School has to conform to type;
there are rules for the proper ordering of every situation. Friendship,
like personality, has to pass through the mint.

In order to follow the technique of such relationships, the official
point of view towards them has to be understood. The house master on
this point finds himself in extreme difficulty. And, indeed, there is no
point on which schoolmasters as a whole waver quite so much. They
realise, for the most part, that it is natural, if unfortunate, for boys
to feel like this. At the same time they have to discountenance such
friendships. Where actual misconduct is concerned, they think themselves
to be on safe ground. And, as they believe that immorality in schools
consists in the main of the corruption of small boys by big boys, they
are able to speak with unrestrained violence against the majority of
such friendships. They adjure their prefects to suppress at once the
least sign of intimacy between a small and a big boy. They, themselves,
watch carefully to see whether any of their seniors are evincing an
interest in members of the day room. Every one in a school knows that a
friendship between two boys of different positions will be viewed
seriously by authority. A boy is given to understand that the romantic
emotion he feels for a smaller boy is an emotion that is unworthy of him
and of its object, and should consequently be suppressed. Such teaching
is absolutely wrong. The emotions that a boy has for a smaller boy are
as natural as those that he would feel for a girl were he not restrained
by an unnatural system. It is wrong to make a boy say to himself: 'I
ought not to feel like this.' Such teaching is responsible for many of
the mistakes that a boy will make when he becomes a man; it arbitrarily
defines the form which the romantic friendship takes.

A boy is surprised by a new, delightful, interesting emotion. He feels
strangely happy. Under its inspiration he works better and plays his
games harder. He is told it is wrong to feel as he is feeling. But that
he cannot believe. The emotions that are condemned in the pulpit and in
confirmation addresses must in their essentials be different from those
that he is feeling. That must be lust, the mere desire for sensation.
This, on the other hand, is love. And so the public school boy of
sixteen makes the discovery that love is in its highest form unphysical.
The truth of this intuition is established for him by public opinion and
by the course of his own experience.

The slightest suggestion of indecent conduct between the big and the
small boy is regarded by boys as well as masters as the unforgivable
offence.

It is hard to know exactly how important a part these friendships play
in the life of a boy. It has often been said that the novelist falsifies
life by writing too much about love, that except at certain periods of a
man's life love occupies only a small part of his attention; he is
caught up by other interests. This argument, however, is no sounder than
the objection raised by an old lady against the number of nudes
displayed at the Paris Salon. 'It's so absurd,' she said, 'one-half of
these portraits are nudes, and think how small a part of our life we
spend without any clothes on.' A beautiful woman is most beautiful when
she is naked, and a man's life is most interesting when he is in love.
The condensation and indeed the actual elimination of whole periods must
in a novel always falsify life for those who demand a direct
transcription of it. If you were to record one average day of a man's
life on gramophone and cinema and exhibit the result at the Alhambra you
would empty the theatre in an hour. A story-teller recounts only what is
of interest. He is a good or a bad story-teller according to the degree
of his ability to discern what is, and what is not, of interest. He
merely indicates the passage of the unimportant.

The man, therefore, who draws direct conclusions from a school story,
would imagine that a schoolboy spends his entire time in form ragging
masters, and, when not ragging, in cribbing, and that the rest of his
time is divided between the fierce rivalries of the football field and
the intrigues of romantic friendships. Such, it is needless to say, is
not the case. The story-teller has only written of what seemed to him to
be of interest. He has omitted, and he has expected his reader to
realise out of his own experience that he has omitted, the long,
tedious hours of good behaviour, the ordered harmony of routine.

The romantic friendship has a modest place in the schoolboy's scale of
values, but its nature is curious enough. It has the great charm of the
forbidden. It is mixed with fear. Even after the first interest has
waned, its setting makes it a delightful toy that no one would willingly
throw away. It is the flavouring to the routine. There is usually a 'go
between' who carries messages from one to the other. And the glance
across a table stating that the intermediary has something of interest
to disclose is one of the exciting moments of the day, as exciting as
the post is to a recluse or the arrival of rations to a soldier. There
are jealousies and intrigues. There is the interchange of notes--the joy
of a secret. There are carefully arranged appointments. On Sundays there
will be meetings in some prearranged point outside the town, at which
each will arrive by a different route, and they will sit in a wood and
talk till the afternoon has waned and the chiming of the abbey clock
warns them that roll-call is imminent. It is not surprising that such an
adventure should appeal irresistibly to a schoolboy. When such a
friendship is ended either by the appearance of a rival, or more
frequently through the inclination of the smaller boy, who has risen in
the school and feels that such a position is beneath his dignity, the
elder boy feels an immense gap in his life. The immediate sense of
anticipation has gone. There is nothing particular to which he may look
forward. He is bored. Often he drifts into such another friendship out
of loneliness.

Authority adopts towards these friendships a wavering attitude. It
realises that such a friendship does not necessarily imply the least
indecency, that it often, on the other hand, has a very salubrious
effect on the elder boy, but it still is vividly aware of the danger.
Suppose something went wrong; suppose there was a grave scandal, on
whose shoulders would the responsibility rest. We can well imagine a
resentful father asking a head master why, if he was aware of the
existence of such a friendship, he did not take immediate steps to stop
it. 'You knew about this,' he would say, 'while my son was still
innocent: why did you not protect him? Why should you knowingly subject
him to such a risk?' The head master has always to be thinking of what a
boy's parents will say.

It is difficult for him to work on the plan of 'circumstances alter
cases.' He would thus lay himself open to the accusation of favouritism.
'You didn't stop Cartright and Evans, sir,' is a weapon for which a
master has no shield. There is usually a compromise.[5]

The attitude of authority is one of nervous hesitance. The schoolboy,
as in all other cases, evolves his own standards from his own life. It
remains to be seen what are the actual effects on the partners in a
relationship that must have a large influence on their subsequent
development.

The first objection raised by authority is that it is very bad for a
small boy to be petted and treated like a girl. And such is an undoubted
fact. The small boy who is taken up by a 'blood' makes a very good thing
out of it. He gets first-hand information on a number of disputed
points. He knows two or three hours before any one else in the day room
who is going to be given his house cap and who his seconds. He has a
position among his contemporaries. Favours are sought through him. His
friends get leave off house runs and are allowed to watch First Eleven
matches when others have to attend pick ups. He is immune from the
assaults of the swash-bucklers, for no one would willingly run the risk
of making himself unpopular with the bloods. He gets his 'con' done for
him, and, after football, he will sit in front of a warm study fire. He
has many privileges, and, of course, it is very bad for him.

How far the effects last into manhood I cannot say with any degree of
certainty. I am inclined to think that they pass more quickly than is
popularly imagined. But the small boy who is taken up by his seniors
gets very little out of his schooldays. If he gets taken up by a 'blood'
he has a fairly good time while that blood is still at school. But it is
by no means certain that he will be taken up by a blood, and he may very
likely find himself an object of fierce jealousy between two fellows in
the Middle School, both of whom he likes, but for neither of whom he
feels any strong attachment. Neither of them is sufficiently important
to claim a monopoly. Between them they contrive to make his life
wretched for him. They worry him with notes and with pleas for an
appointment. Each tries to persuade him to have nothing to do with the
other. The whole of his spare time is divided between them. And the
small boy who is unable to see why he should not choose what friends he
likes, grows more and more impatient. At the end of a term's wrangling
he decides to speak to neither of them again.

But the life even of the favoured-of-the-mighty has its disadvantages.
The hours that he spends in the day room are numbered, so that he makes
few friends among his contemporaries. The majority of them dislike him;
nearly all of them are jealous and distrust him. They are afraid to say
things in his presence for fear that they will be repeated. His only
friends are those who hope to be able to gain some advantages from him.
His life is made none too comfortable in the dormitory. He is accepted
as being in a higher social position than the rest of the room, which
is, of course, flattering to his pride; but it is not nice when every
occupant of the room only speaks when he is spoken to. He feels himself
apart. The evenings in the dormitory which, with their sing-songs, their
football matches, and long talks, provide such delightful material for
reminiscence, are for him cheerless. It cannot be too often repeated
that the biggest mistake a boy can make at a Public School is to form
friendships outside the circle of his contemporaries.

The good-looking boy makes friends so easily among his seniors, and the
successful athlete can, if he wants, after a year or two choose his
friends among boys who have been at school a couple of years longer than
he has. It is very exciting for a boy to feel that he is outstripping
his contemporaries, to be able to nod to fellows in the Fifteen and
Eleven, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The big man leaves, and
the social aspirant is left stranded. I have seen it happen so many
times. One term a boy seems to be surrounded with friends. His life is a
continual course of tea parties and suppers. An arm always lies through
his as he walks down to the field, or to the tuck shop. And then,
suddenly, a generation passes; he is left an anachronism without his
friends. His contemporaries do not welcome him. They have made their own
friends. If he has reached his prominence as an athlete he will be able
to make friends in other houses, and, before long, in his own house. To
the athlete everything is forgiven. But the boy who has become the
associate of bloods not through any quality of his own, but merely
because he is good-looking, never makes friends with his contemporaries.
They have been jealous of him and have distrusted him a long time. There
was a time when they longed for the big boy to go, so that they could
'jolly well boot the little swine.' But members of the Sixth Form table
consider it beneath their dignity to indulge emotions that are the
exclusive property of fags. They remain coldly distant. It may be that
for the favoured small boy these years of loneliness adjust the balance
and teach him those lessons of fortitude and independence that he should
have learnt in the day room. But it is an unhappy time. He can hardly
look back on his schooldays without regret. He would wish things had
turned out otherwise. And it is not thus that we should look back on our
schooldays. Certainly I could wish nothing worse for any friend of mine
than to be taken up as a small boy.

There remains to be considered the effect that such friendships have on
the elder boy. And it is generally conceded that though they may on
occasions do harm to the smaller boy, they usually prove of benefit to
the elder boy. Authority confines its objection to the secrecy that is
involved. An eyebrow is raised at the interchange of notes and the
carefully arranged Sunday afternoon walks. 'This is bad, this is bad,'
says Authority. 'There would be no need for all this secrecy if the
thing were honest and straightforward. They are both ashamed of
themselves really. They wish to hide the thing away from their masters
and their comrades. It is a bad thing for a boy, the harbouring of a
secret. It will prey upon his mind. He will be forced to lie within
himself. He will be unable to look us squarely in the face. He will
never be free from worry.' Now all this about the subtle poison of a
secret life is very true (though it is a fact seldom taken into account
in the question of self abuse), but it is not at all applicable to the
romantic friendship. The secret is an open secret. Neither party is
ashamed of it. And the pretence of a secret is little more than part of
a delightful game. A child in a nursery lays a deck chair on the blue
carpet and imagines he is sailing the high seas in a schooner, while
with a poker to his shoulder he shoots an albatross for breakfast.
Twelve years later he signs notes with a false name, rolls them into a
pellet, conveys them to a messenger and imagines he is a diplomat. The
sending of notes is nothing but a game. Otherwise no one would write
them, carry them, nor read them: for they are most unnecessary, and most
dangerous. People will drop them in the cloisters, or put them in their
waistcoat pockets and then leave their waistcoats in the matron's room
to have a button sewn on them. The writing of notes has upset more
careers than the rustling of silk or the creaking of shoes. And yet
they will always be written, for they are a prelude to adventure.

Moreover, a certain measure of secrecy is prudent. If you have stolen a
man's greatcoat you do not call at his house next day wearing it; and
the schoolboy sees no reason why he should parade his affection before
his head master's study window. Only the ass courts trouble. Prefects
who are well aware of the existence of such a friendship do not wish to
have their attention called to it officially. There are things they
prefer not to notice. If a member of the Eleven and a new boy started
out together for a walk under the shade of the school buildings the
heads of their houses would reluctantly feel themselves forced to take
some sort of action. They would be extremely annoyed with the school
slow bowler for his lack of tact. A prefect is usually on the side of
the house.

Masters, however, are pleased to imagine that a pact has been signed
between the schoolboy and themselves which binds the schoolboy to
confess to any fault he may have committed, and to answer any leading
questions that may be put to him. The schoolboy does not look on things
in this light. He knows that there is no such agreement. There are
certain things he wants to do, the doing of which, if known, will render
him liable to punishment. When the wish to do these overrides the fear
of punishment he takes all reasonable precautions to avoid detection,
and proceeds to break the inconvenient rule. It is up to the master to
find him out. If the master came down to the dining-hall one evening
and said: 'Now, look here, there have been complaints that some fellows,
I don't say you, but fellows in the school, have been getting out at
night and going down to the Eversham Arms. If any one of you here has
been getting out at night, I want him to come to my study afterwards and
tell me.' If a house master were to do that, the guilty one would not
feel himself under the least compunction to own up. He has run a big
risk in getting out of the boothole window at half-past eleven. It was
up to the master to catch him then.

If a form master were to call a member of his form aside and say to him:
'Jones, last term you were bottom of the form; this term you have
reached single figures. Last term you had to write me a hundred lines
nearly every time I put you on to construe; this term you have not
failed once. I cannot understand it. Are you working honestly?' Jones
would reply: 'Yes, sir.' He would not feel that he was telling a lie. He
would feel, on the other hand, that his form master had taken an unfair
advantage of him in putting him a leading question. No one thinks a
murderer lies because he says, 'Not guilty, my lord.' It is the law of
England that the Crown has to prove the defendant guilty. A schoolboy
considers himself entitled to the same rights as the murderer and the
thief. A master has to find him out. And it is quite absurd to say that
a boy's soul is going to suffer because of the secrecy he imposes on
himself in the course of a romantic friendship. There are a lot of
things that a boy is not anxious that his house master should know, and
of which no one could expect him to be ashamed. To smuggle into the
dormitory a chicken, a loaf of bread, and a pound of cheese in
preparation for a midnight feast is a natural and, according to one's
point of view, a worthy act; but it is not a performance the success of
which one would be in a hurry to confide in one's house master. When a
schoolboy deceives a master he does not feel he is deceiving an
individual, but an impersonal body. In the same way do we call the
grocer's attention to the omission of a pound of butter on our weekly
books, but skilfully conceal from the income-tax assessor a number of
interesting facts. A lie is hardly a lie if the person telling it does
not consider it so. We may dismiss altogether the assertion that
romantic friendships are bad because they entail secrecy.

If, then, the objection of secrecy is to be discounted, it would at
first sight appear that for the elder boy these friendships are, on the
whole, good things. The emotion experienced is a noble one; it is
unselfish, it makes considerable demands on the patience and
self-control of the subject; it encourages the bigger boy to work hard
and play his games harder; it protects him from many of the dangers of
school life, and yet I believe that its results are, in the long run,
more serious for the elder than for the younger boy.

It is the worst possible prelude to the sexual life of a man. It sends
a boy into the world with an entirely false view of the normal sexual
relations of men and women; it is a hindrance to him in marriage. A boy
of sixteen experiences for a younger boy the emotion that he would
naturally at such a period feel for a girl of his own age. He is
surprised into a new relationship, and he is told that the relationship
can only remain worthy of him as long as it remains platonic. Sexual
emotion is, he is given to understand, unclean. During adolescence he
will be subjected to a force that he must, at all costs, resist. That is
the official attitude, and it is the attitude of nearly every
unscientific writer on the subject. A schoolmaster considers the moral
question from the point of view of the policeman. 'Here,' he says, 'is
something that must be suppressed.' Various writers suggest various
remedies. The popular idea is to sublimate the passions, to provide
another focus. Schoolmasters usually select the focus that is most near
to the boy's interests: namely, athletics. They encourage the athletic
worship, because a boy who really wishes to excel in this will not run
the risk of losing his proficiency by weakening practices. This panacea
has not worked too well, and the band of earnest idealists has begun to
clamour for a more spiritual focus: poetry, art, religion. Which is all
very jolly, but gets us no nearer to solving the main problem of how a
natural force is to be directed through an unnatural channel into a
natural one. It is no sort of use to place a lump of granite in front
of the unnatural channel and say: 'This is forbidden.' The stream will
only select another course, and very likely one that will not lead it to
the natural waters.

It is, I admit, an extremely difficult question, but that does not alter
the fact that it is being treated in an entirely wrong manner. The boy
is told that sexual emotion is wrong; he assumes, therefore, that love
to be truly love must be sexless. He draws fine distinctions between
love and lust. A decent fellow, he says, would never want to do anything
like that with some one for whom he really cared. And nothing happens in
the course of his romantic friendship to make him reconsider this
opinion. It is probable that his affection will not be returned; and,
indeed, why should it be? Under such circumstances it is natural that a
big boy should be attracted by a smaller boy because the smaller boy is
the nearest approach to the feminine ideal. It would be quite unnatural
for a small boy to be attracted by a bigger boy who would be to him as
far as possible removed from femininity. The small boy likes the elder
boy, is grateful for his kindness to him, is perhaps even mildly fond of
him; nothing more. As, therefore, there is no response to the elder boy,
it is impossible for the natural rhythm of mutually felt emotion to
carry them out of the reach of conventional standards, and the
friendship is too sacred to the elder boy to allow passage to the itch
of sensation; while the small boy, even if he happened to be casual
among his contemporaries on such matters, would be restrained by the
shyness that he must always feel in the presence of a senior boy and by
the inevitable embarrassment at finding himself the object of an emotion
he does not understand.

Nothing happens, therefore, to disabuse the conviction that love in its
purest form is sexless. As a boy is, however, on the whole an amoral
creature, he sees no reason why he should not misconduct himself with a
person for whom he has no respect. He is not sullying a fine romance. It
is a different thing altogether; this is a thing of sensation. A
bachelor refrains from prostitutes more often through fear of illness
than through reverence for a moral code. There is at school a type that
corresponds to the prostitute from whom boys refrain, when they do
refrain, for many mixed reasons, of which fear of expulsion is generally
not one. Boys are not afraid of punishments, nor do they think that a
punishable offence is necessarily a moral offence. That point must
always be kept in mind. Punishments to a boy's mind are part of the game
that is played between him and authority. The boy has his own scale of
values. He would think an immoral act highly reprehensible if he were at
the time engaged in a romantic friendship, but he could square his
conscience to it if he happened to be emotionally free.

The reasons why a boy commits an immoral act are so many and so complex
that inquiry into them for the purpose of a generalisation is
unprofitable. It may be that he has had a quarrel with his small friend,
it may be that he is bored, or that he is curious; he may think it the
'blood' thing to do. If he is literary he may be in search of some
equivalent for the emotional reactions of decadent poetry. The
confessions that a boy makes himself must always be accepted with
reserve. The confessional is a subtle form of flattery. It titillates
the egotism; it is a self-indulgence. Madame Bovary used to invent small
crimes because she enjoyed the romantic atmosphere of the confessional,
and though most schoolboys would stand in no need of such invention,
they create the most ingenious setting for their offences. They feel
what they want to feel. They have derived emotion at second hand from
some book, or the confidence of an elder brother; they want to make
themselves believe that they are interesting. The most trivial affair is
embellished with a wealth of motive that would have delighted Henry
James. Sometimes they lie quite conscientiously.

A boy was once asked by his house master whether he felt that
confirmation had been of any assistance to him. It had not, but the boy
felt that it was up to him to pretend that it had. The house master
obviously expected it; it was a social decency, on a par with the
assurance to a hostess that one had spent a most delightful evening. The
boy was inclined to think that he swore less than he had done. The
master's interest was aroused. Where had he learnt to swear? The boy
had, of course, acquired this knowledge in the day room. He realised,
however, that this was one of the things that one did not confess. He
said he had learnt it from some navvies in the holidays. More questions
were asked. 'Oh, yes,' the boy said, 'My people allow me to do more or
less what I like. I wander all over the place.' It was quite untrue, but
it confirmed the house master in his belief that all the faults of a
Public School could be attributed to the ignorance and foolishness of
parents. He developed the idea in a letter which he contributed to a
well-known weekly.

It is never safe to generalise from a boy's confession, and house
masters would do well in such cases to base their conclusions on their
own experience and on their previous knowledge of the boy's character.
In their investigations, however, of the moral question, there is one
motive that they can almost certainly rule out: the motive of strong
personal attraction. Such an act would be opposed to the ethics of
school society, and a boy only rarely does what he, himself, feels to be
wrong.

He is inclined to enter a world of women with the idea that the sexual
impulse can only be gratified with a woman he does not love. He realises
that in marriage it is necessary for the procreation of children. But he
regards it chiefly from his point of view as a 'remedy against sin,' and
on the woman's part an act of gracious compliance. It is thus that a man
comes to divide women into classes: one's sisters' friends, and the
rest. There is little need to elaborate the results of such an
attitude. The subject has been discussed exhaustively. On this rock many
marriages have been shipwrecked. It can do little in cases of strong
mutual feeling. Passion harmonises all things; the rhythm of love takes
its own course. But where the woman has not been deeply moved before
marriage, where she knows her future husband only slightly, and is timid
in his presence, then the preconceived formula of the 'pure girl' will
achieve havoc. The woman will sink herself in motherhood, and the man
will seek elsewhere diversion. A cynic has remarked that the man who
marries a girl because she appeals to his higher nature will spend the
rest of his life among those who appeal to his lower nature. And, like
all epigrams, that remark presents a facet of the truth. It is now
generally accepted that there is no more dangerous heresy than the idea
that one does not 'feel like that about a decent girl.' Much has been
written on the subject. But the causes of the heresy have not been
sufficiently investigated. It is said, 'Boys are badly brought up.'
Children, we are told, should be brought to regard their bodies as
temples, and there the matter is left.

But this heresy is, I am certain, very largely the natural result of the
public school system. It is confined to the upper and upper-middle
classes, to those, that is, who have been to Public Schools. The collier
and the peasant have no such fanciful illusions. Divorce must naturally
be more common in circles where men and women have leisure to indulge
their emotions, where temptations are frequent, where the imagination is
most vivid, the longing for the unattainable most acute. But, even so,
any student of character cannot but feel that the married lives of
public school men are less happy than those of the lower classes.

All through the discussion of this delicate subject I have used marriage
as the norm. It includes all other considerations. There are those who
are shocked to learn of the existence of immorality in Public Schools,
and the socialist press is only too ready for an opportunity of slinging
mud at the object of its envy. But, however a boy is brought up, it is
unlikely that he would pass unscathed through adolescence. Curiosity is
as irresistible as fear. It is the power of the unknown. The moral
offences of a public school boy are disgusting enough, but because they
are so entirely physical they have little lasting effect on him. They
play indeed a very casual part in his life. Nothing is at stake. The
romantic friendship, on the other hand, is the dawn of love; it is a
delicate and deep emotion; it is the most exciting thing that up to then
has happened to a boy; it touches his senses and his soul. And, because
he experiences this emotion for the first time in an unnatural
environment, his natural reaction is misdirected and misinformed. It is
important that we should find some remedy.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] It may here be mentioned that in girls' schools such friendships
would seem to be common, and no great objection taken to them. Unnatural
vice between women is not, of course, a criminal offence. Its existence
is not widely recognised. And it has never been treated very seriously
by men. But it was surprising to read a few months ago in a leading
London newspaper an article on 'schoolgirls,' which accepted such
friendships among girls as an amusing topic for popular journalism. The
editor would probably have had a fit if a similar article on romantic
friendships in Public Schools had been submitted to him. The attitude of
the man who has not been to a Public School to this side of school life
is a mixture of ignorance and astonished horror.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE YEARS

Desmond Coke has described in _The Bending of a Twig_, the middle years
of a public school career as being slow to pass, but swift in
retrospect. He devoted two chapters to them--'See-saw down' and 'See-saw
up.' And those chapter headings convey more clearly than a long analysis
the nature of that period. To begin with it is 'See-saw down.' The boy
is confused with his new-found liberty; the future stretches endlessly
before him. There is plenty of time. There is no need for hurry. And so
he rags and wastes his time and makes, on the whole, a pretty general
nuisance of himself. His house reports are worse at the end of every
term. His parents grow worried; they remember the bright promise of that
first term: the prize, the promotion, the glowing panegyric. The arrival
of the blue envelope during the second week of the holidays is the
occasion of considerable domestic stress. On such a morning one
remembers that one has promised to spend the day with a friend at
Richmond.

And then suddenly, when the revel is at its height, some chance incident
or conversation forces a boy to realise that he has not so much time as
he had thought, that the weeks are passing, that, already, the end has
drawn close to him. Clifford Bax, in one of his many beautiful poems,
has described a man's first appreciation of the approach of age.

     'There is a certain mid-way hour in life
     Which startles every man, when the tide turns
     And, wave on wave, we hear death coming on.'

In the same way the boy discovers that the half of his schooldays are at
an end, that he has put them to little use. And, as the temporal quality
of life drives the epicurean to gather with what eager haste he may,
flowers that for him will soon have blossomed, the sense of passing days
defines and directs for the schoolboy the course of ambition. It is
perhaps the first moment of conscious thought, of objective reasoning.
The days of unreflecting action are at an end. He is no longer a child
playing in a nursery. He is a man, subject to the laws of time and
space, a mortal man aware of his mortality.

Now this sudden change, which partakes of the nature of a conversion,
owes its existence, as often as not, to some perfectly trivial
occurrence. The stage is not set appropriately. There is no long heart
to heart talk with a schoolmaster, a parent, or a friend at the end of
which the boy leaps to his feet, claps his hand to his forehead, and
exclaims: 'I see the evil of my ways.' Such dramatic moments, I suppose,
take place occasionally, but they are the exception. The boy has
reached that stage of his development when the idea of time can become
an actuality to him, and some quite casual incident will bring this
actuality before him.

It is possible, of course, that this reformation may be effected by a
conversation. But it will be an unrehearsed effect. One is walking down
to hall, and, through the open door of the changing room overhears some
uncomplimentary statement of one's worth. The statement need not be made
by a particular friend. Indeed, it will probably be more effective if it
is not. We accept with composure the criticisms of our friends, our
relatives, our enemies. Wherever there is an intimate relationship there
is friction. We know that, at times, we must be intensely annoying to
our friends, because they are at times so intensely annoying to
ourselves. Little tricks, traits of character, intonations of the voice
that we should hardly notice in those to whom we are indifferent,
exasperate us in those for whom we care. We expect our friends at times
to say nasty things about us. We are too conscious of our own
delinquencies. But impersonal criticism is unpleasant; it is like an
unfavourable review that is unsigned. If we cannot reassure ourselves
with the knowledge that our assailant is either jealous of us or
dislikes us, or thinks we pay too many attentions to his wife; if, that
is to say, we can detect in this criticism no ulterior motive, but
simply a dispassionate impersonal disapproval of ourselves and of our
work, then we do indeed feel that the need for drastic self-criticism
is immediate.

When, therefore, Jones on his way down to hall overhears Ferguson, who
is in another form, who has never been brought into contact with him,
who has no possible reason for feeling envious or jealous, remark that
Jones is the sort of fellow whom the house could get on very well
without, he goes quickly to his study and communes with himself.

At the beginning of my third year at school, when I was very happy, very
light-hearted, very boisterous, and, I suppose, rather obnoxious
generally, I was standing at the counter of the tuck shop waiting to be
served with a poached egg and a sausage. I experienced considerable
difficulty in catching the eye of the waitress, and for the better
announcing of my presence I took a knife out of the basket and beat it
upon the zinc covering of the counter. The waitress, who was harassed by
the number of orders, turned round impatiently: 'Oh, do be quiet, Mr.
Waugh,' she said, 'I don't know what's come over you lately. You used to
be such a nice quiet boy when you first came.' Several people laughed,
but her remark was a shock to me. I had not the slightest romantic
interest in her. I did not care greatly what opinion she held of my
moral worth, but I had not before realised that it was possible for a
change of which I was myself ignorant to take place within me, that a
process of degeneration could take its slow effect, altering me in the
eyes of others, leaving me unaltered in my own, that, like rust on
iron, environment could corrode temperament. That chance remark had a
most profound effect on me. It gave me a sudden insight into the secret
forces that lie under the surface of life. I do not know whether from
the outside I appeared afterwards a different person. One cannot focus
the impression one has of oneself and the impression one makes on
others. But to myself I know that I was different. And some such
revelation invariably comes to a boy during his period of school life.

In novels and stories we attribute it to some emotional crisis. The
reason of the change is less important than that there should be change,
and that the reader should be able to realise that for such a change
there was a reason. But, actually, the reason is usually trivial enough.
It may be that a boy's pride has been rebuffed; some one has got a house
cap before him. He begins to reassure himself with the old dope: 'There
is plenty of time. It doesn't matter. I'll catch him later on.' But for
once the old dope does not work. He realises with a shock that there is
less time than he had thought. He has allowed his rival to get too far
ahead. A house cap is only two stages distant from a first. He may not
have time to catch him up. In the light of the discovery he revises his
whole career. He asks himself whither he is drifting. He sees that he
has passed beyond the stage of a vague promise into one of definite
rivalry and achievement.

The prospects of the beginner are always golden. His wares are not yet
for sale in the open market. He has not entered into competition with
his contemporaries. A young professional makes a century during his
first month of first-class cricket and is immediately the object of
generous enthusiasm. The reporter can write of him as ecstatically as he
will. The professional has not yet reached representative cricket. At
school a slow left-hand bowler takes eight wickets for twenty-seven in a
house match. He is spoken of at once as the coming man. For another
season he will continue to take wickets in house matches to the delight
of every one. Then he will enter the lists of representative cricket. He
will play on uppers, and it will have to be decided, not whether he is a
good slow left-hand bowler, but whether he is better than Evans in
Buller's, and Morrison in Wilkes's. It is so easy to say of a boy of
fifteen: 'Some day he will be captain of the house.' We can all of us
exclaim at the beginning of a Marathon: 'What a beautiful runner that
fellow is.' It is after ten miles have been run and the runners have
sorted themselves out that the real race begins. It is the appreciation
of this moment that ends the 'see-saw down' period and sees the start of
the 'see-saw up.'

It must not be imagined, however, that this process of see-saw up
involves a complete moral, spiritual, and intellectual reformation; it
sometimes does; more usually it means that the schoolboy looks at the
same life from a different angle. His standards, his scale of values
remain unaltered. He feels that he has not adjusted himself properly to
their demands. He has been making an ass of himself: he has been ragging
about, he has allowed opportunities to slip past him. 'It won't do,' he
tells himself. 'I must stop all this. I must settle down.'

Such a resolution involves, to a certain extent, an appreciation of
imminent responsibilities; a boy realises that a series of desperate
escapades will prejudice his prospects of prefectship; it often results
in the exchange of a positive for a negative manner of life. The Sixth
Former, the potential scholar of Balliol, is spurred by such an
experience to really hard work. For him a turning-point has been
reached. It is different, however, for the second eleven colour who has
reached the Lower Fifth after three years of spasmodic cribbing. He has
been in the past a free-lance, an irresponsible ragster. He decides that
the time has come for him to settle down. If the Lower Fifth is, as it
often is, a comfortable backwater, he is content to rest there. He sits
on a back bench, and plays an occasional part in the life of the form.
While he was a ragster he had to work. A well-prepared lesson was his
armour. Now that he no longer rags he need no longer work; he is content
to be inoffensive, agreeable, somnolent. He considers that between
himself and his form master there is an unwritten pact by which each
agrees to leave the other alone. It is as though he said: 'Your time,
Mr. Featherbrain, is fully occupied between the ragsters and the
industrious. You have to keep a constant watch upon the ragster. You
have to teach the industrious. That is a whole-time job. Why worry about
me? You need not keep a watch upon me. It is agreed that I shall do no
ragging. And why try to teach me anything. Your energies are wasted upon
me. I don't want to learn anything. You may lead a horse to the water,
you know. Why worry yourself and me! There are all those other fellows
who want to learn.' And the master, usually, signs the contract. He is a
busy man. The temptation is very great. He excuses himself in the common
room by speaking of 'fellows like dear old Thomas; good-natured chaps,
but with absolutely no brains. Latin and Greek are flung away on them.
But they'll make fine empire builders.' And so the boy who has settled
down spends the greater part of his day wool-gathering in vacuous
laziness. To nothing that happens between chapel and lunch can he bring
the least enthusiasm. His thoughts are fixed on the more thrilling
encounters of the football field. His whole life, indeed, is centred on
sport, and on the most entertaining methods he can discover for the
better employing of his spare time. All his energy, all his enthusiasm,
is concentrated into one, or perhaps two, focuses. It is not surprising
that he should become tolerably proficient at games and a source of
moral anxiety to prefects and house masters.

Is the pursuit of athletic success a sufficiently engrossing occupation
for such a boy? That is the question that a house master unconsciously
puts to himself. He must put it to himself, but his attitude to this
particular type of boy is based on a non-committal answer to this
question: the answer--'Perhaps; but it's up to you.' The house master,
therefore, does all in his power to persuade the boy that the acquiring
of a First Fifteen cap is his immediate object in life. He will not
state his case in words; but he will omit the uncomfortable topic of
form work in conversations, and discuss at length the prospects of the
house in the senior matches. If he does not succeed in directing the
entire energy of the boy on games, the results of such a failure may be
disastrous. A fellow of seventeen who has nothing particular to do is
bound to find himself in mischief. This fact is realised by both parents
and house masters, and those boys who are good neither at games nor work
usually leave at about this period. It is the falling out of the
unsuccessful runner in a long race. It is no good going on. The leaders
are too far ahead. The gap between the senior and the junior is thus
considerably increased. The stepping-stones have been removed. A boy of
eighteen at the start of his last year sees very few of his
contemporaries sitting at the Sixth Form table. Of the eight or nine
boys who came there with him, only three are left, and the Fifth Form
table is filled by fellows two or three years junior to himself, with
whom he has but a slight acquaintance. It is always the 'blood' who is
asked to stop on that extra year. The insignificant are encouraged by
silence to retire.

     'Thou shalt not kill, yet needst not strive
     Officiously to keep alive.'

By the time the boy comes to be a prefect he is able to feel himself
supreme, not only because of the system that is at his back.

CHAPTER IX

PREFECTSHIP

Prefectship is the coping-stone of a public school education. The boy
who leaves without becoming a prefect has missed, we are continually
assured, the most important part of his school career. And yet what
percentage of an old boys' list, I wonder, reaches the dignity of house
prefectship. One gets the impression sometimes that every one, provided
he stays on long enough, becomes a prefect. All school stories follow a
convention. They open with the new boy closing behind him the
green-baize door of the head master's study, gazing wistfully down a
long corridor at the end of which is the oak door of the day room. From
behind that door comes to him the sound of laughter and eager
conversation. There is the unknown, mysterious world he has to enter.
That is how every school story opens. And every school story closes on
the departure of a hero crowned with athletic and academic honours. The
space in between is occupied with the 'see-saw up' process. How else a
school story is to be constructed I do not know. It has to be narrative
rather than dramatic. But it gives the impression that public school
life for the average boy is a slow voyage from fag to prefect. Indeed,
if _Peg's Paper_ printed school stories, 'From Fag to Prefect' would
probably be the title. Such a tale would, however, be little more
generally applicable than a tale of army life entitled 'From Bugler to
Brigadier.' The majority of schoolboys do not become prefects. But the
people in whose hands the framing of the convention lies think they do,
because they did themselves. The dwellers in Mayfair think London
consists of a few drawing-rooms and a few restaurants. The schoolmaster
naturally follows the conventional course, otherwise he would not be a
schoolmaster. If he had not reached the Upper Sixth he would not be in a
position to teach. If he had not reached the Eleven he would not be a
games master. The story-writer may not be an athlete, but it is hardly
possible that a man who can write an interesting book should have failed
to make some mark at school if he had stayed out his full time. And so
there has grown up a tendency to ignore entirely the careers of the
insignificant, which form the background for more striking exploits. And
yet, as always, the insignificant are in the majority.

A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon in the company of some
friends at the school where their son was completing his second term. It
was a warm afternoon and we naturally walked down to the cricket field.
On the Upper a senior house match, which we should have liked to have
watched, was in progress. Our small guide assured us, however, that this
would be impossible. 'It isn't our house, you see, and the fellows
would think it awful niff of me to watch another house playing. But
there's a house game of our own going on down there.' Realising that it
was impossible to overcome the novice's fear of doing the wrong thing,