consider it rather good form to do so. And seeking for some reason and some remedy for this remarkable phenomenon, a number of patriotic gentlemen have discovered that the Schools, the Schools are to blame. Something in the nature of Reform has to be waved over our schools.
It would be a wicked deed to write anything that might seem to imply that our Schools were not in need of very extensive reforms, or that their efficiency is not a necessary preliminary condition to general public efficiency, but, indeed, the Schools are only one factor in a great interplay of causes, and the remedy is a much ampler problem than any Education Act will cure. Take a typical young Englishman, for example, one who has recently emerged from one of our public schools, one of the sort of young Englishmen for whom all commissions in the Army are practically reserved, who will own some great business, perhaps, or direct companies, and worm your way through the tough hide of style and restraint he has acquired, get him to talk about women, about his prospects, his intimate self, and see for yourself how much of him, and how little of him, his school has made. Test him on politics, on the national future, on social relationships, and lead him if you can to an utterance or so upon art and literature. You will be astonished how little you can either blame or praise the teaching of his school for him. He is ignorant, profoundly ignorant, and much of his style and reserve is draped over that; he does not clearly understand what he reads, and he can scarcely write a letter; he draws, calculates and thinks no better than an errand boy, and he has no habit of work; for that much perhaps the school must answer. And the school, too, must answer for the fact that although—unless he is one of the small specialized set who “swat” at games—he plays cricket and football quite without distinction, he regards these games as much more important than military training and things of that sort, spends days watching his school matches, and thumbs and muddles over the records of county cricket to an amazing extent. But these things are indeed only symptons, and not essential factors in