One would not, of course, hold up a military institution as the model for an educational system. But, from the point of view of athletics, the Sandhurst that I knew in the winter of 1916 and the spring of 1917 possessed all the merits and none of the faults that one associates with the average Public School. And yet that Sandhurst was composed of the same boys that a few months earlier had, at their Public Schools, rigidly observed the exacting ritual of the great god of sport.
Reasons for this change are not difficult to find, and it may be noticed that they are in line with the improvements suggested in an earlier chapter. There is no blood system, because there is little disparity of age between the G.C.'s. Juniors belong to a lower caste than the seniors, but they inhabit that lower world without worrying much about what is happening in the superior world. Contact between the two is not established. There is a hard dividing line. A junior may not sit on a certain side of the anteroom. There is no social fluidity. One is one thing or the other. Athletic worship in school was due largely, I suggested, to the absence of any other focus for a boy's enthusiasm. At Sandhurst several such focuses were provided. To begin with, the work was interesting. The morning was not a mere succession of tiresome hours relieved by a quarter of an hour's break. The G.C. did not listen to lectures and tactics with the listless condescension that he had paid formerly to the Greek syntax; he realised that the knowledge of the subjects he was studying would be of practical value to him at a later date. He was anxious to be a good officer. He was, therefore, interested in his work. He was also at Sandhurst for a very little while. He regarded Sandhurst quite definitely as the anteroom to a career; he never imagined it to be anything else. In a few months he would have joined his regiment. The honours he won at Sandhurst would be of little value in themselves, and were only worth the gaining in as far as they would enhance the reputation which he would take with him to his regiment. A Sandhurst cadet was always looking beyond the present.
Nor did the officers in charge of companies feel any compunction to prescribe athleticism as an antidote to immorality. In the first place, they were not responsible for the G.C.'s moral welfare, nor was there, indeed, any occasion for alarm. The amount of immoral conduct between G.C.'s, if there was any, must have been extremely small. Such conduct is essentially faute de mieux: women were abundantly available for those who wanted them. And in a town such as Camberley there were endless opportunities for innocent romance.
The three main causes for athleticism were removed, and in consequence there was no athleticism. Now it is obviously impossible for all these conditions to be introduced into a Public School. There must be a disparity of age, schoolmasters must feel some anxiety about the morals of the boys that are to be entrusted to them. But, if we can show that the complete removal of certain conditions of public school life can entirely remove certain evils, we can only assume that the modification of these conditions would cause considerable improvement. The smaller the disparity of age between the eldest and the youngest boy, the less intense will be the blood system. The shorter the period that a boy spends at school, the less will be the tendency to regard school life as the complete compass of his life. The supply of another focus for a boy's enthusiasm will diminish the strength of his athletic ardour. The greater the honesty in tackling the moral question, the less will masters feel themselves forced to recommend athleticism as an antidote to immorality. And these changes are, I believe, possible without altering appreciably the principle of public school education. The supply of other focuses may, at first glance, seem a highly difficult job. It may, indeed, be advanced that were there another focus, athleticism could not exist in its present state, and that there would be no need for a reduction of the age limit. But I am inclined to think that it would be hardly possible to run any school which contained boys of thirteen and boys of nineteen and not have a blood system and an athletic worship. The forces of a natural inclination are too strongly entrenched behind the barricade of six years. The masters do not stand a fair chance. But the weakening of one force means the strengthening of another. A lowering of the barricade by a couple of years would give the other side a chance of contending equally. The moment a boy realised that the prizes of school life had only a temporary value, he would question his blind devotion to the religion of athleticism. He would wonder whether other things were not worth while. His allegiance would be divided.
But the passing of regulations cannot in themselves effect a reformation. They can be of great assistance; they can support and they can protect. They cannot build. And, in the study of public school life, we have to return in the end to the point from which we started. Boys and parents and schoolmasters must meet on a common ground and discuss their mutual welfare. They can do nothing till they are honest with each other, till they face the facts together. When they had once done that they would not find the road hopelessly barricaded. The solutions that I have, from time to time, suggested in these chapters, would, I believe, prove beneficial. But it is as a statement of facts, an analysis of certain conditions, tendencies, and lines of thought, that I would chiefly submit this book to the consideration of parents and schoolmasters and those others who are interested in these questions. For nothing can be done till the conspiracy of silence, the policy of evasion and self-deception, the diplomacy of the merchant and his goods is broken down, till, that is to say, parents and schoolmasters meet on the common ground of co-operation, till they can look each other in the face and say: 'Things are so, and it is for us to find a remedy.'
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.