These are the British

by Drew Middleton

Critics of the Foreign Office have often charged that British diplomacy is filled with the products of the public schools and that the representatives of the great mass of the nation are excluded from the Foreign Service because they have not attended public schools. Lord Strang, a former Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and thus head of the Foreign Office, answered this criticism in his book The Foreign Office.

"The Foreign Office," he wrote, "can move no faster towards fully democratic methods of selection than the State as a whole is moving in its educational policies, though it has already moved far at the pace set for it by these wider policies of political evolution. The fact is that the Foreign Service always must and will recruit from the best, in brains and character, that the prevailing educational system can produce."

Note that "character" is coupled with "brains" in this indirect reference to the public schools.

What does the middle-class Briton mean when he says that Eton or some obscure public school in the Midlands will develop his son's character? There is no complete answer. But I would say that he includes in character such traits as willingness to take responsibility, loyalty to the class conception of the nation's interests, readiness to lead (which implies, of course, a belief that he is fit to lead and that there are people willing to be led), truthfulness, self-discipline, a love for vigorous outdoor sports. I have heard all these cited as reasons why boys should go to public schools and why fathers will give up smoking or limit their drinking to a small sherry before dinner to provide the money for such schooling.

In considering the development of character in the public schools it should be remembered that these schools often represent the third phase in the education of a British boy. The boy's first preceptor will be a nanny or nursemaid, often chosen from the rural working class. At eight or nine he goes away to a preparatory school. At twelve or thirteen he is ready for his public school. Because of economic pressure only a wealthy minority can follow this system today, but it was the system that produced the majority of the leaders of the Conservative Party and not a few prominent Labor Party leaders.

Direct paternal influence is much less evident in the education of Britons of the middle class than it is in the United States. One argument for the system maintains that the boy learns self-reliance; when in his twenties he is commanding a platoon or acting as Third Secretary of Embassy in a foreign country he is not likely to be wishing that Mom were there to advise him. This argument implies acceptance of the proposition that people will consent to be led by the public-school boy or that his education and character will fit him for a diplomatic post abroad.

Critics of the public schools charge that the concept of public-school leadership was exploded by World War II. This does not jibe with my own experiences with the British forces from 1939 to 1945. I found that most of the young officers in all three services were products of the public schools and that, on the whole, they provided a high standard of leadership in the lower echelons. Their earlier training had enforced upon them the idea that they were responsible for their men, not only in battle but elsewhere. So they would tramp through the Icelandic sleet to obscure posts to organize amateur theatricals or sweat through an African afternoon playing soccer with their men because this was part of the responsibility. They were told that they had to lead in battle, and they accepted the obligation without doubts.

A great many of them were killed all over the world while sociologists and reformers were planning how to eliminate the public schools. Those who were killed were no more intelligent, no more attractive in person, no more energetic than those they led. But when the time came to lead, they led. These remarks, no doubt, will annoy critics of the public schools and public-school leadership. When I am informed how wars are to be won or nations to be governed without leaders I will be properly contrite.

The public school's place in British society rests basically upon this conviction that a public-school education provides character-training that will equip a boy for leadership in business, in politics, in the military services, and in society. But the system as it appears in British society is composed of much more than formal education and character-building. The public schools also mean a body of traditions and customs often as involved and as unrelated to the modern world as the taboos of primitive man.

The Old School Tie is one. Almost all middle-class and some working-class institutions in Britain have a tie striped with the colors of the institution or ornamented with its crest. There are ties for cricket clubs and associations of football fans, there are ties for regiments and clubs. But the tie that generally means most is the tie that stands for attendance at a public school. It is at once a certificate of education and a badge of recognition.