This paltry and frivolous attempt to evade the real point at issue—which appears to be that many people, including Tommy's parents and the Headmaster himself, smoke, drink, and go out after dark and are none the worse—is treated with the severity which it deserves. A letter is despatched, consigning the Headmaster to scholastic perdition. The Headmaster briefly acknowledges receipt, and suggests that the correspondence should now cease.
So far the campaign has followed well-defined
and perfectly natural lines, for a parent is seldom disposed to take his boy's expulsion "lying down." But at this point the new-style parent breaks right away from tradition—kicks over the traces, in fact. Despatching that slightly dazed but on the whole deeply gratified infant martyr, Master Tommy, to salve outraged nature at an adjacent Picture Palace, the parent sits down at his (or her) desk and unmasks the whole dastardly conspiracy to a halfpenny newspaper of wide circulation. "I do this," he explains, "not from any feeling of animosity towards the Headmaster of the School, but in order to clear my son's good name and fair fame in the eyes of the world." This is interesting and valuable news to the world, which has not previously heard of Tommy Snooks. The astute editor of the halfpenny paper, with a paternal smile upon his features and his tongue in his cheek, publishes the letter in a conspicuous position—if things in the football and political world happen to be particularly dull, he sometimes finds room for Tommy's photograph too—and invites general correspondence on the subject.
Few parents can resist such an opportunity; and for several weeks the editor is supplied,
free gratis, with a column of diversified but eminently saleable matter. The beauty of a controversy of this kind is that you can debate upon almost any subject without being pulled up for irrelevance. Parents take full advantage of this licence. Some contribute interesting legends of their children's infancy. Others plunge into a debate upon punishment in general, and the old battle of cane, birch, slipper, imposition, detention, and moral suasion is fought over again. This leads to a discussion as to whether public schools shall or shall not be abolished—by whom, is not stated. Presently the national reserve of retired colonels is mobilised, and fiery old gentlemen write from Cheltenham to say that in their young days boys were boys and not molly-coddles. Old friends like Materfamilias, Pro Bono Publico, Quis Custodiet Custodes rush into the fray with joyous whoops. There is quite a riot of pseudonyms: the only person who gives his proper name (and address) is the headmaster of a small preparatory school, who contributes a copy of his prospectus, skilfully disguised as a treatise on "How to Preserve Home Influences at School."
But the boom is short-lived. Presently a crisis
arises in some other department of our national life. Something cataclysmal happens to the House of Commons, or the Hippodrome, or Tottenham Hotspur. Public attention is diverted; the correspondence is closed with cruel abruptness; and little Tommy Snooks is summoned from the Picture Palace, and sent to another school or provided with a private tutor. Still, his good name and fair fame are now vindicated in the eyes of the world.
But it is not altogether surprising that the great Temple should once have observed:
"Boys are always reasonable; masters sometimes; parents never!"