pace, he is "putting on side," and is promptly sacrificed. Presumption is the deadliest sin in school life, and is usually punished with a ferocity out of all proportion to the offence. In moderation, Convention is a very salutary deity. None of us are of much use in this world until we have found our level and acquired the virtues of modesty and self-suppression. It is extremely good for a cheeky new boy, late cock of a small preparatory school and idol of a doting family, to have to learn by painful experience that it is not for him to raise his voice in the course of general conversation or address himself to any but his own immediate order until he has been a member of the school for a year at least. These are what may be termed self-evident conventions, and it does no one any particular harm to learn to obey them. But the great god Convention, like most absolute monarchs, has grown distinctly cranky and eccentric in some of his whims. A sensible new boy knows better than to speak familiarly to a superior, or take a seat too near the fire, or answer back when unceremoniously treated. But there are certain laws of Convention which cannot be anticipated by the most intelligent and well-meaning beginner. For instance, it may be—and
invariably is—"side" to wear your cap straight (or crooked), or your jacket buttoned (or unbuttoned), or your hair brushed (or not), or to walk upon this side of the street (or that). But which? It is impossible to solve these problems by any process save that of dismal experience. And, as in a maturer branch of criminology, ignorance of the Law is held to be no excuse for infraction of the Law. I once knew a small boy who, trotting back to his House from football and being pressed for time, tied his new white sweater round his neck by the sleeves instead of donning it in the ordinary fashion. That evening, to his great surprise and extreme discomfort, he was taken out and slippered by a self-appointed vigilance committee. To wear one's sweater tied round one's neck, it seemed, was the privilege of the First Fifteen alone. Who shall tell how oft he offendeth?
And even when the first years are past and a position of comparative prominence attained, the danger of Presumption is not outdistanced. A boy obtains his House colours, we will say. His friends congratulate him warmly, and then sit down to wait for symptoms of "side." The newly-born celebrity must walk warily. Too often he trips. Our first success in life is very,
very sweet, and it is hard to swallow our exultation and preserve a modest or unconscious demeanour when our heart is singing. But the lesson must be learned, and ultimately is learned; but too often only after a cruel and utterly disproportionate banishment to the wilderness. Can we wonder that the Englishman who has achieved greatness in the world—the statesman, the soldier, the athlete—always exhibits an artificial indifference of manner when his deeds are mentioned in his presence? In nine cases out of ten this is not due to proverbial heroic modesty: it is caused by painful and lasting memories of the results which followed his first essays in self-esteem.
The other god which schoolboys dread is Public Opinion. They have little fear of their masters, and none whatever of their parents; but they are mortally afraid of one another. Moral courage is the rarest thing in schoolboy life. Physical courage, on the other hand, is a sine qua non: so much so that if a boy does not possess it he must pretend that he does. But if he exhibits moral courage the great majority of his fellows will fail to recognise it, and will certainly not appreciate it. They do not know its meaning. Their fathers have extolled it to
them, and they have heard it warmly commended in sermons in chapel; but they seldom know it when they meet it. If an obscure and unathletic prefect reports a muscular and prominent member of the House to the Housemaster for some gross and demoralising offence, they will not regard the prefect as a hero. Probably they will consider him a prig, and certainly a sneak. The fact that he has sacrificed all that makes schoolboy life worth living in the exercise of his simple duty will not occur to the rank and file at all. Admiration for that sort of thing they regard as an idiosyncrasy of pastors and masters.
It is not until he becomes a prefect himself that the average boy discovers the meaning of the word character, and whether he possesses any of his own. If he does, he begins straight-way to make up for lost time. He sets yet another god upon his Olympus and keeps him at the very summit thereof from that day forth for the rest of his life. As already noted, the Englishman is suspicious of brains, despises intellectuality, and thoroughly mistrusts any superficial appearance of cleverness; but he worships character, character, character all the time. And that is the main—the only—difference between
the English man and the English boy. The man appreciates moral courage, because it is a sign of character. It is the only respect in which the English Peter Pan grows up.
Finally, we note a new factor in the composition of the Public School Type—the military factor. Ten years ago school Cadet Corps were few in number, lacking in efficiency, and thoroughly lax in discipline. Routine consisted of some very inert company drills and some very intermittent class-firing, varied by an occasional and very disorderly field-day. Real keenness was confined to those boys who had a chance of going to Bisley as members of the shooting eight. The officers were middle-aged and short-winded. It was not quite "the thing" to belong to the Corps—presumably because anybody could belong to it—and in any case it was not decorous to be enthusiastic about it.
But the Officers' Training Corps has changed all that. At last the hand of peace-loving and somnolent Headmasters has been forced by the action of a higher power. Now the smallest public school has its Corps, subsidised by the State and supervised by the War Office. Three years ago, in Windsor Great Park, King George reviewed a perfectly equipped and splendidly