12 JUNE 1897, Page 7

THE HAILEYBITRY SUICIDE.

IN an interesting letter which we publish in another column on the suicide at Halley bury, the writer blames us for having taken for granted that it was, as a matter of course, wrong to publish the names of the three boys who had teased the unfortunate Evans till he could no longer bear his life. We cannot, however, agree with the opinion which is expressed in that letter; first because it seems to us impossible to treat boys of that age as fully responsible for actions which, however faulty, it evidently required a good deal of judgment and experience to estimate aright, though when they result in consequences so terrible, there must attach to them through life a far more evil reputation than any which it was possible for them to have known that they deserved ; and next, because it was really very doubtful whether or not their unfortunate victim had not grossly exaggerated their actual guilt, in consequence of a morbid sensitiveness in his own nature, of which even his most kindly schoolfelloWs seem to have perceived the trace. It is of course clear enough that the three boys of whose cruelty Evans complained in his letter to the Head-Master deserved to have had a fair private trial before they were condemned to so great a penalty as the publication of their names to all the world ; and also that they had had no such trial before the question rose as to their guilt. Yet it might well have been that it was only the hypersensitiveness of the poor boy, who imagined himself disgraced before all the school, without really having suffered more than any other of his schoolfellows, that caused this mistaken impression. That at least was evidently the view taken of his case by the head-boy in the house in which Evans lived, and who on Evans's own authority was one of his best friends. And that, too; was the judgment of the Head-Master, Canon Lyttelton, of whose justice and kindliness all who know lam have, we believe, formed the highest opinion. These being the general circumstances of the case, it seems to us absolutely clear that the publication of the boys' names before there was any kind of certainty as to their guilt, or if they were guilty, as to the degree of that guilt, might well have been a far greater injustice to them than any of which they had themselves been guilty towards Evans. Not that we doubt the absolute necessity of a full investigation of the ease such as that for which Canon Lyttelton has very wisely asked. We wish, indeed, that in his first letter on the subject he had expressed a stronger condemnation of these habitual attacks on particular boys, almost always especially sensitive boys, which now and then lead to such tragic results, even though it may be quite true that they arise quite as often out of the special excitability of the victim, as out of the love of teasing which seems to be so deeply rooted in boys at the age when they are beginning to grow contemptuous of any- thing like softness in their schoolfellows. Canon Lyttelton is the very last man to underrate the torture which such teasing boys often inflict, but we think that he might well have seized the first opportunity to impress that lesson on the probably rather blunt moral feelings of some of his pupils, especially when he could have done so without attaching guilt to any particular boy, since he might have frankly admitted that a special sensitiveness, not un- frequently due to specially fine qualities, contributes greatly to the danger of a tragic end for petty and often only half-appreciated cruelties of this kind. We quite admit that Head-Masters are justly reluctant to press too hard on the dullness of the average boy's sympathies, knowing as they do that these sympathies develop them- selves in them later in life, and that it is by no means easy to get them into earlier blossom ; nay, that a thick skin in early life may be part of the preparation for a successful career. Still, it was a very good. opportunity for teaching boys that anything like cruelty is cowardly and unmanly as well as unjust, and that it leads to the narrowing of all the greater openings in life by rendering others unwilling to co-operate with us and unwilling to trust us. We have no doubt at all that Canon Lyttelton does impress these simple truths upon his boys, and that it was his im- pression that the three boys named in poor Evans's last letter had been hardly dealt with that made him disposed to attenuate their faultiness instead of throwing on them all the blame for Evans's despair. But still we could have wished that while saying what he did, Canon Lyttelton had used the opportunity to show how very easily it may happen that teasing results in tragedy when the subject, of the teasing happens to be a person of specially sensitive nature. And, indeed, there could be no better opportunity for beginning to open a boy's mind to those larger sympathies which seem to be so late in maturing in nineteen boys out of twenty.

It is perfectly true, of course, that one of the great advantages which boys get in school is the hardening, as it is called, of the too sensitive skin which home life often produces. But this great advantage should be gained as much as possible at their own cost, and not at the cost of their schoolfellows. We shall be told, of course, that if every boy is to abstain from anything like harshness to his schoolfellows, school will become like another home, and that there will be no hardening at all. But that is surely a great mistake. What makes the difference between school and home is the same as that which makes the difference between the world and home,— namely, the absence of those special feelings that grow out of common sympathies and common hopes, and the necessity of a constant self-restraint which is not and cannot be requisite in an atmosphere of habitual sympathy. School is like the world, only much harder than the world, because it requires not only perpetual self-restraint, but perpetual warfare of a mild kind, and perpetual warfare is more than a bracing atmosphere, it is a. biting atmosphere, and it is very doubtful indeed whether that is beneficial to any but the strongest constitutions. We do not believe that constant conflict is at all suited to any character in an immature stage. And all schoolboys are not only immature, but very easily indurated by constant conflict, even where they are not driven mad by it. The moral atmosphere of a great public school might well be softened without making it too soft, just as the moral atmosphere of home might well he rendered more bracing with nothing but advantage to all its members.