It may be that we must now pay the penalty
for having for so many generations allowed our educational system to remain stratified in social layers, and that we have only our- selves to blame if the half-educated and the inexpert seek, by various forms of derision, to ease the pangs of inferiority aroused in them by the specialist or the humanist. Yet what a misfortune it is for any community when intellectual super- iority is identified by the masses with class differences, or when certain standards of behaviour, which should and might have become national standards, are derided as the monopoly and symbol of a privileged caste. No such jealousy existed in pre-Nazi Germany or exists in modem France. There was no uneasy envy of the Berlin Technical High School or of the Ecole Normale. Such slogans as " high-brow " or "old school tie" have no meaning for the continentals, who have been brought up to believe that ability is always estimable and that mental sloth can never be a reputable defect. Yet we, in our muddled tolerance, have welcomed such subversive slogans into our own camp, not realising that they detract from eminence, discourage eflort and sap authority.
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