A PUBLIC SCHOOL IN WAR TIME.*

Tun title of Mr. Mais's book is slightly misleading, since the sketches of which it is made up deal with Public School life before as well as during the war, and this composite character inevitably involves the adoption of varying standpoints. In his preface he vigorously combats the view that nothing will be the same after tho war as it was before, and that everything is in the melting-pot ; and he deprecates all revolutionary or violent changes of the Publics School system, not merely on the ground that the needed reforms must be typically English and come from within and slowly, but also because "there is something not merely sentimentally but ineffably precious in the spirit of the Public Schools which once lost could never be regained." He frankly admits that there is much that is wrong with the system "an idolatry of physical prowess to the detriment of the cultivation of the brain, a lack of imagination, and a blindness to the beautiful which almost passes belief." Thom things, he maintains, "can be and are slowly being remedied." Yet only a few pages further on he speaks of the "extraordinary and unbelievable renaissance that has come about in our Public Schools since and through the war" ve:th sem ial refsrenee to the appreciation of poetry, and devotes three chapters to showing that, from having been regarded by the majority as a bore, the O.T.C. has become the one thing that matters just now at the Public Schools. With all that he says of the keenness of boys and masters in this connexion, of the value of the corps as a now alternative for the non-athletic, and as an instrument of practical Nature study, no one who knows anything of our Public Schools is likely to disagree ; and we welcome his spirited protest against the view that this midden renascence of interest in military strategy and tactics is likely to fester a love of militarism. But the emphasis with which he insists on this renascence rather detracts from the cogency of the arguments and illustrations which he adduces to show later on that the human boy remains un- altered, and that no bigger mistake could possibly be made than to believe that, because there is a war on, the youth of to-day has " suddenly become quietened, chastened, angelic." There is truth in both views : human nature remains the same though its manifestations may undergo modification, and Mr. Mais is inclined to overstate both positions. He is a man of many moods. Ho tells us how he returned to his school disquieted, dejected, and perhaps unduly depressed ; how as he woke up next morning a glow of heartfelt thankfulness filled his being ; how lie saw in chapel the hundreds of faces he had "so grown to love, all fresh with the imperishable glow of youth, all imbued with the God.. given gifts of health and determination " ; and he closes the first day of the Summer Term with the conviction that "after the happy warrior, the schoolmaster of to-day is by far the most to be envied of those who mould and influence the nation of the future." But in the chapter on "Ragging," written evidently in a spasm of dejection, we read that boys "have no imagination, and consoluently never tire of being cruel" :—

"They are precisely on the came moral level with snakes and cats in this, that their absolute lack of any imaginative faculty makes them smack their lips over the sight of an old man in pain at their malicious efforts to drive him out of his mind again and again and again. They never tire."

On this subject Mr. Mats claims to be an authority, for "f spent the best years of my life as a boy in trying to devise new tortures for a man who had been kindness itself to me, but who had the misfortune to stammer and blush. As a consequence I learnt nothing, and he gained a whole-hearted loathing for the whole race of boys" :— "This ragging of incapable masters by boys is only comparable to the silly goose-cackle of the country yokel when he sees a bicycle 'skid' in the wet, and a girl fall and cover herself with mud. That is his notion of humour ; a boy's sense of humour is about as much developed : to see a master or a friend in real agonies (spiritual, of course; physical bullying is slowly becoming unfashionable ; we have now got to the refined stage of inflicting torture on the soul : mere arm-twisting was humane by comparison)—this is a source of inexhaustible delight : it is surely a sign of human progress that by the time he roaches Oxford he is content to derive amusement by leaping on to a bonfire made from his own and his friends' furniture. I can think of nothing in school life which so sickens me as this distorted sense of humour on tho part of nearly all boys. One moment and I am pessionately declaiming a passage of Shakespeare, making myself believe that I really am culti- vating a sense of honour, of pathos, of proportion, of real humour in the minds of my boys ; they really look as if they are gaining something ; they think they are too : five minutes later they have left me and I

• A Public &hod in War Time. By S. P. B. Kale. London: J. Manse. as. ed. netj

hear them in an adjoining classroom shouting, clamouring, unanimous in one groat burst of raucous, empty laughter as tho blackboard,(by

special arrangement) falls on old ' Flatfoot's ' heal. It makes one al times almost despair of the whole race of boys ; whereas, in my calmer moments, I can quite see that it is not the fault of the boys : it is the whole pernicious system that encourages them to grow up like this. There is no trace of a healthy side in the ragging of masters by boys." When Mr. Mais talks of "the whole Pernicious system" we cannot be certain whether he means the Public School system, with its "ineffably precious" spirit, or the system under which the teaching staff is largely recruited from the ranks of men unable to keep discipline. Anyhow, it is tolerably clear that he is not satisfied with things as they are, and, while deprecating a cataclysm, offers a number of specific suggestions for remedying existing evils and difficulties. Thus in his chapter on "Chapel," while unhesitatingly maintaining that if England is to continue to be the great nation she has become she must be definitely Christian in her outlook, he advocates voluntary attendance, or the reduction of obligatory attendances to three a week. He would like to see the senior boys taking some definite part in the ervice and the lay staff employed in prayer reading. He finds too great a cleavage between chapel and the rest of school life, and holds that the study of the Bible, psalms, and hymns should be brought more frequently into classroom weekly work. Ho urges a drastic revision of school hymn, pleading for the exclusion of those which are dismal and retributory and for a more liberal use of those which lay stress on the friendliness of God. In another sphere he recommends the multiplication of school debating and literary societies, with the proviso that they must not be master. ridden. He is tremendously down on " cribbing ":— Cribbing' is just as much an offence against the rights of man lie cheating, lying, impurity, or stealing. How, then, to deal with it First, I suggest, by making work so interesting that boys will begin to work for work's sake. It is no use laughing at such a notion as crack- brained, weak-kneed, or even as an impossible ideal. It can be done, because it has been done. In English I do it, and Heaven knows I am no born teacher. Make a boy see that there is something vastly entertaining in the subject, explain to him thoroughly the use that it will be to him hereafter; if it is a merely disciplinary subject no good in itself, scrap it ; scrap it at once and substitute a live subject in it place ; the theory that a thing is good for you in proportion as it is distasteful has gone for over ; make a boy see that the subject is your own life-hobby and is every bit as important as (say) cricket or football, that oven grown men in tho world outside continue such a study for pure pleasure until their lives' ond, and the artificial stimulus of marks and examinations—the bane of the usher's existence—will disappear for ever, and naturally with the marks will likewise vanish cribbing,' for there will ho no point in it. Punishment mast go ; marks must go ; and then, and then only, will interest revive and 'cribbing' dio. It is no use tolling me that masters are not capable of bringing this about. Sack all those who confess their inefficiency, and bring in a now rime. It only needs courage, an indomitable optimism, and catching your boy young ; it might perhaps be as well to hang all parents and relatives who indulge in dangerous reminiscences, but, as we have neglected parents for so long, perhaps we might continuo to do so with impunity. After all, they do not matter much either way ; it is the future we are trying to save, not the past."

Mr. Mais would, further, not only sanction but encourage the general use of good translations by all forms. There is a great deal to be said in favour of this view, which, we believe, is already adopted in some schools. As for working for work's sake, Hr. Mais has omitted to notice that at the moment the difficulty is greatly enhanced by war conditions. Boys will work harder than they ever did before for a specific object—chiefly for that of gaining a commission. But there is a notable falling off in enthusiasm for study for its own sake. As for the "scrapping" of disciplinary subjects which

are no good in themselves, the phrase is really a contradiction in terms. How can a thing have any disciplinary value which is "no good in itself " ? Enthusiasm is infectious ; but there is no guarantee that

one man's life-hobby can be profitably accommodated to the needs of a whole class of ho s. He believes in the prefect system, but condemns its present working, largely because of tho fetish-worship of the athlete:—

" Our loaders of the future ought to be men of highly developed aesthetic taste, possessed of that vivid imagination which prompts men first of all to think of the cause of spiritual progress rather than of material success ; we have too long left the affairs of the State in the hands of material-minded, selfish mon. All this 'will never do.' There

is but one cure. You can only influence a nation as you influence an

animel, by catching it young. Tho present system of profectorial government' is ideal in theory, but we should see to it that no boy shall be allowed to lead others unless he has proved himself to be devoted to the cause of real progress, and has ideas beyond the world of schooL"

Mr. Mais laments our "stereotyped conservatism." "Boys and made,s alike are eaten up by tradition," and he draws a sad picture of the bard

lot of the enthusiast, the reformer, and the individualist. He is an ardent supporter of unofficial, irregular school magazines as an outlet for the spirit of literary adventure and independence and a training.

school for the writers who will really matter in the next generation.

Returning to the question of athletics, he finds one of the greatest benefits of the war in the depreciation of their value in consequence of the rise cf the O.T.C. But the average boy, he contends, is even now driven too much ; he advocates a "slack afternoon" now and then, when a boy should be sllowed to do whatever he pleases to counteract

the effect of the other days. He is all for keeping boys physically fit and encouraging the team spirit, but gives a lurid picture of the overtraining and overstrain of the boys who take part ba a Junior House match. Turn- ing to the question of the staffing of schools in war time, Mr. Mais dis- cusses the employment of " dug-outs " with great frankness. Their " cocksureness " as to the superiority of the old methods estranges them from reformers, and they are not always able to hold the junior boys. For while he dislikes the drill-sergeant, policeman type of schoolmaster, he frankly admits that a man must be able to handle boys bet ore he can teach them anything. Here, then, comes in his plea for the employment of disabled officers to relieve and strengthen the existing staffs. They would, he is convinced, be assured not only of a welcome but of the admiration of the boys, who would listen to the appeals of mon versed In the realities far more readily than to those of ordinary pedagogues; and their assistance in the 0.T.0 would be invaluable It may be objected, however, that if disabled officers are fit for schoolmastering, they would probably be fit for training In a chapter on holiday tasks he dwells on the greater efficacy of the present-day plan of com- bining manual energy with military training, bodily energy with intellectual effort, and the broadening effect of the fusion of classes brought about by war-work.

The "Gallery of Schoolmasters," a survey of the dominie in literature and fiction, opens well with the extraordinarily sagacious and far-sighted passage from Fuller, and the references in Johnson and Lamb are worth quoting. But it is characteristic of Mr. Mais's method that he should dismiss all ninoteenth-contury books on school life, from Eric to Stalky, as "romantically impossible and hopelessly out of date," and that he should single out Mr. Hugh Walpole's Mr. Perrin and Mr, Traill for its " uncanny " and " magical " reality It is. to put it mildly, highly arguable to say that here for the first time we have pictures drawn from the master's point of view. Evidently Mr. Waloole's book has upset Mr. Mats very much, and quite needlessly, for, by his own showing, it is a gross caricature in one important particular. The only other book ho mentions honoris camel is The Lanchester Tradition, a study of an altogether different quality, which deserves to be remembered, if only for the portrait of the stimulating cynic, Bent, some of whose beat sayings arc quoted by Mr. Male. We can only briefly allude to his vehement onslaught on masters' common-rooms when conducted on the hostel system—as loading to constant friction and bad manners— and his Utopian suggestions for their reorganization on the lines of a luxurious chil—a reorganization which he himself admits could only be carried out by raising the incomes of assistant-masters to £1,000 a year. He also pleads for the holding of fewer masters' meetings in term time, and criticizes the attitude of those Head-Masters who use those gatherings merely for announcing their decisions instead of con- sulting their colleagues. He does not say anything about some of the best-founded grievances of assistant-masters—the inadequacy of the pension system whore it exists ; its non-existence in many schools ; and the disproportion between the salaries paid to head- and assistant- masters. In fine, this is a book which commands attention by its obvious sincerity, but it is more interesting as a revelation of the writer's temperament—easily elated and depressed—than as a comprehensive treatment of the subject. There is a considerable difference in the spirit and traditions of different Public Schools and the tone of their common-rooms, and Mr. Maas, though he is aware of this fact, is perhaps inclined to generalize too freely from his intimate experience of one or two.