"I wish Mester Macdonald wud be a cattleman," he said fervently.
"Some folk might say that he is," I remarked.
"He gave me my licks the first mornin' he cam," he continued. "We got an
essay 'How I spent my holidays,' and I said that I was in France and
helped the Crown Prince to loot places. We quarrelled about how much we
should get each and I shot him. The Mester gave me three scuds for
tellin' lies."
"He would," I said grimly.
"But you used to tell me to tell lies!" he cried.
"I did, Jim. And you see the result.... I muck out a byre."
When Jim went away I came to a sudden resolution: I would fight for Jim.
I'll do all in my power to help the lad to preserve his own
personality.... Frank Thomson is his uncle and I'll try to get Jim to
see me often. Professional etiquette! Professional etiquette be damned!
I'm not in the profession now anyhow, and all the professional etiquette
in the world is as nothing to the saving of a soul.
* * *
I find that I enjoy my food now. Formerly I looked on a meal as an
appetiser for a smoke; now I look on a meal as an event. I feel
healthier than I ever did in my life before. The land dulls one,
however. The old cry "Back to the Land" means "Back to Elemental Mental
Stagnation." I spent this forenoon cutting turnips, and I know that I
thought of nothing all the time. I have a theory that great thoughts are
the product of disease. Possibly this is only another way of saying that
genius is allied to madness. Shelley was a physical weakling; Ibsen and
Nietzsche went mad. Yes, geniuses are diseased folk, but the converse
does not hold.
Macdonald came up to see me to-night; he wanted to ask a few things
about the school. We lay on a bank and lit our pipes.
"I can't find your 'Record of Work,'" he said.
"I never kept one."
"But ... the Code demands one!"
"I know ... but I didn't keep one. My record of work is my pupils in
after life."
"Yes," he said drily, "I know all about that, but you are supposed to
keep a record that will show an inspector what you are doing to produce
this after life record."
"Macdonald," I said impatiently, "if you mean to tell me that any man
can tell what I am doing to prepare children for after life by squinting
at a crowd of entries of the
Took-the-History-of-the-Great-Rebellion-this-week order ... well, I
don't understand your attitude to life in general."
"That's all very well," he protested, "but we aren't there to make the
rules; we're paid servants who have to administer the laws of wiser
men."
"How do you know that they are wiser?" I asked.
"They're wiser than I am anyway," he said with a smile.
"I'm not so sure of it, Macdonald; they are more unscrupulous than you
are. They know what they want, definitely and finally; they want
efficient wage-slaves."
"That's merely a Socialistic cry."
"It may be, but it's true. Who rule us? A definite governing class of
trained aristocrats."
"H'm! I shouldn't call Lloyd George and that Labour man Hodge trained
aristocrats."
"They aren't born aristocrats I admit, but they are aristocratised
democrats. They've adapted themselves to the aristocratic tradition.
They are on the side of aristocracy; you won't find them alienating the
good opinion of the moneyed classes. We are governed from above; do you
admit that?"
"In the main ... yes," he said grudgingly.
"Very good! Well, then, our rulers believe in two kinds of education.
They send their sons to the public schools where boys are trained to be
governors, but they send the rest of the sons of the community to State
schools where they are trained to be disciplined and content with their
lot."
"That's nonsense."
"Possibly, but I suppose you know that the members of the House of Lords
and the Cabinet don't send their sons to L.C.C. schools."
"You are simply preaching class war," he said.
"I am. There is a class war--there has been for generations--but it is a
one-sided war."
"It is," said Macdonald grimly.
"The upper class took the offensive long ago, and it keeps it yet. Look
at the squire down in the village. He won't ride in the same railway
compartment with you or me; he won't sit beside us in the theatre ...
why, he won't lie beside us in the kirkyard: he's got that railed-off
corner for his family. I don't blame him; he has been educated up in
his belief, just as you and I have been educated up in the belief that
we are his inferiors. When I was down in the school I lectured the whole
class one day because I saw a boy doff his cap to the squire and nod to
his mother three seconds afterwards.
"Don't you see that this village is a little British Empire? Here there
are only two classes--the big house and the village ... the ruling class
and the ruled. The school trains the ruled to be ruled, and the kirk
takes up the training on the Seventh Day. The minister talks a lot of
prosy platitudes about Faith and Love and Charity, but he never thinks
of saying a thing that the squire might take umbrage at."