CONCLUSION
Were the moral question to be tackled sensibly, and were the reduction
of the age limit to modify the 'blood' system, and insist upon the fact
that school life is only a prelude, I believe that athletics would
occupy their proper place in the life of the school. The social force of
religion depends, to a large extent, on the appreciation of the
importance of what will follow the 'here and now.' During the war, when
the future was insecure, and no one could see anything certainly beyond
the limits of a fortnight's leave, the country plunged recklessly in
search of pleasure. No one looked ahead. No one paused to consider what
would be the harvest of their sowing.
The eyes of the preparatory school boy are fixed upon the future. He
knows that the successes and failures of the moment are unimportant. He
knows that a strenuous contest lies in wait for him. In consequence
there is at a Preparatory School little of the fanatical devotion that
colours the fabric of public school life. I remember a house master once
saying that it was impossible for a member of a house side to do much
work while the house matches were in progress. And, as the house matches
covered a period of six weeks, this was a pretty generous allowance. At
the same time the house master only spoke the truth: it was practically
impossible to do much work during the house matches term; we could think
of little else. Every evening we would discuss at considerable length
the afternoon's punt-about and the morrow's match. We would devise
schemes for the better outwitting of our opponents. We would discuss the
weakness and strength of individual players. And the majority of
masters, certainly of house masters, shared this fervour. It is true
that a certain house master, when presented with the excuse for an
indifferent prose that house matches were too exciting, remarked: 'I
don't know whom they excite, they don't excite me.' But this assertion
was belied by his subsequent behaviour on the touchline. During house
matches there is an educational moratorium. In peace time the energies
and interests of a nation are directed into a thousand different
channels, but in war time every interest is secondary to that of war.
And, while house matches are in progress, the atmosphere of a house is
not unlike that of a nation that is at war. Individual members may have
their private troubles, but they realise that these troubles are of
small account at such a time. And, though it is no doubt admirable for
the individual to feel himself of less importance than the community, it
will hardly be conceded that self-negation in such a cause is likely to
prove of any very permanent value to him.
Now there are those who will urge that boy nature cannot be altered,
that it is natural for a boy to worship games, and that you cannot
expect him to be otherwise. But that I shall never believe is so. For
myself, I know that I play cricket and football as keenly as I did seven
years ago, that I spend a great many evenings with a Wisden in my hands;
but that I manage to get through a fair amount of work between each
January and December. That is not in itself a fair argument. One cannot
arraign the enthusiasms of sixteen before the enthusiasms of
twenty-three any more than one can arraign the enthusiasms of
twenty-three before those of forty. There is no more fallacious argument
than the 'when you have reached my age, young man.' At different stages
of our life we are vexed by different problems. At twenty-three our
sexual life is of vast importance; it stretches before us, a wide field
for courage, enterprise, adventure. In the man of forty, curiosity has
been satisfied. He has settled many of the problems that perplexed him
when he was a young man. And he says: 'My dear fellow, all this that is
worrying you does not really matter.' But he is wrong. It does matter to
a young man of twenty. And nothing is trivial that has ever exercised
deeply the human spirit.
In a world that is in flux the permanence or impermanence of any emotion
is of less matter than its intensity while it lasts. Sooner or later
everything must desert us. Is the brain a useless possession because it
will one day soften. Are teeth less efficacious now because one day
they will decay. Is a young man of twenty going to listen to the
impotent man of sixty who mutters: 'Young man, the charms of woman are a
snare and an illusion. When you have reached my age you will be no
longer moved by them.' For that is where the 'when you are my age, young
man,' argument finally lands us. And it is not fair to say to a boy of
seventeen: 'This mad excitement about games is absurd. In six years even
you will have outgrown it.' It is for us to decide whether this mad
excitement is the natural expression of a boy's temperament, or whether
it is the peculiar growth of a peculiar environment.
I will take as an example Sandhurst as it was in the autumn of 1916. It
was composed almost entirely of boys straight from the Public Schools,
and I should imagine that the average age of a company was about
eighteen, the age, that is to say, at which most of them would have been
about to start on their last year. They brought with them the standards
of public school life. One would have expected them to establish their
standards at Sandhurst. They did nothing of the sort. There was nothing
that bore the least approach to a blood system. There were seniors and
juniors, that was all. There was no fierce cult of athleticism. The G.C.
who scored tries in company matches was not granted a general permission
to drive his bayonet through college furniture. In the daily life games
played a prominent part. Indeed, the under officer whose company did not
make use of the ground allotted to it would have had to face an
unpleasant half-hour with the commandant. But games never became the
business of life. They were played for their own sake. They were
untouched by professionalism. If a three-quarter missed a pass five
yards from the line he did not bury himself in a far corner of the
anteroom, apart from the gaiety of his companions. The average company
side played just as keenly as a house fifteen at school. While we were
on the field we were as desperately anxious to win. But we did not spend
the morning in a state of nervous irritation, nor did the issue of the
contests drive us to deep despondency, or to hysterical elation. A
certain intensity had passed. Yet I do not think that ever before had I
derived such pleasure from the actual playing of the game as I did at
Sandhurst.
One would not, of course, hold up a military institution as the model
for an educational system. But, from the point of view of athletics, the
Sandhurst that I knew in the winter of 1916 and the spring of 1917
possessed all the merits and none of the faults that one associates with
the average Public School. And yet that Sandhurst was composed of the
same boys that a few months earlier had, at their Public Schools,
rigidly observed the exacting ritual of the great god of sport.
Reasons for this change are not difficult to find, and it may be noticed
that they are in line with the improvements suggested in an earlier
chapter. There is no blood system, because there is little disparity of
age between the G.C.'s. Juniors belong to a lower caste than the
seniors, but they inhabit that lower world without worrying much about
what is happening in the superior world. Contact between the two is not
established. There is a hard dividing line. A junior may not sit on a
certain side of the anteroom. There is no social fluidity. One is one
thing or the other. Athletic worship in school was due largely, I
suggested, to the absence of any other focus for a boy's enthusiasm. At
Sandhurst several such focuses were provided. To begin with, the work
was interesting. The morning was not a mere succession of tiresome hours
relieved by a quarter of an hour's break. The G.C. did not listen to
lectures and tactics with the listless condescension that he had paid
formerly to the Greek syntax; he realised that the knowledge of the
subjects he was studying would be of practical value to him at a later
date. He was anxious to be a good officer. He was, therefore, interested
in his work. He was also at Sandhurst for a very little while. He
regarded Sandhurst quite definitely as the anteroom to a career; he
never imagined it to be anything else. In a few months he would have
joined his regiment. The honours he won at Sandhurst would be of little
value in themselves, and were only worth the gaining in as far as they
would enhance the reputation which he would take with him to his
regiment. A Sandhurst cadet was always looking beyond the present.
Nor did the officers in charge of companies feel any compunction to
prescribe athleticism as an antidote to immorality. In the first place,
they were not responsible for the G.C.'s moral welfare, nor was there,
indeed, any occasion for alarm. The amount of immoral conduct between
G.C.'s, if there was any, must have been extremely small. Such conduct
is essentially _faute de mieux_: women were abundantly available for
those who wanted them. And in a town such as Camberley there were
endless opportunities for innocent romance.
The three main causes for athleticism were removed, and in consequence
there was no athleticism. Now it is obviously impossible for all these
conditions to be introduced into a Public School. There must be a
disparity of age, schoolmasters must feel some anxiety about the morals
of the boys that are to be entrusted to them. But, if we can show that
the complete removal of certain conditions of public school life can
entirely remove certain evils, we can only assume that the modification
of these conditions would cause considerable improvement. The smaller
the disparity of age between the eldest and the youngest boy, the less
intense will be the blood system. The shorter the period that a boy
spends at school, the less will be the tendency to regard school life as
the complete compass of his life. The supply of another focus for a
boy's enthusiasm will diminish the strength of his athletic ardour. The
greater the honesty in tackling the moral question, the less will
masters feel themselves forced to recommend athleticism as an antidote
to immorality. And these changes are, I believe, possible without
altering appreciably the principle of public school education. The
supply of other focuses may, at first glance, seem a highly difficult
job. It may, indeed, be advanced that were there another focus,
athleticism could not exist in its present state, and that there would
be no need for a reduction of the age limit. But I am inclined to think
that it would be hardly possible to run any school which contained boys
of thirteen and boys of nineteen and not have a blood system and an
athletic worship. The forces of a natural inclination are too strongly
entrenched behind the barricade of six years. The masters do not stand a
fair chance. But the weakening of one force means the strengthening of
another. A lowering of the barricade by a couple of years would give the
other side a chance of contending equally. The moment a boy realised
that the prizes of school life had only a temporary value, he would
question his blind devotion to the religion of athleticism. He would
wonder whether other things were not worth while. His allegiance would
be divided.
But the passing of regulations cannot in themselves effect a
reformation. They can be of great assistance; they can support and they
can protect. They cannot build. And, in the study of public school life,
we have to return in the end to the point from which we started. Boys
and parents and schoolmasters must meet on a common ground and discuss
their mutual welfare. They can do nothing till they are honest with
each other, till they face the facts together. When they had once done
that they would not find the road hopelessly barricaded. The solutions
that I have, from time to time, suggested in these chapters, would, I
believe, prove beneficial. But it is as a statement of facts, an
analysis of certain conditions, tendencies, and lines of thought, that I
would chiefly submit this book to the consideration of parents and
schoolmasters and those others who are interested in these questions.
For nothing can be done till the conspiracy of silence, the policy of
evasion and self-deception, the diplomacy of the merchant and his goods
is broken down, till, that is to say, parents and schoolmasters meet on
the common ground of co-operation, till they can look each other in the
face and say: 'Things are so, and it is for us to find a remedy.'
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Old England BERNARD GILBERT
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