"I think I have a greater ideal," I said. "And," I added, "I am sure
that if Balfour were asked about it he would reply: 'I wish I could have
got out of my aristocratic environment at your age.'"
"Lawson," I continued, "I gathered tatties behind the digger once. That
is the chief difference between me and Balfour. When first I went
through Eton on a motor-bus and saw the boys on the playing grounds, I
said to myself, 'Thank God I wasn't sent to Eton!'"
"Class prejudice and jealousy," said Lawson. "Will the Rangers get into
the Final?"
* * *
I met Wilkie the mason, on the road to-night. He cannot write his name,
and he is the richest man in the village.
"What's this Aw hear aboot you bein' are o' they Socialists?" he
demanded. "Aw didna ken that when Aw voted for ye."
"If you had?"
"Not a vote wud ye hae gotten frae me. Ye'll be layin' yer bombs a' ower
the place," he said half jocularly.
"Ye manna put ony o' they ideas in the bairns' heids," he continued
anxiously. "Politics have no place in a schule."
I did not pursue the subject; I sidetracked him on to turnips, and by
using what I had picked up from Andrew Smith I made a fairly good
effort. When we parted Wilkie grasped my hand.
"Ye're no dozzent," he said kindly, "but, tak ma advice, and leave they
politics alone. It's a dangerous game for a schulemester to play."
* * *
I find that I am becoming obsessed by my creed. I see that I place
politics before everything else in education. But I feel that I am doing
the best I can for true education. After all it isn't Socialism I am
teaching, it is heresy. I am trying to form minds that will question
and destroy and rebuild.
Morris's _News from Nowhere_ appeals to me most as a Utopia. Like him I
want to see an artistic world.
I travelled to Newcastle on Saturday, and the brick squalor that
stretches for miles out Elswick and Blaydon way sickened me. Dirty
bairns were playing on muddy patches, dirty women were gossiping at
doors, miners were wandering off in twos and threes with whippets at
their heels. And smoke was over all. Britain is the workshop of the
world. Good old Merrie England!
These are strange entries for a Dominie's Log. I must bring my mind back
to Vulgar Fractions and Composition.
* * *
There was a Cinema Show in the village hall to-night. My bairns turned
out in force. Most of the pictures were drivel ... the typist wrongly
accused, the seducing employer; the weeping parents at home. The average
cinema plot is of the same brand as the plots in a washerwoman's weekly.
Then we had the inevitable Indian chase on horseback, and the hero
pardoned after the rope was round his neck.
I enjoyed the comic films. To see the comic go down in diver's dress to
wreck a German submarine was delightfully ludicrous. He took off his
helmet under water and wiped the sweat from his brow. Excellent fun!
I have often thought about the cinema as an aid to education. At the
present time it is a drag on education, for its chief attraction is its
piffling melodrama. Yet I have seen good plays and playlets filmed ...
that is good melodramatic and incident plays.
I have seen _Hamlet_ filmed, and then I understood what Tolstoi (or was
it Shaw?) meant when he said that Shakespeare without his word music is
nowhere. Yet I must be just; philosophy had to go along with music when
the cinema took up _Hamlet_.
The cinema may have a future as an educational force, but it will deal
with what I consider the subsidiary part of education--the facts of
life. Pictures of foreign countries are undoubtedly of great use. The
cinema can never give us theories and philosophy. So with its lighter
side. _Charley's Aunt_ might make a good film; _The Importance of Being
Earnest_ could not. The cinema can give us humour but not wit. What will
happen when the cinema and the phonograph are made to work together
perfectly I do not know. I may yet be able to take my bairns to a
performance of _Nan_ or _The Wild Duck_ or _The Doctor's Dilemma_.
* * *
"Please, sir, Willie Smith was swearing." Thus little Maggie Shepherd to
me to-day.
I always fear this complaint, for what can I do? I can't very well ask
Maggie what he said, and if he says he wasn't swearing ... well, his
word is as good as Maggie's. I can summon witnesses, but bairns have but
the haziest notion of what swearing is. (For that matter so do I.) If a
boy shoves his fingers to his nose.... "Please, sir, he swore!"
I try to be a just man, and ... well, I was bunkered at the ninth hole
on Saturday, and I dismissed Willie Smith--without an admonition. But I
am worried to-night, for I can't recollect whether Willie has ever
caddied for me; I have a shrewd suspicion that he has.