THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

Evening Star, Issue 19745, 21 December 1927, Page 9

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

Whai the training gained at a public school should contribute to the public life of a British community subject of an article in the November ‘ Contemporary Be view,’ by Bishop Welldon, at one tirao head master of Harrow. “Various as these schools are,” ho says. “ they breathe a certain atmosphere, they exercise a special influence; and it would seem that they make an irresistible appeal to an everwidening circle of parents all over the British Empire.” “ One of the most inspiring and ennobling sentiments of life is the willing subordination of the individual to the State, and that subordination, when it is effectively realised, constitutes good citizenship.” Then, there acts upon the boy, he says, a strong sense of tradition. “ A new boy soon becomes conscious of his scholastic ancestry. He thinks of the great men who have sat upon the benches, played in the fields, and ivorshipped in the chapel, which now are his. He is daily reminded of them by their names inscribed upon the walls, by the prizes founded in their honor, or by the tablets which commemorate their lives and their deaths in chapel. In a true sense they are to him not dead, but still living. . . . So _ it becomes a boy’s silent passionate desire that he may _ prove himself not unworthy of his school. . t . . Yet, again,' a new boy in a public school is taught to accept a certain definite code of morals. The code may not be, and in fact, is not, altogether, complete or correct. It deals too lightly wnth some offences and too 'severely with

others; hut such as it is it is the creation of the boys themselves for themselves, and it is silently, hut) owerfully, imposed on every new boy. The bishop's main point is that the fruits of his public school training are not always taken by the public schoolboy into his public life, and that political conventions and motives do not do justice to this code. “No student of British industrial history can indeed maintain that the public school _ spirit has always characterised the political or industrial conduct of public school men.” Dr Welldon blames past generations of coal owners for the present recalcitrant bitterness of the miners. The sale of honors is not a reflection of the public school spirit. While the British Labor Party has been singularly free from pecuniary corruption, the bishop lists a number of its sins, which a stronger infusion of the public school spirit would prevent. The limitation of loyalty to one section of the community is one. Another is the cosmopolitanism which, instead of being based on patriotism and the desire to make one’s country play a worthy part in the world, is based on the denial oi patriotism. The guerrilal tactics of industrial warfare involving breach of faith is a third. Both sides show less respect for truth in political than in private life. From the public schools, however, has come that moderate, equitable temper characteristic of Englishmen, a temper that has enabled them to make democracy and constitutional government workable.