The public school spirit in public life
Welldon, James Edward Cowell, bishop, 1854-1937
2 - z ms 5 ap ge mae oe WEN SS <s aa THE PUBLIC’ SCHOOL SPIRIT IN PUBLIC ade ee HERE are few English institutions which have played a greater part in the national life than the Public Schools. The interest excited by them and the confidence reposed in them, not only within but beyond the British Isles, are alike remarkable. The Public Schools are not all similar in origin or history or in their social or educational character. Some, like Eton College and Winchester College, are strictly colleges, as having been parts of ecclesiastical collegiate foundations ; others are Grammar Schools, such as the many schools which date backwards to the reigns of Edward the VIth and Elizabeth ; others were created or remodelled in the nineteenth century; for it is a striking fact that no great Public School came into being between the reigns of Queen Eliza- beth and Queen Victoria. Some of the Public Schools are wholly or mainly boarding schools; others are day schools. ‘ But, various as they are, they breathe a certain atmosphere, they exercise a specia! influence ; and it would seem that they make an irresistible appea’ to an ever widening circle of parents over all the British Empire. | The Public Schools have often been the objects of bitter attack. But it seemed to me, when I was a headmaster, that attacks, whether they were made upon the Public Schools generally or ;50n some particular school, did not perceptibly affect ta. sum} a boys whose names were entered for them. Since the outbreak of Great War in 1914 the pressure upon the Public Schools has beer heavier than it was before, partly perhaps because the wealth ol the nation has been more widely diffused, and partly too because th service which the Public Schools rendered to the nation in its agony was itself felt to be an imperishable monument of noble patriotism. Even when I was a headmaster the possible influx of boys from all parts of the world, and from the Eastern as well as from thd Western world, into the Public Schools had begun to create some anxiety. I remember that applications for the admission of boys to Harrow came to me from India, from Egypt, and from Siam, as well as from Africa and South America. A number of the leading Mohammedan princes in India made a proposal to support a board- ing house and erect a mosque in connection with it for their sons a Harrow. I once said laughingly to that great friend of Harrov cricket, the Earl of Bessborough, that I thought he would live t see Harrow represented in the cricket match at Lord’s against Eto by two coloured princes. It is probably the formation of characte in the Public Schools which has most deeply impressed observer: who cannot themselves look back upon the experience of Publi School life. A good many years ago, when I was travelling i | KING BORIS OF BULGARIA. 611 The conversations between the Balkan Prime Ministers at Geneva during the last Assembly have dispelled some of the clouds obscur- ing the political horizon of the Peninsula. The programme of King Boris and M. Liaptcheff is based on the wish to live‘on friendly terms with the neighbouring States, and the desire to he one of the factors of the Peace of Europe. King Boris. during the informal. motoring trips throughout Bulgaria which he so much,enjoys, is constantly impressing these ideas on the people. He often deserts the somewhat melancholy Palace at Sofia, for stays in his favourite summer residence at Kuxinograde on the Black Sea, or for long rambles in the mountains. A great lover of nature in her wildest moods, King Boris is never happier than at the wheel of his car, dashing about the country with the Princess Eudoxie and one or two friends. Held in great esteem by the Diplomatic Corps at Sofia, he has made a special friend of the present British Minister. ‘Bulgaria has to-day no more valuable asset than her King. | : Since the armistice, Governments have succeeded one another in Sofia, have made mistakes, been denounced by their successors and have incurred hostility ; but, as a British author wrote the other day, ““ no one has been able to accuse King Boris of a single false move in ‘his country.’’ This constitutes a splendid and unique record, which has earned for the young Bulgarian Sovereign the regard of Burape, is to be hoped that this appreciation will soon materialise into more Fs ‘ical support. King Boris is a firm believer in the League of ations and follows its work with constant interest. Since the day of his accession, but few rewards have fallen to the hivalrous knight who presides over the destinies of the brave ulgarian people, in a romantic land where the great Danube flows into the strange and wonderful Black Sea, where roses grow thickly in deep, mysterious valleys, where mountains combine the grace of cotch hills with the impressive grandeur of Kashmir. Sad and beautiful Balkan Peninsula, where primitive instincts breed strife and possessions excite envy and distrust. However, the most indomitable Balkan race is fortunate in having King Boris as leader. If fate is kind, the capable young Sovereign, whose predecessor and namesake pe nverted the Kingdom to Christianity in 865, may yet bring lasting happiness to his valiant nation through the forces of peace. Boris III of Bulgaria, is, at thirty-three and after only nine years f reign, already a great King. His greatness has been achieved, not oy dashing feats or dazzling exploits, but by his modesty, simplicity, nigh sense of duty and earnest devotion to the Bulgarian people. 4ndowed with these gifts, King Boris will always have the esteem nd sympathy of Britain, where, as Lord Oxford once said: “Monarchy is held and can only be held by the highest form of vublic service.’’ MADARA, Pie PUBLIC (SCHOOL SPIRIT: IN) PUBLIC “LIFE. 613 Japan, the Minister of Education kindly invited me to deliver a lecture before the University of Tokio upon the training of an English gentleman. When he spoke to me about the lecture, I told him that I thought the English Public Schools had been more successful in forming the character than in training the intellect of their pupils. A quiet smile played upon his face as he replied, “T think we can look after the intellect ; will you be so kind as to speak about the character ?”’ A boy’s entrance into his Public School is generally an epoch- making event in his life. He becomes for the first time, as it were, an enfranchised citizen of a society which far exceeds the scope and range of his own family. He is taken out of himself; he learns to think not of himself alone or of himself and those who are near to him alone, but of himself in relation to the general body of which he is a member; he learns even to forget himself in the interest of the whole body. ‘The lesson so learnt is often, if not always, productive of high character. For 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, consti#"*es-2eed- citizenship. ~=But a Public School has a past as well as a present. ‘To the boy who enters it, it appears as an institution of great historical dignity. He feels that he is the heir of lofty traditions. Dr. Arnold was wont to say at Rugby that such elevation of thought and life as would naturally be shown by the scions of ancient aristocratic families ought to be equally shown by the sons of famous Public Schools. 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 worshipped 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 honour, or by the tablets which commemorate their lives and their deaths in the Chapel. In a true sense they are to him not dead but still living. If I may quote some lines of the late Edward Bowen, the poet of Harrow School, in reference to a distinguished member of the School who had been killed on active service : He trod of old the hill we tread, He played the games we play; The part of him that is not dead Belongs to us to-day. So it becomes a boy’s silent passionate desire that he may prove him- self not unworthy of his school. That was the spirit of the young British officer who at the battle of Laing’s Nek rode to his death with the words Floreat Etona on his lips. A Public School boy, then, comes to appreciate the duty of 95-926 / ie 614 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. playing his part in the life of the School. He is willing to sacrifice himself for the public goods he cheerfully obeys the captain of his eleven, if he is told to take his place at the wicket when the light is bad just before stumps are drawn; it never occurs to him to resist or complain. Far better is it in his eyes that the School should win the match and that he himself should make a poor score, than that he should make runs at the cost of the School losing the match. Unconsciously, it may be irresistibly, the immemorial spirit created by so many generations of boys who have gone before stamps itself in indelible characters upon his mind and his soul. 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 with some offences and too severely with others; but, such as it is, it is the creation of the boys themselves for themselves, and it is silently but powerfully imposed upon every new boy. Perhaps the most conspicuous feature in this code of morals is a sense of honour. There are certain things which a boy, if he has once imbibed the Public School spirit, will not and cannot do; others may do them, and the supreme penalty of their doing them is,that they are wholly unconscious of having done them, or of having done wrong in doing them; but the true Public School boy instinctively shrinks from them. He will not break his word, he will not show the white feather, he will not take unfair advantage of other boys; in a word, he will always and everywhere ‘‘ play the game;’’ for it may well be that the spirit of honour is even more forcibly inculcated on the playing fields than in the class-rooms. A Public School boy learns that it is impossible to play any organised game, or to play it with any satisfaction, unless the players scrupulously observe not only the written laws but the unwritten conventions of the game. What- ever is mean then or tricky or underhand or disingenuous is re- pugnant to the true Public School boy. He is a sportsman; and sport, however gravely it may be debased by some of its votaries, when it becomes infected by the gambling spirit, is, or ought to be, a synonym of honourable conduct. Public Schools may be said to be in a large measure self-govern- ing republics. Their character is determined fully as much by the boys as by the masters. In fact, the rules which boys make for boys are generally stricter or more strictly enforced than the rules which masters make for boys. But boys in the Public Schools enjoy a great measure of liberty, and it is this liberty which fits them for the conduct of after life. They are not disciplined by the incessant vigilance of officials during many hdurs of every day ; they are left themselves in many ways to originate and administer the regular _ \ System of their own lives. It is possible that they are exposed in HE PUBLIC SCHOOL SPIRIT. IN PUBLIC LIFE. 615 heir school life to certain dangers which they would or might scape if they regularly played their games or spent their leisure hours under the eyes of their schoolmasters. But if the liberty of Public School entails a certain loss, yet it may be said that because of that liberty the great majority of boys leave their Public Schools with a self-restraint and a self-respect, with a power of initiative and with a capacity for co-operation in a degree which singularly qualifies them to fight the battle of life. Nowhere is a person so fully judged by his merits without reference to wealth or rank or social antecedents as a boy in a Public School. The liberty of Public Schools is qualified by leadership. Whether a system of monitorial or prefectorial authority exists in a school or not, cer- tain boys, in virtue of their age or character or intellectual or ath- letic distinction, become its natural leaders. ‘They set the tone of the place, they claim obedience, they excite imitation, they stand out as representatives of their Schools. It is under these influences and by these experiences that the character of a Public School is almost insensibly developed. The Public Schools then have established a tradition of their own. They may have insisted upon uniformity at the cost of doing injustice to those exceptional boys who, while they have won little honour in their school lives, as they did not shine upon the common- place lines of mental or physical prowess, yet in their after-lives have often become the most highly honoured members of their generation, if not of all generations, in the School. They may have issued therefrom in a certain stable mediocrity. But in spite of all - their faults and failings they have in a large measure created and disciplined the character of gentlemen. It has been sometimes critically observed that the Labour Party lacks what I have ven- tured to call the Public School spirit. When the first Government of the Labour Party was formed, with Mr. Ramsay Macdonald as rime Minister, two great Public Schools, and only two, Harrow and Winchester, were represented in his Cabinet. For the first time during many years of English history there was no Etonian in the Cabinet. It happened when I referred in a speech to this exclusion of Eton from the Cabinet that a strong Etonian, who was also, I think, a strong Conservative, wrote to me saying this was one of the highest honours which had ever been paid to Eton. I could not pretend to agree with him, if only because I cherished the hope that the Cabinet Ministers who had been educated at Harrow and Winchester might not unnaturally breathe something of the Public School spirit into the Labour Party. 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. In the history of the 616 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. coal mines, for example, who can doubt that the original respons: bility for the unhappy disputes, which have during the last three quarters of a century convulsed the mining industry, may b justly laid upon the shoulders not of the miners but of the mine owners? Had the employers, and especially the mine-owners, 1 the early Victorian era, when profits were pouring in, been wis enough to give the workers an equitable share of the money whic had in so large a degree been earned by the workers, instead o absorbing the profits or nearly all the profits themselves, it is pos sible, and indeed it is probable, that the long-standing acrimoniou feud between Capital and Labour would have been avoided. Th evidence published by the Royal Commission upon the Mines i: 1842, before the legislation which is and will ever be associated wit! the honoured name of the great Earl of Shaftesbury, can only excit a feeling of indignation at the cruel and callous spirit which coul suffer not the miners alone but their wives and their little childres to be treated as brute beasts. Mr. and Mrs. Hammond in th seventh chapter of their Life of Lord Shaftesbury have well sum marised the conclusions at which the Commissioners arrived. I will be enough to quote two or three passages of the Report. A Lancashire woman who worked in the mines gave the followings testimony : “I have a belt round my waist and a chain passing between m legs, and so I go on my hands and feet. The water comes up to m clog tops, and I have seen it over my thighs. I have drawn til I have the skin taken off me. The belt and chain are worse whe; we are in the family way.’ Speaking of children working in the mines and of their working at the age of six or even five years, Lord Shaftesbury, who was then Lord Ashley, said in the House of Commons about the York shire pits : “A child has a girdle round the waist to which is attached th: chain that passes under the legs and is attached to the cart. Hodgson, in whose parish no fewer than ninety-two lives had been lost by an explosion in a coal mine, issued a protest which led to the establishment of a Society for the Prevention of Accidents ; it was that society which invoked the help of Sir Humphry Davy, and his help took the form of the invention of the safety-lamp. Where was the Public School spirit in the minds and hearts of the men who could consent to accumulate wealth at such a price of suffering and misery? Where was the sense of human equality? Where was the generous view of society as a whole? “Where was the honourable temper which would refuse to sacrifice the weak and the poor for the benefit of the powerful and the wealthy? It can be no pleasure to dwell on so conspicuous a failure of public duty and common humanity. But in the attitude of the mine-owners to the miners during all the early part of the last century lies the explanation of the profound dislike and distrust which so many of the miners entertain to-day toward the mine-owners. ‘Therein lies too the explanation of the almost childlike confidence which they repose in Trade Unionism; for they know only too well that such improvements as have occurred in their social and industrial cir- cumstances have not generally been conceded by the mine-owners out of goodwill, but have been wrung from them by the force of that collective action which is popularly known as Trade Unionism. It is high time that the spirit of conciliation and co-operation should take the place of bitter antagonism in the relation of the employers to the employed all through the world of industry; and that where con- ciliation and co-operation fail, the principle of arbitration, which the mine-owners and the miners alike regard as applicable to inter- national affairs, should be at least equally applied to industrial affairs. But if there is some reason for the belief that in the long series of lock-outs and strikes, which have gone far towards ruining the world of industry in Great Britain, the fault lay at first mainly with the employers, but has in recent years lain in equal, and perhaps in greater, measure with the employed, yet it would not be difficult to indicate certain points in which the spirit of Public School life has singularly failed to assert itself among men who have enjoyed more than members of the Labour Party the opportunity of B 618 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. au acquiring and displaying it. A Public School, as has been said, is a 0 democracy. More than other societies it represents the democratic principle of equality. What would be said in the Public Schools / of any such transaction as the sale of honours? It has more than * once been my fortune as a headmaster to watch with admiring sym- | pathy the purely equitable spirit in which a captain of the eleven has bestowed the highly valued honours which he commands upon the basis of merit alone, at the cost of excluding from the eleven boys who on every ground, except that of proficiency in the game, might have held themselves, and might have been held by their schoolfellows, to be entitled in a singular degree to represent their school as members of the cricket eleven. From pecuniary corruption the Labour Party has been specially free. Perhaps it has not yet been so grievously tempted as other parties to make money by the traffic in honours. But there are lessons which the Labour Party still needs to learn, aS a 1 I ae if it is to realise the Public School spirit. It must needs think * | allegiance to the whole body of the State rather than to av one of © +) its parts. ‘he very name ‘‘ Labour Party, as a French critic has | suggested, is unfortunate, if only because it suggests that the — Labour Party is one which adopts and pursues such a policy as tends to the good, and indeed to the material good, of the Labour | Party alone. For if the Labour Party professes itself to be not a national but a sectional party, in other words, to serve not the State but Labour alone, it asserts a lower spirit of public service than other parties. The old political parties, whether Tories or. Whigs, Conservatives or Liberals, aimed or professed to aim at the | welfare of the whole community. ‘The Labour Party alone to-day, like the Irish Party in the last generation, seems at times to forget or ignore all interests except its own. But whatever party in the State or in the Church aspires to achieve only a sectional, and not a patriotic or a catholic, end is in greater or less degree opposed to the national welfare. It is here that the Labour Party, whether it be in power or out of power, may fail in statesmanship. If it is to administer the affairs of the nation with any success, it needs to expand its political and social theories at least so far as to realise that the State is not the Labour Party alone; nor can the State as a whole prosper, unless all parties are equally protected and supported by its governors. | There has often been in British political history a strange ten- \ dency of certain Englishmen to pursue an anti-British policy. They scarcely affect to be patriots; they call themselves cosmopolitans. - But cosmopolitanism is an honourable spirit, only if it is built upon patriotism, as is patriotism, only if it is built on the love of city or home. Apart from patriotism it is apt to be indistinguishable i Sr ne THE PuerpriGcpoCnUCL ) SPIRIT IN: ; PUBLIC, LIBEV G6 rom personal selfishness, as when a man seeks to escape the duty hich he owes to his country by pleading the duty which he owes or hinks he owes to humanity. The Conscientious Objectors to mili- ary service during the war of 1914-1919 would have acted with sounder logic as cosmopolitans, if it had not been their policy to njoy all the benefits which citizens derive from the ordered com- munity known as the State, and then to refuse the corresponding ervice which all citizens may render to the State by defending it gainst its enemies. It is not a little difficult at the present time to nderstand the attitude of the Labour Party or of some among the eaders of the Labour Party towards Russia and China. They do ot seem to be gravely moved by the fact that the Soviet Govern- ent has sunk in morality much below the level of the government of the Czar during the Crimean war, in so far as it has robbed English men and women of many millions of pounds which have een invested upon faith in the Government of Russia in Russian rewrites or that the Chinese have threatened and, but for the ear of international consequences, would probably have destroyed, the lives of many thousands of Europeans who are living in the seaports and in some cities of the interior of China. Strangest of all pethaps is the plea advanced for military and naval inaction in China, if indeed it is seriously advanced, by more members of the Labour Party, that the English men and women living in Shang- hai are not themselves members of the working-class. * meritorious service to keep body and soul together in old age. Vet not a word of pity is spoken by the strikers for their unhappy fellow-countrymen. I do not plead for the inheritors of vas wealth; yet the representatives of Labour might perhaps fee peneeosity enough to show some sympathy with the descendants o ancient families who cannot without a feeling of bitter pain leave’ and leave for ever, the homes which are consecrated to them by the traditional associations of many centuries. But at least thy small tradesman and the daily worker whose living is brought to D standstill, the poor who are left helpless and homeless in old age _ might appeal to the sympathy of the agitators who profess to speal \ for the railwaymen or the miners, and even of Mr. A. J. Cook. ‘. Democracy, it is sometimes said, is inimical to moral courage It invests the will of a majority with a sacrosanct force. Vox populs vox Dei. There is no temper perhaps more demoralising than that of subserviency to votes. He who sets great store by his moral a dependence may well be thankful if he does not need to seek or te gain anybody’s vote. It would be wrong, however, to lay undue blame upon politicians; for they are bound to understand that nothing but a majority of votes will enable them to carry out a certain policy, or to attain such a position as will afford them any promise or hope of carrying out such a policy. All honour indeed is owing to those statesmen who do not shrink, even in a Democracy, from telling the people when and where they believe the popular judgment to be wrong. Yet for the most part the secret of success in a democracy is popularity, and popularity is often won by the sacrifice of principle. ‘The lack of moral courage indeed is not peculiar to any political party or parties. The Public School spirit has tended to cultivate the-feexlty 3! leadership. It has created the initiative which has so often asserted itself in many parts of the civilised and uncivilised world. It has encouraged men, and even young men, to accept responsibilities which they might not unjustly have felt to be too burdensome for their immature age. It may well be wished that all persons who take part in public life should learn the lesson of ‘‘ playing the game,’’ It is a lesson which has been regularly taught upon the playing-fields of the Public Schools. It springs out of the tradi- tional British interest in athletic games. For sport is essentially a British institution. Many or most of the terms which describe the different aspects of sport in foreign languages are English in their origin. To say that an action is not sporting, or is not cricket, or that somebody does not play up, or does not play with a straight bat, or does not pull his weight, or that he hits below the belt, is an English method of indicating some defect of character. Perhaps one of the most difficult yet the most valuable habits which are He PUBERG: SGHOOL SPIRIT IN: PUBLIC’ LIFE? 62% rmed as outcomes of the sporting spirit is the habit of obedience the umpire; for it is a habit expressive of self-restraint, of re- ect for authority and of confidence in the honourable spirit of one hose decision, whether popular or unpopular, must be unhesitat- gly accepted. The true sportsman in a Public School or elsewhere will act with hivalrous honour. He will prefer honour to honours. He will sen- tively avoid the suspicion or appearance of unfair play; he will hlways be ready to give the side which is opposed to his own the nenefit of the doubt. It was so that, when an English batsman ie run out in one of the test matches last year by the accident of ollision with one of the fieldsmen, the captain of the Australian ‘leven courteously invited him to continue his innings. For the. 1atred of meanness, of self-seeking and of disingenuousness has stamped itself on the heart of the British people mainly, if not holly, owing to the temper of true sport. | But the generosity of sport is not always displayed in public life. t may be admitted that the employers have been too eager at times o avail themselves of such means as were legally open to them for aising their profits at the expense of their workmen. But they ave not, I think, committed actual breaches of good faith. They wii upon the whole sustained the inviolability of contracts. But lightning strike, as it is called, if it involves, as it does, the breach of plighted good faith, is a wholly immoral proceeding; it hannot be justified on the plea of necessity by men who resort to it. Yet lightning strikes have come to be far too common; they have ilmost been taken for granted as regular incidents in the industrial watfare, and the Labour Party has been apt to treat them as ex- sable, if not as actually commendable. ‘The general strike itself as scarcely less immoral than the German invasion of Belgium n 1914. It is difficult to express the sense of pain which must arise n all patriotic minds at any such action as tends to destroy or impair the sanctity which has hitherto been regarded by the nations of mankind as attaching to an Englishman’s word. There is some reason also to fear that in industrial as in political controversy truth is held less sacred than it ought to be. It would be easy to quote instances of statements which have been refuted as soon as they were made, but have not been retracted. Yet to make a false statement and to leave it without apology, in the hope that it may blacken some one’s character, is an anti-social offence. A recent trial in the Courts of Law has shown how unscrupulous may be the statements made by a man of good education not only against the living, but against the dead. It may well be hoped that a wider experience of public life will produce in all classes a more Ras reverence for the truth. It is impossible to overrate the " v 622 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. value of the implicit faith which has been everywhere reposed the word of an Englishman. Scarcely less valuable has been th confidence so universally felt that it was possible to rely upon th honesty of Englishmen in the domain of commerce. British goog was possible to depend upon their quality. If then good faith i is onf of the lessons inculcated by Public School life, it has been an ass of the Empire all the world over. Nothing is more remarkable i in}, for constitutional government, and still more for constitutional), monarchy. Bolshevism is as strongly opposed as is Militarism tof constitutional action. “The late Czar of Russia might have saved his throne if he could have reigned as a constitutional sovereign.}. But the. choice seems often to lie between Absolutism and- Com- moderate equitable temper which has facilitated the transferencé‘ of power from the few to the many without revolution and which, / if it remains the attribute of all classes in the nation and the Em} pire, will ensure stability as well as liberty in the progress of the British people through the coming days. J. E. C. WELLDON. M4 3 0112 062263162 MN. 