e Natural Science Tripos, "what
is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?"

But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world.

"What is the adult form of any of us?" asked Benton, voicing the thought
that had arrested our flow.

3

I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to the dons and the
organisation of the University. I think we took them for granted. When I
look back at my youth I am always astonished by the multitude of things
that we took for granted. It seemed to us that Cambridge was in the
order of things, for all the world like having eyebrows or a vermiform
appendix. Now with the larger scepticism of middle age I can entertain
very fundamental doubts about these old universities. Indeed I had a
scheme--

I do not see what harm I can do now by laying bare the purpose of the
political combinations I was trying to effect.

My educational scheme was indeed the starting-point of all the big
project of conscious public reconstruction at which I aimed. I wanted
to build up a new educational machine altogether for the governing class
out of a consolidated system of special public service schools. I
meant to get to work upon this whatever office I was given in the new
government. I could have begun my plan from the Admiralty or the
War Office quite as easily as from the Education Office. I am firmly
convinced it is hopeless to think of reforming the old public schools
and universities to meet the needs of a modern state, they send their
roots too deep and far, the cost would exceed any good that could
possibly be effected, and so I have sought a way round this invincible
obstacle. I do think it would be quite practicable to side-track, as the
Americans say, the whole system by creating hardworking, hard-living,
modern and scientific boys' schools, first for the Royal Navy and then
for the public service generally, and as they grew, opening them to
the public without any absolute obligation to subsequent service.
Simultaneously with this it would not be impossible to develop a new
college system with strong faculties in modern philosophy, modern
history, European literature and criticism, physical and biological
science, education and sociology.

We could in fact create a new liberal education in this way, and cut the
umbilicus of the classical languages for good and all. I should have set
this going, and trusted it to correct or kill the old public schools and
the Oxford and Cambridge tr