ringes of the playing-fields and round about
the boarding-houses are magnificent trees--chiefly elm, beech, birch
and chestnut, more rarely oak. In short, the surroundings of the
college have a thoroughly rural aspect. It is an ideal environment for
the training of boys. There is nothing in this sylvan and pastoral
beauty to suggest that we are in a great city.

Dulwich College is both a boarding school and a day school, the
boarders numbering about 120 and the day-boys about 550. When Paul
Jones entered the college as a day-boy in 1908 the Headmaster was Mr.
A. H. Gilkes, who retired after the summer term of 1914. Our son,
therefore, had the good fortune to come under the influence for six
years of one of the greatest public-school masters of our generation.
A former colleague of mine, Mr. Henry W. Nevinson, used to speak to me
in glowing terms of Mr. Gilkes, who was a master at Shrewsbury School
when he was a boy there, and I note that the Rev. Dr. Horton in his
"Autobiography" alludes to him as "the master at Shrewsbury to whom I
owed most." Undoubtedly Mr. Gilkes's best work was done as Headmaster
of Dulwich. The College has never known a greater head. Under him the
whole place was revivified. During his reign not only did a fine moral
tone characterise the school, but there was equal enthusiasm for work
and games. Thanks to a commanding personality, in which strength,
dignity and graciousness were subtly mingled, the influence of Mr.
Gilkes pervaded the whole school from the highest to the lowest forms.
Paul quickly recognised the nobility of the "Old Man," as he was
universally known to the boys. His affection for him amounted to
veneration, and however brief the leave he had from the Army he always
found time to pay his old headmaster a visit. On his part Mr. Gilkes
had a great regard for our son, whom with sure perception he described
as "fearless, strong and capable, with a heart as soft and kind as a
heart can be."

A new boy's early days in a public school are often trying. He is in a
strange world with its own laws and customs; and at the outset he has
to endure the scrutiny of curious and often hostile eyes. Our son's
marked idiosyncrasies, sturdy independence, fastidious refinement and
passion for work, singled him out from his fellows as an original. As
boys resent any deviation from the normal, he had a rough time until
he found his feet, and the experience was repeated as he moved up to
new forms. Not