an enthusiasm
bred of the fact that they rightly felt themselves to be pioneers.
They felt themselves to be making history, certainly for the first,
possibly for the last, time in their lives, and whether you admire them
or whether you laugh at them, making history they were, so far as their
own world was concerned. It seems doubtful whether the spiritual force
engendered would have lasted at full strength when the thing had become
normal, and it was no longer possible to start the hare of some new
"stunt" (as they called it, I am sorry to say) once every two or three
weeks. The experiment was cut short in its prime, and how it would
have developed when the first generation of enthusiasts had passed
away, one cannot say.

As for the other houses, something had been begun in two or three, but
nothing of much value had been achieved. The minorities hesitated
between a desire to imitate and a desire to be quite original, and the
majorities looked a trifle askance upon the whole affair. And the
masters came in here and put every sort of difficulty in the way, for
by this time the collapse was visibly approaching.

None the less, the lines on which this strange and temporary
achievement was based are the only lines along which the moral problem
can be grappled with. A perfectly "pure" public school is as
impossible as a perfectly satisfactory Marriage Law. A few
incorrigibly bad boys there will always be--incorrigible, that is, when
they have reached public school age. Hopelessly inanimate and feeble
boys there will be also, doomed to become the victims of the bad. But
the present moral average might be immensely raised, and the plain way
to raise it is to provide other adventures for the soul. A boy once
said to me, speaking of the matter in hand, "You see, it's the only
thing I've ever found to do here really 'on my own.'" It was, in fact,
his one adventure. No amount of class-room tasks, however well
devised, no amount of organised games, however healthy, no amount of
school religion, however sincere, could fill that gap. We must put the
boys on the lines to organise their own adventures, and the only
adventures that can compete with this absorbing adventure of misapplied
sexuality, must be adventures that really lead up to the highest and
best things of life. It was only when he found an empire to save that
Clive ceased to be a young ruffian. Nothing lower than "politics" will
suffice.

[1] Not tha