r
was always of the nature of a _jeu d'esprit_, a glorious game, a kind
of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure
to the pursuit of politics. When the paper had been suppressed, a boy
who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he
added very pensively, "It was all so extraordinarily romantic!"

But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor
degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course
of their professional duties. That was plainly not enough. If boys
are learning from their masters something that they really value, their
natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be
eager to pass it on to their friends. This may seem a paradox, but it
is true enough. If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning
algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one
of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence. Either he does
not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by
hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care
about algebra. A simple experiment will verify our conclusion. Drop
an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C,
D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about
it before sunset. A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions
of each other.

Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects
should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if
they do not.[2] That would be grotesque. But it seems to us that the
central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all
others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought
to make some such appeal to enthusiasm. Unless education produces
enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has
so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is
in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm
is generated, if it is generated at all. (For most, one may remark in
passing, it is not generated even there. The notion that the average
boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the
idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the
Church of England.)

Judged by this test of infectious enthusiasm, political education was
to produce in the early months of 1918, evidence