not yet seriously faced the fact that a liberal education for the average
boy is an unsolved problem, for the solution of which they need all the
help they can possibly get. Of course this taking of the parent into
partnership would be no easy matter. Readers of that wise and humorous
tale, "The Lanchester Tradition," will remember the comical failure of
the head master's attempt at a "Parents' Committee." Still, all this
being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of
the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the
false image of the traditional parent has been created in the
schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is
always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not
necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto
on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the
unmusical generally dislike a _new_ tune.

The opposition to political education developed along two lines. One of
them makes this story a microcosm of the world history of the years
1917-1918. The other is something peculiar to the English public
schools, and might have befallen at any period since Dr. Arnold
inaugurated their modern history.

When we began our experiments the "party truce," in the moral as distinct
from the formal sense, still held good. Outside the circles of strict
pacifism--and with pacifism in any but a merely abusive sense we never
had any concern--English people were agreed upon the great questions of
the war. Such differences of opinion as there were concerned only
questions of method and expediency, not questions of principle. The
"gospel" of August, 1914, had not yet become a battle-ground disputed by
fiercely earnest rival sects. We were Liberals in a general sense, but
we differed on a great many topics, and we were genuinely anxious, in the
words of one of our pupils in the school magazine, "not so much to
advocate any one particular remedy of any given problem as to lay before
the class the problems themselves and the principal reforms which have
been or are being suggested, so that thought and criticism may have full
scope for exercise." It would be unfair to ourselves to admit that we
abandoned that ideal, but the events of 1917 brought a new spirit into
the world. On the one hand, the early days of the Russian Revolution and
the demand for a peace "without annexations or indemnities,"