n political opinion, but because, differing from us in
political opinion, they also differed from us in educational theory. Had
the experiment collapsed simply because they differed from us in
political opinion, it would be no use pursuing the subject of political
education further; for a staff in which all the masters held the same
political views would be unlikely to exist, and in any case altogether
undesirable. We may take it for granted that the staff will consist of
men of diverse political opinions. Indeed we may go further and take it
for granted that in a school in which political education flourishes,
those diversities, though certainly less bitter, will be more clearly
marked than at present. In such a school the masters, for the most part,
will be keenly interested in politics, for the school must be a single
society of men and boys in real intellectual co-operation. What is good
for the boys will be good for the masters. Perverse metaphors comparing
masters and boys to hounds and hares will be seen as the symptom of a
radically false educational philosophy.

If political education becomes not merely an experiment but an integral
part of the timetable, the staff as a whole, not necessarily all the
masters, but all those concerned with what are at present ironically
called "the humanities," will be taking a part in it. But how can this
be worked? We are here faced with a problem such as none of the ordinary
school subjects has ever raised, at any rate in this acute form.
Everything depends upon the educational philosophy of the staff.
Everything depends upon the extent of their belief in freedom of opinion.

The case for freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has
suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted
that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it.
Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality. "Britons never
shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter. Very
likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed
by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was
glorifying were mostly victims of the press-gang. It is but a step from
a press-gang to a Press Bureau. Most Englishmen are not very anxious to
tolerate any opinions but their own, if the subject be one that they deem
of vital importance. Very few have the faith of the great apostles of
freedom, the convic