obscurantism? Only because there is a danger of our whole society
becoming rotten to the core; only because there is a danger of the
present cleavage between the two English nations becoming wider and
wider, until we have, on the one hand, a class ruling in the interests
of money and privilege, and, on the other, a slaving and possibly
pampered proletariate. And unless a start is made here and now with
the political education of Europe--unless boys and girls are made to
think politically while their generosity and idealism is still
untainted by motives of personal profit, and their powers of vital
thought not yet decayed by disuse--these and worse things will happen;
love, tolerance, and the independence which is the birthright of men,
will all be engulfed in a mad welter of personal, class, and national
selfishness. In such a society it really would not matter very much if
political education were captured by the State; and the only way, as it
seems to us, of preventing its advent is by getting up a system of
political education. For by political education we are creating the
only possible safeguard against a misuse of it--we are creating a
society which will not _desire_ to misuse it.

And so we would make, if we may, an appeal to all who are considering
what their future work shall be, and to those also who may be finding
their present work unprofitable--we would urge them to become
schoolmasters. We like sometimes to think of a little Greek army of
devoted warriors--a band of five hundred young men, who will go into
the public schools and there gradually help to set up a system of
political education. The word "Greek" is not out of place. For there
is something about the sunlit freshness of a cricket field--something
too, about the boys, belonging for the most part to a class which, with
all its faults, has a great tradition of public service behind it--that
brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling
peace of a Greek country place. It is idle to pretend that a man of
ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to
make many sacrifices. His salary is usually miserable; his chances of
a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour
with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts
are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters'
Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very wisely
dec