pportunities such as would disappear in a society
based on equality, the finest ideas of which the race is capable.
Individual and national power, privilege, commercialism--it is on these
things that it has set its eyes in its leadership of the nation. And
so our fellow-radicals have more than once said to us, "If you are
really keen on education, why don't you start a school of your own?"

Now it is, no doubt, difficult for any one who has fallen under the
sway of a public school, and who has been so caught up by its
fascination as to feel for it a love more compelling than anything in
his life, to be certain that personal predilections do not dictate a
reply unjustified by intellectual considerations. Yet for all that we
give our answer without hesitation. For the multiplication of what may
be conveniently, if somewhat unkindly, classed together as "freak"
schools, breaks no fresh ground at all. Boys who have been brought up
in an "intellectualist" atmosphere, and those alone, are sent there;
and even if there were no schools to which they could be sent, home
influence would turn them out intellectualists still. The ranks of the
intellectualists, in fact, are recruited from three main sources.
First, there are the sons of intellectualists, sent either to a freak
school or to no school at all; secondly, sons of intellectualists of a
slightly different type, sent to a public school yet nevertheless
retaining in the new environment their own peculiar stamp; and,
thirdly, the clever sons of "ordinary" parents, sent to a public school
and becoming intellectualists by revolt against the philistinism of it
and of their homes. The community thus composed leads a life as
distinct and separate from that of the rest of the nation as was ever
lived by the "Intelligentzia" in Russia's darkest hour. It has hardly
a point of contact with the average Englishman; it does not understand
his revues and musical comedies, his novels and cinemas, his hunting
and race meetings; it speaks a different language, thinks altogether
different thoughts. And being itself not in the least understood, it
has acquired a certain hardness of mind, a certain contempt for
ordinary people and ordinary things, which has widened the gulf, and
led to mutual suspicion and sometimes even hatred. Inevitably its
mental health has been affected by such a situation. Feeling itself
different, it has consciously made itself as different as possible;
intelle