come to the conclusion that this is not an exceptional case at all, but
a fair sample of what our upper-class education does for the imagination
of those who must presently take the lead among us. He declares plainly
that we are raising a generation of rulers and of those with whom the
duty of initiative should chiefly reside, who have minds atrophied by
dull studies and deadening suggestions, and he thinks that this is a
matter of the gravest concern for the future of this land and Empire. It
is difficult to avoid agreeing with him either in his observation or in
his conclusion. Anyone who has seen much of undergraduates, or medical
students, or Army candidates, and also of their social subordinates,
must be disposed to agree that the difference between the two classes is
mainly in unimportant things--in polish, in manner, in superficialities
of accent and vocabulary and social habit--and that their minds, in
range and power, are very much on a level. With an invincibly
aristocratic tradition we are failing altogether to produce a leader
class adequate to modern needs. The State is light-headed.

But while one agrees with "Kappa" and shares his alarm, one must confess
the remedies he considers indicated do not seem quite so satisfactory as
his diagnosis of the disease. He attacks the curriculum and tells us we
must reduce or revolutionise instruction and exercise in the dead
languages, introduce a broader handling of history, a more inspiring
arrangement of scientific courses, and so forth. I wish, indeed, it were
possible to believe that substituting biology for Greek prose
composition or history with models and photographs and diagrams for
Latin versification, would make any considerable difference in this
matter. For so one might discuss this question and still give no offence
to a most amiable and influential class of men. But the roots of the
evil, the ultimate cause of that typical young man's deadness, lie not
at all in that direction. To indicate the direction in which it does lie
is quite unavoidably to give offence to an indiscriminatingly sensitive
class. Yet there is need to speak plainly. This deadening of soul comes
not from the omission or inclusion of this specific subject or that; it
is the effect of the general scholastic atmosphere. It is an atmosphere
that admits of no inspiration at all. It is an atmosphere from which
living stimulating influences have been excluded from which stimulating
and vigo