r
music his knowledge was microscopic. Moreover, he regarded with
suspicion anyone who talked intelligently on such subjects. On the
other hand, he had been in the eleven at Eton, and was a scratch
golfer. He had a fine seat on a horse and rode straight; he could play
a passable game of polo, and was a good shot. Possessing as he did
sufficient money to prevent the necessity of working, he had not taken
the something he was supposed to be doing in the City very seriously.
He had put in a periodical appearance at a desk and drawn pictures on
the blotting paper; for the remainder of the time he had amused
himself. He belonged, in fact, to the Breed; the Breed that has always
existed in England, and will always exist till the world's end. You
may meet its members in London and in Fiji; in the lands that lie
beyond the mountains and at Henley; in the swamps where the stagnant
vegetation rots and stinks; in the great deserts where the night air
strikes cold. They are always the same, and they are branded with the
stamp of the breed. They shake your hand as a man shakes it; they meet
your eye as a man meets it. Just now a generation of them lie around
Ypres and La Bassee; Neuve Chapelle and Bapaume. The graves are
overgrown and the crosses are marked with indelible pencil. Dead--yes;
but not the Breed. The Breed never dies. . . .

We have it on reliable evidence that the breed has its faults; its
education is rotten. Men of great learning and understanding have
fulminated on the subject; women with their vast experience have looked
upon the Breed with great clarity of vision and have written as their
eyes have seen; even boys themselves who doubtless must be right, as
the question concerns them most, have contributed to current literature
one or two damning indictments.

It may well be that hunting butterflies or dissecting rats are more
suitable pursuits for young Percival Johnson than doing scram practice
up against the playground wall. It may well be that it would be a far,
far better thing for mob adoration to be laid at the feet of the
composer of the winning Greek Iambic rather than at the cricketing
boots of the Captain of the Eleven. It may be so, but, then, most
assuredly it may not. . . .

The system which has turned out hundreds of the Breed, and whose object
is to mould all who pass through it on the model of the Breed, is not
one to be dismissed lightly. Doubtless it has its faults; a little
m