ous stuff". Next week Grant Richards
quoted him. Mr Dames Longworth called the book "pernicious stuff", but
Clement Shorter prophesied in _The Sphere_ that it would prove "the
Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Public School system". By Christmas the book
was a best seller.

A modern reader will wonder what all this fuss and indignation was
about. Two points are to be remembered. First that before World War I
Britain's imperial destiny was never questioned, and the Public School
system as a bulwark of Empire was held sacrosanct. Second that no book
before _The Loom of Youth_ had accepted as part of the fabric of School
life the inevitable emotional consequences of a monastic herding
together for eight months of the year of thirteen year old children and
eighteen year old adolescents. On that issue such a complete conspiracy
of silence had been maintained that when fathers were asked by their
wives, and schoolmasters by parents who had not themselves been at
public schools whether "such things really could take place", the only
defence was a grudging admission, "Perhaps in a bad house, in a bad
school, in a bad time."

I followed the controversy with mixed feelings. I was delighted of
course at the book's success. At the same time I was distressed at being
accused of having libelled the school where I had been so happy, to
which I was so devoted, and to so many of whose masters--in particular
its headmaster--I owed so much.

Well, that is all a long long time ago, and usually nothing is more dead
and dated than the book which once caused controversy. Yet _The Loom of
Youth_ has continued to sell steadily from one year to the next; in 1928
it was included in Cassell's Pocket Library; in 1942 it was issued as a
Penguin and now that the original plates are wearing out, Mr Martin
Secker and the directors of The Richards Press feel that it is worth
their while to reset the type and give the book another lease of life. I
hope that their confidence will be justified. If it is, it will be for
reasons very different from those which made _The Loom of Youth_ a best
seller in 1917. The modern reader will find nothing here to shock or
startle him. Several years ago a friend was reading the book in my
company. "When do I reach _the_ scene?" he asked. I looked over his
shoulder. "You've passed it, ten pages back," I told him. At the same
time the book is not presented as a "period piece". Though England
to-day is a different country, sociall