ider tastes, are deterred from
talking about them by the ever present fear of "side." They will talk
freely to a master of architecture or music or Japanese prints, but
they are chary of betraying these enthusiasms to their fellows. And
masters are not free from blame: I suppose we all of us sometimes bow
down in the house of Rimmon, and when the conversation languishes at
the tea-table, fall back on a discussion of the last house match. It
is the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous day's work it
is not easy to maintain a monologue about Home Rule. Not the least of
the boons of the war is that it has ousted games from the foremost
place as a topic of conversation. I have not noticed that they are
less keenly played, although the increase of military work has
diminished the time given to them; but they have ceased to monopolise
the thoughts of boys. The problem then of reducing the absorption in
games is the problem of finding and providing other absorbing
interests. We cannot, fortunately, always have the counter-irritant
of war. Where we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a boy
does not interest him enough in most cases to give him subjects of
conversation out of school. We give some few new interests by means of
societies, literary, antiquarian or scientific. But the main problem
is to make every boy see that the work he does in school is connected
with his life, that it is meant to open to him the shut doors around
him through which he may go out into all the highways and byways of
the world.

Do school games produce the man who regards games as the main business
of life? We must emphasise "main." It is certain that they do
encourage Englishmen to devote some part of their working life to
healthy exercise--and few, I suppose, would wish them to do otherwise.
The Indian civilian does not make a worse judge for playing polo, nor
is Benin worse administered since golf-links were laid out there. But
there are men who never outgrow the boyish narrowness of view that
games are the things that matter most. These remain the ruling
passion, because no stronger passion comes to drive it out. For this
the schools must bear part of the blame, for they have not taught
clearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end. Not all the
blame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates the
idler, and has no reproach for the man who says "I live only for
hunting and golf." And here as elsewhere