nventional, or else
are very secret indeed. Now there is cruelty in public schools, just as
there is kleptomania and secret drinking and vices without a name.
But these things do not flourish in the full daylight and common
consciousness of the school, and no more does cruelty. A tiny trio
of sullen-looking boys gather in corners and seem to have some ugly
business always; it may be indecent literature, it may be the beginning
of drink, it may occasionally be cruelty to little boys. But on this
stage the bully is not a braggart. The proverb says that bullies are
always cowardly, but these bullies are more than cowardly; they are shy.

As a third instance of the wrong form of revolt against the public
schools, I may mention the habit of using the word aristocracy with a
double implication. To put the plain truth as briefly as possible, if
aristocracy means rule by a rich ring, England has aristocracy and the
English public schools support it. If it means rule by ancient families
or flawless blood, England has not got aristocracy, and the public
schools systematically destroy it. In these circles real aristocracy,
like real democracy, has become bad form. A modern fashionable host
dare not praise his ancestry; it would so often be an insult to half the
other oligarchs at table, who have no ancestry. We have said he has
not the moral courage to wear his uniform; still less has he the moral
courage to wear his coat-of-arms. The whole thing now is only a vague
hotch-potch of nice and nasty gentlemen. The nice gentleman never refers
to anyone else's father, the nasty gentleman never refers to his own.
That is the only difference, the rest is the public-school manner. But
Eton and Harrow have to be aristocratic because they consist so largely
of parvenues. The public school is not a sort of refuge for aristocrats,
like an asylum, a place where they go in and never come out. It is a
factory for aristocrats; they come out without ever having perceptibly
gone in. The poor little private schools, in their old-world,
sentimental, feudal style, used to stick up a notice, "For the Sons of
Gentlemen only." If the public schools stuck up a notice it ought to be
inscribed, "For the Fathers of Gentlemen only." In two generations they
can do the trick.

*****

XI. THE SCHOOL FOR HYPOCRITES

These are the false accusations; the accusation of classicism, the
accusation of cruelty, and the accusation of an exclusiveness based on
p