than
those produced by a system which divides boys into
despots and slaves.

"Ever yours, very truly,
F.D."

The question of how to adapt English public school education to nervous
and sensitive boys (often the highest and noblest subjects which that
education has to deal with) ought to be looked at from every point of
view.[A] I therefore add a few extracts from the letter of an old friend
and school-fellow, than whom no man in England is better able to speak
on the subject:--

"What's the use of sorting the boys by ages,
unless you do so by strength: and who are often
the real bullies? The strong young dog of
fourteen, while the victim may be one year or two
years older.... I deny the fact about the
bedrooms: there is trouble at times, and always
will be; but so there is in nurseries;--my little
girl, who looks like an angel, was bullying the
smallest twice to-day.

"Bullying must be fought with in other ways,--by
getting not only the Sixth to put it down, but the
lower fellows to scorn it, and by eradicating
mercilessly the incorrigible; and a master who
really cares for his fellows is pretty sure to
know instinctively who in his house are likely to
be bullied, and, knowing a fellow to be really
victimised and harassed, I am sure that he can
stop it if he is resolved. There are many kinds of
annoyance--sometimes of real cutting persecution
for righteousness' sake--that he can't stop; no
more could all the ushers in the world; but he can
do very much in many ways to make the shafts of
the wicked pointless.

"But though, for quite other reasons, I don't like
to see very young boys launched at a public
school, and though I don't deny (I wish I could)
the existence from time to time of bullying, I
deny its being a constant condition of school
life, and still more, the possibility of meeting
it by the means proposed...."

"I don't wish to understate the amount of bullying
that goes on, but my conviction is that it must be
fought, like all school evils, but it more than
any