Outlines of World History, and for General Principles of Science, and (with some regrettable abstentions) for Political Science and Economics. Some day it will appear ridiculous that these last subjects should not have been deemed a necessity for all the "specialists" alike.

The real test of an educational system is not what the masters do for the boys, but what the boys do for themselves, and in this matter only one large undertaking fell within the scope of our previous book, namely the paper, The School Observer, therein described and largely quoted. The idea of this paper, a political journal on the lines of a high-class weekly, published twice a term, with "Notes on Current Events," political "leaders," literary and philosophic "middles," a poem or so, and correspondence all complete—this laughably magnificant idea came entirely from a little group of boys, and one at any rate of the present writers was at first frankly sceptical. Well,—enthusiasm has a way of beating scepticism, at any rate when youth is thrown into the scale. We were quickly harnessed to our task as members of the editorial committee. Our literary contributions were confined to a part of the "Notes on Current Events," the portion of the paper that naturally attracted least outside notice, and was rarely singled out for praise. It is true that a discerning schoolmaster from another school remarked that these notes displayed "restrained strength even more remarkable in boys than the qualities of the other parts of the paper." I am ashamed to say we smiled and held our peace.

Five of the six issues of the paper appeared, and we had already contracted with our advertisers for a second volume when the crash came. In general, of course, the paper was much less important than the Politics Class. The class was a necessity to political education; the paper was a luxury. But it is a man's luxuries that give the clue to his character, and it was the very fact that the paper was always of the nature of a jeu d'esprit, a glorious game, a kind of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure to the pursuit of politics. When the paper had been suppressed, a boy who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he added very pensively, "It was all so extraordinarily romantic!"

But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course of their professional duties. That was plainly not enough. If boys are learning from their masters something that they really value, their natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be eager to pass it on to their friends. This may seem a paradox, but it is true enough. If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence. Either he does not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care about algebra. A simple experiment will verify our conclusion. Drop an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C, D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about it before sunset. A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions of each other.

Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if they do not.[2] That would be grotesque. But it seems to us that the central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought to make some such appeal to enthusiasm. Unless education produces enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm is generated, if it is generated at all. (For most, one may remark in passing, it is not generated even there. The notion that the average boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the Church of England.)

Judged by this test of infectious enthusiasm, political education was to produce in the early months of 1918, evidence of its educational worth such as we never dreamt of, and here again the pioneer was not ourselves but a boy, and that boy not one of the group that had started the paper. This boy, who had recently become head of his House, conceived the idea that politics could become the medium of the same spirit of joyous and unforced co-operation as is traditionally (and sometimes actually) associated with athletics. His idea of a school house was of a vigorous and jolly community, living together on terms of friendly equality such as reduced fagging and the oligarchial "prefect system" to a minimum, and uniting in a real effort to keep abreast with the great world outside by means of a co-operative study of politics and the Press. The idea will seem mere foolishness and an impossibility to many of those who did not see it actually at work. At the best it will seem the kind of thing we may have read of in books about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set against whatever is gained. In this case, not only the idea, but all the practical details came from the boy himself and the little band of enthusiasts that gathered round him. Indeed, one feels a sense of impropriety in describing what was essentially not our work, but his. However, it was the fine flower of political education, and as such may fitly close this chapter. "Houses," after all, and not "forms," are the natural social units that compose a public school, and a scheme of education that becomes in the best sense popular may, indeed must, take its rise in the classroom, but will find its freest development in the life of house reading-room and house study.

The chief among many "stunts," as they were called, was a political society. The twenty-five members of this society, rather over half the house, undertook to read between them nearly all the more important newspapers, including one or two French papers. On Sunday the society sat in conclave, the three or four leading events of the week were taken each in turn, and the individual or group responsible for each newspaper put forward the view of the event in question taken by his own particular organ. These views were compared and debated, and ultimately a brief synopsis was drawn up, consisting of the event itself, with the chief typical utterances of the press on the subject set out underneath, for purposes of comparison and contrast. These were typed and posted on a board as "news of the week." Neither of us ever attended a meeting of this society, and it is obvious, from the fact that more than half the house joined in, that we are not concerned here with the activities of a little set of intellectualists. In the fullest sense in which the word is applicable in a public school, these political activities were "democratic," and the effect on the "English" work of some of the boys in middle forms was most remarkable. The present writer recalls, for instance, a Middle Fifth essay of some three thousand words on the complex, and in some ways repellent, subject of "National Guilds." On how many successive nights the rule against "sitting up" was broken over the composition of this work the recipient of the essay forebore to inquire.

From this beginning other developments rapidly opened. A modest but useful idea was a question paper, on which any one who liked could set down questions that occurred to him in the course of his reading. The House Library naturally felt the impact of the movement, and a political section was started in which books about the Greeks and Mill's "Liberty" stood