not only did a fine moral tone characterise the school, but there was equal enthusiasm for work and games. Thanks to a commanding personality, in which strength, dignity and graciousness were subtly mingled, the influence of Mr. Gilkes pervaded the whole school from the highest to the lowest forms. Paul quickly recognised the nobility of the "Old Man," as he was universally known to the boys. His affection for him amounted to veneration, and however brief the leave he had from the Army he always found time to pay his old headmaster a visit. On his part Mr. Gilkes had a great regard for our son, whom with sure perception he described as "fearless, strong and capable, with a heart as soft and kind as a heart can be."

A new boy's early days in a public school are often trying. He is in a strange world with its own laws and customs; and at the outset he has to endure the scrutiny of curious and often hostile eyes. Our son's marked idiosyncrasies, sturdy independence, fastidious refinement and passion for work, singled him out from his fellows as an original. As boys resent any deviation from the normal, he had a rough time until he found his feet, and the experience was repeated as he moved up to new forms. Not a word about all this escaped his lips at home; I have ascertained it from others. Stories reached me of personal combats from which he usually emerged the victor, and of one prolonged fight with an older boy that had at last to be drawn. In the end Paul won through; his pluck and strength compelled a respect that would have been refused to his intellectual gifts. His tormentors realised that he was not a mere "swot," that he had fists and knew how to use them. Animosity was also disarmed by his chivalric spirit. He began his career at Dulwich in the Classical Lower IV. In June, 1909, he won a Junior Scholarship, which freed him from school fees for three years, and in 1912 a Senior Scholarship of the same nature. When he was in the Classical Lower Fifth (1909), his form master, Mr. H. V. Doulton reported:

"He is a boy of great promise and will make an excellent scholar. He has marked aptitude for classical work, and success in the great public examinations may be predicted for him with absolute confidence." "Painstaking and anxious to do well, but rather slow," was the verdict of his mathematical teacher.

In the summer term, 1910, Paul changed over from the Classical to the Modern side of the school. I was averse to the change, and his Classical form-master dissuaded him against it. But once Paul's mind was made up nothing would break his resolution: he had a strong and tenacious will. His main desire in transferring to the Modern side was to study English literature and modern languages thoroughly. He never regretted the change. As he grew older the firmer became his conviction that Classics were overdone in the public schools. Even in a school responsive to the spirit of the age like Dulwich, which has Modern, Science, and Engineering sides, the primacy still belongs to Classics, and the captaincy of the school is rigidly confined to boys on the Classical side. My son believed that this bias for Classics was bad educationally. He thought the prestige given to Greek and Latin as compared with English Literature, Science, Modern Languages and History was simply the outcome of a pedantic scholastic tradition, which made for narrowness not for broad culture. With him it was not a case of making a virtue of necessity, as he had real aptitude for Greek and Latin. But he wanted the windows of our public schools to be cleared of mediæval cobwebs and flung wide open to the fresh breezes of the modern world.

In the report for the last term of 1910, when he was in the Modern Upper V, he was described as "a very capable boy with great abilities." The next report, when he was in the Remove, complained of his "frivolous attitude" in the Physics classes, but "otherwise he has worked well and made good progress." In June, 1911, he passed the Senior School Examination with honours, winning distinction in English, French and Latin—a remarkable achievement for a boy who had only just turned fifteen. Owing to his being under age, the London Matriculation certificate in respect of this examination was not forwarded until he had reached sixteen. "Considering that he is only fifteen," wrote Mr. J. A. Joerg, his form-master, "it should be deemed a great honour for him to have passed in the First Division; it does him much credit." Mr. Boon, who prepared him in mathematics, testified that Paul had "worked with interest and energy" at what was for him an uncongenial subject. He entered the Sixth Form in September, 1911, being then fifteen and a half years old; the form average was seventeen years. In 1912 his reports showed that he was making all-round progress, and was applying himself with zest to a new subject, Logic. In the summer term, 1913, he was first in form order—1st in English, 2nd in Latin, 3rd in French, 4th in German. Though specialising in History, he retained his position as head of the Modern side until he left school, with one interval in the summer term of 1914, when he had to take second place, recovering the headship next term. In order to have a clear road to Oxford University, he qualified in Greek at the London Matriculation Examination, January, 1914. During his Dulwich career he won many prizes, most of which took the form of historical works. As will appear later, he played as whole-heartedly in games as he worked at his books.

History was a subject to which he was instinctively drawn, and in 1913 he began preparing definitely for an Oxford University scholarship. He read thoroughly and covered a wide field. In addition to the systematic study of History, he touched the fringes of philosophy and political economy. He was helped in his studies by a very retentive memory. One of his schoolfellows said to me, "Paul has only to read a book once and it is for ever imprinted on his mind." Among the historical writers whom he read during his eighteen months' preparation were: Gibbon, Carlyle, Macaulay, Hallam, Guizot, Michelet, Thiers, Bluntschli, Maine, Froude, Bagehot, Seeley, Maitland, Stubbs, Gardiner, Acton, John Morley, Bryce, Dicey, Tout, Mahan, Holland Rose, G. M. Trevelyan, Hilaire Belloc and H. W. C. Davis. Two recent books that gave him special pleasure were Mr. G. P. Gooch's masterly "History of Historians" and Mr. F. S. Marvin's entrancing little work "The Living Past."

His hard reading was crowned in December, 1914, by a considerable achievement, for he won the coveted Brakenbury Scholarship in History and Modern Languages at Balliol College, Oxford. This scholarship, worth £80 per annum, is tenable for four years; to it subsequently Dulwich College added an exhibition of the annual value of £20. He was the first Balliol scholar in history from Dulwich. Not at all confident that he had won the Brakenbury, he went up to Oxford a second time, while the result of the Balliol examination was still unknown, to try for a less exacting scholarship. Happily there was no necessity for him to undergo this second test, as he found on his arrival at Oxford that his name had just been posted as a Brakenbury scholar.

When he went up, in the last week in November, 1914, for examination at Balliol College, it was his first visit to Oxford. Short as was his stay within its precincts, it was long enough for the glamour and beauty of the venerable university to steal into his soul; and the spell of it remained with him as a permanent possession. In spite of examination anxieties he had a pleasant time at Oxford, as the following letter shows: