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PARENTS AND EDUCATION 181
thing depends on our impressing the boys with the convietion
that spiritual feeding is vastly more important
than bodily feeding. They mostly believe the opposite.
Which do we believe ? At the first excuse we curtail the
nourishment for the spirit and the mind, but I never
heard of a headmaster knocking off a meal to add to the
ovation I Why should the needs of the flesh be treated
as sacrosanet and those of the spirit be set aside when
any excuse offers? Of course we all know why we act
thus ; but we are too thick-headed to connect cause and
effeet.
Doubtless it will be urged against me that I participated
in this mischievous system for years and did nothing to
modify it. I freely admit the charge, but that is no
reason why I should not tell the truth now ; and it will
be more profitable to my readers if they refleet on what
I say, rather than indicate accurately what I or others
have failed to do.
As in international problems, co-operation is now the
great hope but also the great difficulty. Nothing
could be more full of promise than the uprising of
interest in education on the part of parents and of the
public which has marked the last fifty years ; but it has.
brought about a wholly unexpected loss of liberty, and the
modern would-be reformer, let him be the nominal head
of any school he likes, is wholly impotent nowadays for
any independent action on a large scale. Moreover, while
he is in the vortex of the waters, it is all but impossible
for him to see whither he and his fellows are being borne,
However, when the main evil of a system which has
grown up unperceived consists in perversion of aim and
sham social service for which we all alike are responsible,
nothing but good can come if the facts be made known,
I will recall my readers, then, to the matter in hand,
which is not only that managers of education are for the
most part victims of dismal unreality, but that meantime
the ideal aim of young people being spurred on to effort
by interest in the subjeet, by the joy of surmounting