the insistence on the boyish code of honour. Neither as a boy nor
as a schoolmaster did I ever have much evidence of this. There were
certain hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which
prevented any boy from giving information to a master against
another boy. But this was not a conscientious thing. It was part of
the tradition, and the social ostracism which was the penalty of
its infraction was too severe to risk incurring. But the boys who
cut a schoolfellow for telling tales, did not do it from any high-
minded sense of violated honour. It was simply a piece of self-
defence, and the basis of the convention was merely this, that, if
the rule were broken, it would produce an impossible sense of
insecurity and peril. However much boys might on the whole approve
of, respect, and even like their masters, still they could not make
common cause with them. The school was a perfectly definite
community, inside of which it was often convenient and pleasant to
do things which would be penalised if discovered; and thus the
whole stability of that society depended upon a certain secrecy.
The masters were not disliked for finding out the infractions of
rules, if only such infractions were patent and obvious. A master
who looked too closely into things, who practised any sort of
espionage, who tried to extort confession, was disapproved of as a
menace, and it was convenient to label him a sneak and a spy, and
to say that he did not play the game fair. But all this was a mere
tradition. Boys do not reflect much, or look into the reasons of
things. It does not occur to them to credit masters with the motive
of wishing to protect them against themselves, to minimise
temptation, to shelter them from undesirable influences; that
perhaps dawns on the minds of sensible and high-minded prefects,
but the ordinary boy just regards the master as an opposing power,
whom he hoodwinks if he can.