Is it not possible to encourage something of this feeling in a
school? Is it not possible, without violating schoolboy honour,
which is in many ways a fine and admirable thing, to allow the
possibility of an appeal to protection for the young and weak
against vile temptations? It seems to me that it would be best if
we could get the boys to organise such a system among themselves.
But to take no steps to arrive at such an organisation, and to
leave matters severely alone, is a very dark responsibility to
bear.

It is curious to note that in the matter of bullying and cruelty,
which used to be so rife at schools, public opinion among boys does
seem to have undergone a change. The vice has practically
disappeared, and the good feeling of a school would be generally
against any case of gross bullying; but the far more deadly and
insidious temptation of impurity has, as far as one can learn,
increased. One hears of simply heart-rending cases where a boy dare
not even tell his parents of what he endures. Then, too, a boy's
relations will tend to encourage him to hold out, rather than to
invoke a master's aid, because they are afraid of the boy falling
under the social ban.

This is the heaviest burden a schoolmaster has to bear; to be
responsible for his boys, and to be held responsible, and yet to be
probably the very last person to whom the information of what is
happening can possibly come.

One great difficulty seems to be that boys will only, as a rule,
combine for purposes of evil. In matters of virtue a boy has to act
for himself; and I confess, too, with a sigh, that a set of