Let us consider some of the outstanding social evils from this point of
view.

I turn first to the matter of _education_ because it is the primary
issue in every connection. Now education that stops at fourteen is
hardly worthy to be called education at all. It is after that age that
those interests awaken which provide absorbing life for boys and girls,
and ensure them against the pains and dangers of empty-mindedness.
It is also after that age that most young folks learn the ways
and means of self-expression. Probably also, at least in the case
of boys, the years between fourteen and sixteen are just the years
when the discipline of school life is most valuable, and it is certain
that during that period healthy games, played under the discipline of
sternly enforced rules, do most to put boys into possession of
themselves, and to provide a wise outlet for their abundant energies.
Consider then what happens so long as we continue to send boys out of
school at the age of fourteen. They go with minds unawakened and
therefore empty. They face adolescence in almost complete freedom from
control. They very often have far too little opportunity for
invigorating games, and they do not know how to express themselves,
though vital energies are vibrant within them. It is only natural that
they should find orderly ways of life very dull, and that in pursuit of
excitement they should take to hooliganism. Not having learnt to
appreciate either literature or art, they either read nothing or read
stories that are neither true nor decent. They respond only to what is
highly spiced and have nothing in their minds to counter balance the
meretricious attractions of suggestive stories and undesirable films.
The truth about the people who are fond of "blue" stories is often
(though not always) that those stories accurately indicate their