will talk freely to a master of architecture or music
or Japanese prints, but they are chary of betraying
these enthusiasms to their fellows. And masters
are not free from blame: I suppose we all of us
sometimes bow down in the house of Rimmon, and when
the conversation languishes at the tea-table, fall
back on a discussion of the last house match.
It is the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous
day’s work it is not easy to maintain a monologue
about Home Rule. Not the least of the boons of
the war is that it has ousted games from the foremost
place as a topic of conversation. I have not noticed
that they are less keenly played, although the increase
of military work has diminished the time given to
them; but they have ceased to monopolise the thoughts
of boys. The problem then of reducing the absorption
in games is the problem of finding and providing other
absorbing interests. We cannot, fortunately,
always have the counter-irritant of war. Where
we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a
boy does not interest him enough in most cases to
give him subjects of conversation out of school.
We give some few new interests by means of societies,
literary, antiquarian or scientific. But the main
problem is to make every boy see that the work he
does in school is connected with his life, that it
is meant to open to him the shut doors around him
through which he may go out into all the highways and
byways of the world.
Do school games produce the man who regards games
as the main business of life? We must emphasise
“main.” It is certain that they do
encourage Englishmen to devote some part of their working
life to healthy exercise—and few, I suppose,
would wish them to do otherwise. The Indian civilian
does not make a worse judge for playing polo, nor
is Benin worse administered since golf-links were laid
out there. But there are men who never outgrow
the boyish narrowness of view that games are the things
that matter most. These remain the ruling passion,
because no stronger passion comes to drive it out.
For this the schools must bear part of the blame,
for they have not taught clearly enough that athletics
are a means but not an end. Not all the blame,
for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates
the idler, and has no reproach for the man who says
“I live only for hunting and golf.”
And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged more
by a few failures than by many successes. We can
all of us in our experience recall many an honest
athlete who is now doing splendid service to Church
or State, doughty curates, self-sacrificing doctors,
soldiers who are real leaders of men. When they
became men they put away childish things, but they
have not forgotten what they owe to the discipline
of their boyish games. Games are not the first
thing in life for them now, but they have no doubt
that they can do their work better from an occasional
afternoon’s play. They see things in their
right proportion, because they know that the first
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