In the moral region, I think we have much to answer for; there is a code of morals among boys which, if it is not actively corrupting, is at least undeniably low.  The standard of purity is low; a vicious boy doesn’t find his vicious tendencies by any means a bar to social success.  Then the code of honesty is low; a boy who is habitually dishonest in the matter of work is not in the least reprobated.  I do not mean to say that there are not many boys who are both pure-minded and honest; but they treat such virtues as a secret preference of their own, and do not consider that it is in the least necessary to interfere with the practice of others, or even to disapprove of it.  And then comes the perennial difficulty of schoolboy honour; the one unforgivable offence is to communicate anything to masters; and an innocent-minded boy whose natural inclination to purity gave way before perpetual temptation and even compulsion might be thought to have erred, but would have scanty, if any, expression of either sympathy or pity from other boys; while if he breathed the least hint of his miserable position to a master and the fact came out, he would be universally scouted.

This is a horrible fact to contemplate; yet it cannot be cured by enactment, only from within.  It is strange that in this respect it is entirely unlike the code of the world.  No girl or woman would be scouted for appealing to police protection in similar circumstances; no man would be required to submit to violence or even to burglary; no reprobation would fall upon him if he appealed to the law to help him.

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.