So challenged these various high and headmasters had most of them the air of men invited to talk of things that are easier to understand than to say. They were not at all pompous about their explanations; from first to last Oswald never discovered the pompous schoolmaster of legend and history; without exception they seemed anxious to get out of their gowns and pose as intelligent laymen; but they were not intelligent laymen, they did not explain, they did not explain, they waved hands and smiled. They “hoped” they were “turning out clean English gentlemen.” They didn’t train their men specially to any end at all. The aim was to develop a general intelligence, a general goodwill.
“In relation to the empire and its destiny?” said Oswald.
“I should hardly fix it so definitely as that,” said Overtone of Hillborough.
“But don’t you set before these youngsters some general aim in life to which they are all to contribute?”
“We rather leave the sort of contribution to them,” said Overtone.
“But you must put something before them of where they are, where they are to come in, what they belong to?” said Oswald.
“That lies in the world about them,” said Overtone. “King and country—we don’t need to preach such things.”
“But what the King signifies—if he signifies anything at all—and the aim of the country,” urged Oswald. “And the Empire! The Empire—our reality. This greatness of ours beyond the seas.”
“We don’t stress it,” said Overtone. “English boys are apt to be suspicious and ironical. Have you read that delightful account of the patriotic lecture in _Stalky and Co_? Oh, you _should_.”
A common evasiveness characterized all these headmasters when Oswald demanded the particulars of Peter’s curriculum. He wanted to know just the subjects Peter would study and which were to be made the most important, and then when these questions were answered he would demand: “And why do you teach this? What is the particular benefit of that to the boy or the empire? How does this other fit into your scheme of a clear-minded man?” But it was difficult to get even the first questions answered plainly. From the very outset he found himself entangled in that longstanding controversy upon the educational value of Latin and Greek. His circumstances and his disposition alike disposed him to be sceptical of the value of these shibboleths of the British academic world. Their share in the time-table was enormous. Excellent gentlemen who failed to impress him as either strong-minded or exact, sought to convince him of the pricelessness of Latin in strengthening and disciplining the mind; Hinks of Carchester, the distinguished Greek scholar, slipped into his hand at parting a pamphlet asserting that only Greek studies would make a man write English beautifully and precisely. Unhappily for his argument Hinks had written his pamphlet neither beautifully nor precisely. Lippick, irregularly bald and with neglected teeth, a man needlessly unpleasing to the eye, descanted upon the Greek spirit, and its blend of wisdom and sensuous beauty. He quoted Euripides at Oswald and breathed an antique air in his face—although he knew that Oswald knew practically no Greek.