Officially the first term is usually an unqualified success. The new boy is not distracted from his studies by the stress of house politics nor by the ambitions of the football field. The weekly form order is his chief excitement. And it would be surprising, considering the qualified enthusiasm with which the majority of the form welcome this occurrence, if the new boy did not soon find himself in the running for promotion. There is, indeed, little else for him to do.[3] He lives in a world of his own. He sees a good deal of new boys in other houses, and the usual question in break on Saturday morning is: 'Where were you this week?' His offences against discipline are inconsiderable. It is 'side' for a new boy to rag in the day room, in the changing room, and in the dormitories. That is the privilege of his seniors. He is not hardened enough to rag in form. He still regards work as important. I remember once seeing a very small and inoffensive scholar crumple up a sheet of paper and fling it at the head of his chemistry master. He maintained, however, that he was aiming at the waste-paper basket, and, though the excuse was not accepted, the offender's subsequent performances on the cricket field have inclined me to think he spoke the truth. At any rate this is the sole piece of audacity on the part of a new boy that I have witnessed. Indeed the new boy who does not return home with a thundering good report is a well-placed candidate for expulsion. Most of us start well. How many public school boys would have to confess that they won their only prize in their first term. The new boy returns home as from a Roman triumph. The indulgent father is prodigal of largess and theatre-tickets. His secretary is instructed to type out the report and send copies of it to aunts and uncles and his former head master. It is a great occasion, and we do well to make the most of it. It does not come twice.
The change begins, I suppose, on the first evening of the second term, when the novice, clad appropriately in bowler hat and coloured tie, is accosted by a member of the form into which he has been promoted and informed that he will be expected to do the 'con' for them that term. There is no threat. It is merely the announcement of an arrangement for mutual help. The old stagers who have slowly moved up the school, with the danger of superannuation camping on their trail, consider that their last terms should pass in a soft tranquility. They expect the newcomer to provide them with that peace. 'Here,' they say, 'is a smart lad who has got his promotion straight away; he can be of great service to us.' It is a form of practical communism of which the scholar is particularly the victim. There is a general conscription of intellect. Scholars are expected to do the work of the bloods. 'You are paid to come here,' say the great men, 'you must prove yourselves worthy of your hire.' Arnold Lunn has described how the captain of his house used to hold an educational raffle. Slips of paper on which were written: 'Greek Prose'; 'Latin Prose'; 'Essay,' were placed in a hat and the scholars took their chance of drawing a blank. I can still hear the voice of the school fast-bowler shouting over the banisters to a wretched goggle-eyed youth, 'No. 69, Becke, and shove it in my study before prayers.'