He can have brought no enthusiasm to his work. Out of a sense of duty, and in order to improve his own position, he may have worked hard during the winter months, but he must have worked without pleasure, with his work not as an end but as a means.
Yet nothing in a man's life is of more importance than his profession. If he does not enjoy his work he values too highly the privileges that success in it will bring to him. He asks too much of his private life, and if he is disappointed, he embarks on a desperate search for pleasure. Half of the discontent of modern life, the discontent that expresses itself in endless parties, dances, and entertainments, can be traced to the reactions of men and women engaged in uncongenial employment. And so we return again to that first question. Can we call a man educated who has not discovered in what capacity he is most likely to be of service to society, or who, having discovered it, has not taken steps to qualify himself for that profession. That, in a sentence, is the case against the English Public School. A system stands or falls by its products.
And it is only natural that parents who are not particularly well off, and who have no private business into which they can draft their children, should ask themselves whether or not a public school education is worth the considerable personal sacrifice that will be entailed if their sons are to be sent to Wellington, Clifton, or Uppingham. 'We want to do the best for Tommy,' they say. 'But after spending £250 a year on him for five years what do we get in return? Tommy is not clever enough to pass into the civil service; he may get a mastership on a salary only slightly better than that of a Metropolitan policeman. Is it worth it?' When the head master to whom these doubts are carried, commences to enlarge on the moral qualities that are revealed and strengthened by 'the honest give and take of public school life,' the parent is still unsatisfied. 'Are you quite sure?' they say. 'Of course we know it's all exaggerated, but where there's smoke, you know, and one has heard....' Is it surprising that under such circumstances the mandarins of the public school profession should have erected a barricade of prejudice between themselves and criticism. Their maintenance is at stake. They have to persuade the parent that he is getting his money's worth. Otherwise he will send his son to a day school, or, worse still, to some pension in Rome or Brussels.