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Branch Office: RUE LAFAYETTE Opp. Rae Cardinal Mercier It was even so at a school in Sussex, where I spent seven long and desolate years. This school, many sympathizers may discover, corresponds to the institutions of learning where they spent their youthful days before launching out into the larger life afforded by a more advanced school, For masters we had an irate cleric, a man of "stern disciplinary methods," heading the brilliant throng; bringing up the rear were five frustrated individuals, excluding a made-moselle from gay Paris who eloped with one of the aforesaid, all of whom were unmarried, and, until the excitement of the elopement, seemed never likely to become married. Although we never realized it at the time, all their violent tempers and all their "disciplinary" methods were perhaps but the outcome of frustration in their own lives—and they took it out of us young wretches, who unfortunately did not understand the true situation, and could not have complained even if we had. Within this ideally happy environment, without any means of escape, we were literally imprisoned for a good two-thirds of the year. It was only after we lett that we found out how really happy we were to be rid of this environment—an environment for which our fond parents were paying upwards of £150 a year.
We lived simply at our prep. school. We had one egg each per weck—on Sundays. If we did not have an egg, we had half a fried sausage instead—perfect fare for "healthy youngsters." Any eggs provided further to this generous quota were charged extra to the £150 per year which our harassed parents were already paying. The school prospectus told quite a different story. "Fresh eggs from our own farm are supplied daily to the dear boys," was what it conveyed. The rest of the food was not exactly anything to write home about, either. We took it for granted after a time—it was only years afterwards, when we wondered just why our first alma mater had seen fit to feed youngsters on a starvation diet, and an ill-cooked one at that, that we even imagined that things could be different. Then there were the school buildings, It was, of course, an honour to be housed in an old English country mansion, but we did not quite like the idea of long, cold corridors, completely devoid of heating arrangements of any kind even in the depths of winter. We did not think of voicing our objections, of course. After a time we took them for granted too.
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For our £150 per year, then, we received education facilities from six frustrated people. We were fed on scanty food, ill-cooked. We were housed if a decrepit building, lacking the ordinary comforts of civilization. We were somewhat akin to a totalitarian state. We could not leave without the most special permission. The word of the dictator was law, and there was no appeal from it. Our reading was. strictly censored. The dictator's educational methods were the right ones, his methods of housing and feeding his pleasant little flock were entirely the correct ones, he looked after all the pocket money, ell the little comforts such: as sweets and chocolates, (smoking was of the very devil at our school), which were dealt out to us once a week, no one allowed to have more than four pennyworth, and altogether our whole lives were placed in his hands to be shapen according {o his particular idea of how they ought to be shapen. Unfortunately, we only woke up to the defects of our dear old alma mater long after we had left her kindly shadow, and had not tHb heart to rain curses on her shameless old head. When the damage was done, we woke up to the fact that we were too young, too utterly ignorant, to be able to find a single fault in the handled We obediently went to chapel every day, and twice on Sundays, whether we were religiously inclined or not. We had no alternative. We obediently donned strange little uniforms and marched around the village armed with wooden rifles, much to the unconcealed amusement of the ca! lads, who lived a much freer life than we ever dreamed of. We suffered from the usual set of taboos, and accepted quite meekly the rule that there were certain subjects which little boys should not discuss, Only in later years did we realize how inherently mistaken that doctrine of "taboos" was. But our friendly dictator laid down these "taboos," and we were good little boys, and saw that the taboos were tabooed.
We were quite willing to live up to the principle that "little boys should be seen and not heard." We had never heard of the doctrine of "freedom of self-expression," and would not have known what it meant even if we had. We did not know that little boys over in America were brought up under a system diametrically opposed to our own. Our system was one of almost complete suppression, stifling of initiative, strict discipline, and a code which always ensured that the "bumptious" boy, which later we discovered to. be one who had rather more individuality and contempt for our absurd conventions than the rest, was thoroughly and completely squashed, So long as we conformed to the stem which was laid down by that kindly dictator. we were ensured of a continual series of "goods" on our end of term reports. Later, we came to the conclusion that that system must die, might even be dead already, but we were called "good" for meekly conforming io it. Emerging from the prep school at the tender age of 13 or 14, we Were supposed to be well on our way towards becoming dominating personalities, all set for finishing our schooling with flying colours, and then dashing into the professions and rising like bubbles to the top. If we were lucky in our parents' choice of a school o follow on the "prep," we might unlearn many of the mistaken notions we acquired in those strange establishments of learning.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.