I feared that I was losing Jim and Janet and the others, but I have not lost them. They conform to Macdonald's reign of authority when they are in school, but they do it with their tongues in their cheeks. But only the select few have followed my banner. Jim is the only boy, and the only girls are Janet, Jean, Ellen, Annie, and Gladys. Barbara is of divided allegiance. The others are Macdonaldised. I find it a very difficult thing to define Macdonaldisation. Possibly its most distinguishing characteristic is what I might call a dour pertness. The bairns have lost their standard of values; they don't know limits. I pinched Mary's cheek when I met her this morning on her way to school, and she tossed her head in the air and looked at me with a cheeky expression which meant: "What do you think you're doing?" If I rag Eva she answers with brazen impudence. I have given up speaking facetiously to the boys, for they also were impudent. They were not like that when I had them; I could play with them, joke with them, rag them and they took it all with the best good humour; they teased me and played jokes on me, but they did it in the right spirit. I have seen it again and again. Strict discipline destroys a child's values of good taste and bad taste. Naturally when freedom is denied them they do not know what freedom means. The atrocities committed by the super-disciplined German army are quite understandable to me; like Macdonaldised bairns they did not understand the freedom they suddenly found themselves enjoying, and they converted it into licence. I can tell the character of a village dominie when I stop to ask a group of boys the way to the next village when I am cycling. Jimmy Young slouches past me now with a stare of hostility, and it isn't six months ago since he came running to me on the road one night for protection from the policeman who was after him for stealing a turnip from Peter Mitchell's field. The policeman came up and in a loud voice accused the laddie, while at the same time he threw in a hint or two that my lax discipline had something to do with the case. "If they got a little mair o' the leather, things wud be different," he growled. I do not like policemen; their little brief authority somehow manages to get my back up. "What's the row?" I asked mildly. "This young devil has been stealin' neeps," he roared, "and Mitchell's gaein' to mak a pollis court case o't." I said nothing; I took Jimmy by the arm and walked towards the gate of Mitchell's field. I vaulted it and deliberately pulled up a turnip and peeled it and ate it, while the constable stood writing down notes voluminously. "Understand," I said to him, "that I am not primarily encouraging Jimmy to steal turnips; my one aim is to appear in the police court with him if he is charged. I would rather a thousand times be with him in the dock than with you and your farmer in the witness-box." Peter Mitchell did not prosecute.