Individuality, like originality, is dangerous to custom: when people begin to think for themselves there is usually trouble somewhere, but unless people learn to think for themselves they will surround themselves with unimaginable horrors. How often in the train does one come across half-educated louts gesticulating and laying down the law on every conceivable point, their arguments, theories and principles all emanating from the halfpenny press. More harm has been done to the cause of progress and good sense in this country by cheap journalism than by any other agency. It is not drink, but the gutter press that gnaws at the very vitals of the commonwealth. It is an appalling thing to think that as a nation we prefer to take all our theories and principles at second hand from the sayings of unscrupulous ink-slingers of Grub Street who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, but have just earned their daily bread by obeying the dictates of some foul capitalist who thinks of nothing but filling his own pockets. Politics may be dirty, but there is nothing quite so foul in this country as journalism. Unless we can make boys rise above the pinchbeck claptrap of the cheaper writers we fail entirely to educate them. To pin one's faith to anything but one's own intellect is to fail to make anything of life. I've tried every means in my power of late to rouse my boys to take an interest in their work, to show them the continuity of history, the reason why we read good literature, the reason for exercising the faculties: we must send them out into the world with the critical spirit fully developed, not ready to be gulled by every shibboleth of party politics or mad cry in the market-place of people with axes to grind. We want them to mould other people's opinions, not to take everything ready made--as a sort of reach-me-down suit that they can wear without question. I want them to probe all difficulties and not to rest until they have planted the new Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land of England.