I have been of late reading numbers of books on education. The days of Thring and Arnold are over; instead of two textbooks on the theory, there are now two hundred or two thousand. Every day sees some new thesis appear hot from the press. People are beginning to take an interest in what is, after all, the most important department in the State. In all of these books I find the same points raised. As at present practised, education does not teach the younger generation to love the beautiful or the intellectual: without such a love all education is worth nothing. How to attain these affections is the next question. One man advocates the abolition of examinations, another the substitution of any method rather than that of rewards and punishments, another sees salvation in the teaching of English literature, geography and history, to the exclusion of the classics, and the cutting down of mathematics--but somehow I can't make much of these books on theory. I make marginal notes, underline passages, copy out good advice and I try to put what I believe to be practicable into practice, but on the whole I am left somewhat cold. I am on the search for a rich mine and, although I often feel that I am near it, I never quite succeed in doing more than unearthing one precious morsel of ore. In some ways the Head Master was right when he told me to read no books on education. He was right because I find nothing really new there. I am told to foster a boy's imagination: I spend all my time in trying to do this, and should do so even if I had read nothing whatever about education. Only on Sunday nights, after a peculiarly good sermon and inspiring hymns, can one at all reach the mood in which it is possible to discuss quite openly with boys exactly what education means to you and ought to mean to them. Instead of rushing out of chapel and fighting for places at the sideboard in Common Room over the chicken and salmon, I go to my rooms and talk quietly to such boys as can get leave to come then. Most House-masters refuse to let their boys come to my rooms at all during lock-up. They think my influence is quite definitely pernicious and immoral. In other words I try to develop the imagination.