"I have heard, by a side wind," he foamed, "that a meeting was held, two days ago, up at the Vicarage, when it was decided that you should hold lectures in this school--_my_ school. I wasn't asked to attend. . . . And of course you will jump to the conclusion that I am over-sensitive, huffed for my own sake. It isn't that! . . . I _am_ huffed--maddened--if you will--for the sake of my calling. For twenty years, Dr Mant, I have opened this school every morning with prayer, dismissed it with prayer every evening, and between times laboured to preach many things that all in the end come to one thing--the idea of a poor English schoolmaster. All over the country other poor schoolmasters have been spending their lives teaching in just the same way their notion of England--what she is, has been, ought to be. Similarly, no doubt, teachers all over France and Germany have been teaching--under the guise of grammar, arithmetic, what not--_their_ ideas of what France or Germany has been, is, ought to be. These nations are opposed and at length they come to a direct conflict, in this War. Mark you what happens! At once we patient teachers in England are brushed all aside. You call a chance Committee of amateurs, and the man who has taught the boys whom, within a fortnight, you will be clamouring to fight for you, has not even the honour to be consulted. . . . Yes, I think well enough of Great Britain to be pretty confident that she will win, letting us slip; that is, she will win though fighting with a hand tied. But Germany is no such fool. _She_ won't, in her hour of need, despise the help of her teachers. They teach what is almost diametrically opposed to our teaching: they teach it thoroughly, and on my soul I believe it to be as nearly opposed as wrong can be to right. But they have the honour to be trusted; therefore they will succeed in making this war a long one. . . . Yes, I have a wall-map, sir, of the human body. It does not belong to the school: I bought it on my own account seven years ago, but the then Managers considered it too naked to hang on the walls of a mixed school, and disallowed the expense. You are very welcome to use it, and I am only glad that at length it will serve a purpose."