You cannot follow this line of reasoning with a public school boy. A parent cannot say: 'Six years ago I sent you a young, innocent boy, industrious, honest, truthful. You have returned to me a young man who knows more than I consider it proper that he should know, whose sole object appears to be to extract from life as much pleasure as is commensurate with a minimum of work, a young man, moreover, who considers that a lie told to an official is not a lie. Look what you have done!' But that is not a fair attitude. Anyhow, during those six years, a boy must to a certain extent have lost his innocence; most young men of nineteen place the claims of personal indulgence before those of work. Most young men look on life as a game that is played between themselves and a perfectly ridiculous antiquated body which is called 'government,' and whom it is permissible to hoodwink, misinform, or otherwise deceive whenever the opportunity is presented. The corroding forces of knowledge must make themselves felt during those six years. It is unreasonable and absurd to attribute their effects solely to the public school system. One can, however, by examining the mental state of a boy a week after he has left school, form some estimate of what he has learnt at such considerable expense to his parents. In the first place, he has acquired an extremely valuable social technique. A public school education is a passport. Its assailants would describe it as the membership of a select trades union. An old public school boy can enter a new mess without feeling any great embarrassment. He knows how to comport himself in the more superficial of the situations in which he will from time to time discover himself. All of which is distinctly valuable. He has also learnt to understand the type of man with whom he will have most dealing. He is admitted, that is to say, to terms of good fellowship with a very large number of persons. He will be treated by them as a decent chap till he proves himself otherwise. He will have enough in common with them to be able to bridge superficially the uncertain moments that precede friendship. If he were introduced to a man at his club, he would have no difficulty in finding a congenial topic of conversation, during which conversation he would be able to decide whether or not the man to whom he had been introduced was likely to prove a sympathetic companion.