But when all is said and done, the really big difference between the Preparatory and the Public School is the absence of the cult of athleticism. The scholar is entitled to and receives as much respect as the cricketer and for obvious reasons. The Preparatory School has to contend with a far more competitive system than the Public School. Schools have their ups and downs. Numbers rise and fall, but a Public School that has a name can be always certain of the support of its old boys. It has a firmly established tradition. Only a few Preparatory Schools, on the other hand, possess this questionable advantage. The name of only a few are familiar. None of them would justify the journalist in the employment of his cliché 'a household word.' The Preparatory School depends largely on the energy and personality of one man, and the scholars are, after all, his exhibition blooms. He may produce cricketer after cricketer, but the Public School will take all the credit. We speak of Hedges and Chapman and Stevens as products of Tonbridge, Uppingham, and U.C.S. respectively. We do not know where they learnt the groundwork of the game. The scholar, however, comes into prominence while he is still at his Preparatory School. The name of the school is put after the name of the successful candidate. It is the scholar, not the cricketer, who advertises a school. If the head master of a Preparatory School told you that seven of his old boys were at that time playing in their Public School Eleven, you would not feel that he was entitled to any extravagant credit. If, however, he told you that in one year seven of his boys had won scholarships you would be considerably impressed. The boys themselves naturally, of course, are more interested in cricket than in Greek, but they appreciate that scholastic triumph has a marketable value, and the school officially is prouder of its Winchester scholar than of its slow left-hand bowler. The small boy who goes home for the holidays knows that he can impress his uncle by the announcement that Hughes got the second Eton scholarship, but that the statement that they beat Southdown by 100 runs and that Evans took seven wickets for twenty-three will elicit only a polite 'really.' It is exactly the opposite at a Public School. The new boy will proudly announce that the captain of his house had played for Notts. There is a standard by which one can judge public school cricket and football; there is no more a standard for the performances of preparatory school athletes than there is for the startling figures of the village fast bowler. Naturally there is more excitement when a new boy shows an uncanny apprehension of the theorems of geometry than over a new boy who brings the ball back naturally from the off. As a result the preparatory master is inclined to push the clever boys on too fast. It is the one real mistake that the Preparatory School makes, and it should be noticed. For it is serious.