Now, in the world at large, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If it were, law court procedure would be infinitely complex. At school, however, the intention matters more than the result. The means are set before the end. The head master in the story realised that the American's offence was actually far less serious than it appeared, and the American was not expelled. In this case, of course, the theft of the examination paper was definitely anti-social. It was a real theft. The American was endeavouring to acquire a position that others valued through means not at the disposal of his competitors. But this story, which appeared in a paper the moral tone of which has necessarily to be above suspicion, establishes officially the principle that the seriousness of an offence depends largely on the attitude adopted to it by the offender. And therein lie the true ethics of cribbing. What public opinion approves cannot be anti-social. Only a few recognise the distinction between the immoral and the anti-social. And public opinion is, on the whole, inclined to condone cribbing. Every boy is anxious to be a power in his house; he wants to be a prefect, he looks forward to the day when he will be safe from authority, will be, indeed, authority itself. But he knows that, without unduly exerting himself in the class-room, he will be able to achieve prominence through success at football. A house cap has to sit at the Va table: as a second, probably, and certainly as a first, he will be raised to the dignity of the dais; thence the process of seniority will carry him quickly to his prefectship. It is assumed that by that time the same process of seniority will have carried him to the Upper Fifth. (It is hard to avoid being promoted once a year.) The hours spent in the class-room are a dull setting for the vivid hues of the life that lies outside it. Occasionally the setting is relieved by a bright patch of colour--an ingenious rag, a successful piece of cribbing--but, on the whole, it is dull and monotonous. A boy works spasmodically, sometimes to get a promotion, sometimes to secure the good-will of a master he admires, sometimes to reach a form where it will be only rarely necessary for him to prepare his work. And he cribs more or less consistently out of laziness, to avoid being bottled, to save himself trouble, to be able to devote as much of his evening as is possible to more sympathetic forms of employment. He does not consider he is doing anything wrong. He knows that, if he is caught, he will be punished. But then he sees the relationship of boys and masters as a long, intermittent struggle, a game played in good faith, with fixed rewards and penalties. He does not expect his conduct to be condoned officially. His form master has set him so many lines of Virgil to prepare. It is assumed that he will take an hour to prepare those lines properly. However, with the help of Dr Giles's translation, he has managed to