We may dismiss altogether the assertion that romantic friendships are bad because they entail secrecy. If, then, the objection of secrecy is to be discounted, it would at first sight appear that for the elder boy these friendships are, on the whole, good things. The emotion experienced is a noble one; it is unselfish, it makes considerable demands on the patience and self-control of the subject; it encourages the bigger boy to work hard and play his games harder; it protects him from many of the dangers of school life, and yet I believe that its results are, in the long run, more serious for the elder than for the younger boy. It is the worst possible prelude to the sexual life of a man. It sends a boy into the world with an entirely false view of the normal sexual relations of men and women; it is a hindrance to him in marriage. A boy of sixteen experiences for a younger boy the emotion that he would naturally at such a period feel for a girl of his own age. He is surprised into a new relationship, and he is told that the relationship can only remain worthy of him as long as it remains platonic. Sexual emotion is, he is given to understand, unclean. During adolescence he will be subjected to a force that he must, at all costs, resist. That is the official attitude, and it is the attitude of nearly every unscientific writer on the subject. A schoolmaster considers the moral question from the point of view of the policeman. 'Here,' he says, 'is something that must be suppressed.' Various writers suggest various remedies. The popular idea is to sublimate the passions, to provide another focus. Schoolmasters usually select the focus that is most near to the boy's interests: namely, athletics. They encourage the athletic worship, because a boy who really wishes to excel in this will not run the risk of losing his proficiency by weakening practices. This panacea has not worked too well, and the band of earnest idealists has begun to clamour for a more spiritual focus: poetry, art, religion. Which is all very jolly, but gets us no nearer to solving the main problem of how a natural force is to be directed through an unnatural channel into a natural one. It is no sort of use to place a lump of granite in front of the unnatural channel and say: 'This is forbidden.' The stream will only select another course, and very likely one that will not lead it to the natural waters.