Throughout 1914 Paul was the mainstay of the magazine. The May number contains from his pen exhaustive reports of two house matches (football), a shrewd commentary on the Junior School Cup matches, and a long report of a lecture. For the July number he wrote ten pages of cricket reports, and an account of the swimming competition. He was also responsible for the finances of the magazine, continuing to act as secretary and treasurer. All this time he was preparing for his Oxford scholarship. If he owed much to Dulwich, the College also owed something to him. No boy ever worked harder for it, or consecrated himself with more entire devotion to its welfare. CHAPTER VI PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE WAR _Now all the youth of England are on fire._ SHAKESPEARE: "HENRY V." To _The Alleynian_ for October, 1914, Paul contributed an editorial article on the War that had then begun to rage in its destructive fury. Taking the view that "this war had to come sooner or later," he wrote: When one nation has a world-wide Empire embracing a fifth of the globe, founded on principles of absolute liberty for all whom it contains, and when another, built up by the force of circumstances on a basis of military despotism, also aspires to a different sort of world-power, and challenges the first nation, whose principles it abhors as much as its own are abhorred--in these circumstances it is hopeless to talk of reconciliation till one or the other is down. Actually, Germany's monstrous conduct in violating the neutrality of a small, industrious and inoffensive Power--a neutrality to which, be it marked, Germany was as much a partner as England or France--has put her hopelessly in the wrong with the civilised world. But that does not alter the fact that the War is primarily one for political existence. Either the despotism of Potsdam or the constitutional government of Westminster must survive. We, more even than Russia or France, are fighting for our very existence.