Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/195

 soul, and that the school goes somewhere and has life in it. We Woldingstanton boys have that in common when we meet; we understand one another; we have something that a lot of the other chaps one meets out here, even from the crack schools, don't seem to have. It isn't a flourish with us, sir, it is a simple statement of fact that the life we joined up to at Woldingstanton is more important to us than the life in our bodies. Just as it is more important to you. It isn't only the way you taught it, though you taught it splendidly, it is the way you felt it that got hold of us. You made us think and feel that the past of the world was our own history; you made us feel that we were in one living story with the reindeer men and the Egyptian priests, with the soldiers of Cæsar and the alchemists of Spain; nothing was dead and nothing alien; you made discovery and civilisation our adventure and the whole future our inheritance. Most of the men I meet here feel lost in this war; they are like rabbits washed out of their burrows by a flood, but we of Woldingstanton have taken it in the day's work, and when the peace comes and the new world begins, it will still be in the story for us, the day's work will still join on. That's the essence of Woldingstanton, that it puts you on the high road that goes on. The other chaps I talk to here from other schools seem to be on no road at all. They are tough and plucky by nature and association; they are fighters and sturdy men; but what holds them in it is either just habit and the example of people about them or something unsound that can't hold out to the end; a vague loyalty to the Empire or a desire to punish the Hun or restore the peace of Europe, some short range view of that sort,