ADVANTAGES AND DEFECTS 61

be recognized is that most of them operate outside the
classroom, and consequently the boarding-school system
from this point of view is decidedly preferable to the day
school system. Of course the boy loses home influences
to a certain extent, but, however desirable home influences
may be, the cultivation of a wide outlook upon life, and
the advantages of the association with other boys and
with masters is so important, that to some extent home
influence must be limited in order to secure the most desirable
 result. In any case home influences are predominant
 for three months in the year during a school
career, and too much of the apron-string is, after all,
undesirable,
What, then, are the factors which tend towards the
formation and development of moral fibre? First and
foremost athletics and games are of the utmost importance,
 and any reformed public school which minimizes
this importance will be doomed to failure. Only those
who have had experience in the training of youth can
estimate at its true value the importance of athletics in
this connection,
The healthy rivalry of house and dormitory matches
in both cricket and football, and the playing of the game
on the recreation fields, are the finest possible training for
the bigger game of life. The parrot cry of the undue
attention paid to athletics at our big public schools is
based on ignorance and misapprehension.
Second only to the importance of athletics is the part
played by the Officers Training Corps in this relation.
Never possibly in its history has the Government spent
money to better advantage than in fostering this movement.
 The Officers Training Corps was formed as recently
 as 1908, and yet within a few months of the
outbreak of war in 1914 no fewer than 20,000 officers
had been supplied through this organization. When
the history of this war comes to be written, it will be