THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

"'Croquet's my game,' said the Pinky Dinky, and felt a man

condescended."

"But what the devil do they think they're up to, anyhow?" roared old

Hatherleigh suddenly, dropping plump into bottomless despair.

We felt we had still failed to get at the core of the mystery of the

Pinky Dinky.

We tried over things about his religion. "The Pinky Dinky goes to

King's Chapel, and sits and feels in the dusk. Solemn things! Oh

HUSH! He wouldn't tell you-"

"He COULDN'T tell you."

"Religion is so sacred to him he never talks about it, never reads

about it, never thinks about it. Just feels!"

"But in his heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a

doubt-"

Some one protested.

"Not a vulgar doubt," Esmeer went on, "but a kind of hesitation

whether the Ancient of Days is really exactly what one would call

goodform… There's a lot of horrid coarseness got into the

world somehow. SOMEBODY put it there… And anyhow there's no

particular reason why a man should be seen about with Him. He's

jolly Awful of course and all that-"

"The Pinky Dinky for all his fun and levity has a clean mind."

"A thoroughly clean mind. Not like Esmeer's-the Pig!"

"If once he began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at

croquet?"

"It's their Damned Modesty," said Hatherleigh suddenly, "that's

what's the matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice

dressed up as a virtue and taking the poor dears in. Cambridge is

soaked with it; it's some confounded local bacillus. Like the thing

that gives a flavour to Havana cigars. He comes up here to be made

into a man and a ruler of the people, and he thinks it shows a nice

disposition not to take on the job! How the Devil is a great Empire

to be run with men like him?"

"All his little jokes and things," said Esmeer regarding his feet on

the fender, "it's just a nervous sniggering-because he's afraid…

Oxford's no better."

"What's he afraid of?" said I.

"God knows!" exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire.

"LIFE!" said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he added, and made a

thoughtful silence for a time.

"I say," began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos,

"what is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?"

But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world.

"What is the adult form of any of us?" asked Benton, voicing the

thought that had arrested our flow.

3

I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to the dons and

the organisation of the University. I think we took them for

granted. When I look back at my youth Iam always astonished by the

multitude of things that we took for granted. It seemed to us that

Cambridge was in the order of things, for all the world like having

eyebrows or a vermiform appendix. Now with the larger scepticism of

middle age I can entertain very fundamental doubts about these old

universities. Indeed I had a scheme-

I do not see what harm I can do now by laying bare the purpose of

the political combinations I was trying to effect.

My educational scheme was indeed the starting-point of all the big

project of conscious public reconstruction at which I aimed. I

wanted to build up a new educational machine altogether for the

governing class out of a consolidated system of special public

service schools. I meant to get to work upon this whatever office I

was given in the new government. I could have begun my plan from

the Admiralty or the War Office quite as easily as from the

Education Office. Iam firmly convinced it is hopeless to think of

reforming the old public schools and universities to meet the needs

of a modern state, they send their roots too deep and far, the cost

would exceed any good that could possibly be effected, and so I have

sought a way round this invincible obstacle. I do think it would be

quite practicable to side-track, as the Americans say, the whole

system by creating hardworking, hard-living, modern and scientific

boys' schools, first for the Royal Navy and then for the public

service generally, and as they grew, opening them to the public

without any absolute obligation to subsequent service.

Simultaneously with this it would not be impossible to develop a new

college system with strong faculties in modern philosophy, modern

history, European literature and criticism, physical and biological