massing of boys for school as well as for play – living in the light of day, in fact. Now, neither a boy nor a man does much harm or has much harm done to him, so long as he lives in the light of day, and the consequence is that although, of course, many boys who leave Jesuit schools become bad men afterwards, yet they get no harm while they stay at school. They leave as good as they come and, moreover, if they do not come pretty reasonably good, they do not stay long. The father gets a letter to say 'the boy is doing no good at school and had better be removed.' The Goal-bird system is simplicity itself. The head master draws his salary, attends to the teaching of Greek and Latin and shuts his eyes firmly, deliberately, conscientiously, like an English gentleman, as he would say himself, to everything else going on around him."[1] This is very severe language. May it not partly apply to a number of "educators" in this country, who denounce so strongly any "paternalism" exercised over the pupils?
As regards the charges against the precautions taken in Jesuit colleges, they are usually founded upon wrong suppositions. It is believed that the Jesuit pupil is watched every moment. This is not so; he has liberty enough within a certain reasonable limit. Of course, it is a most delicate and difficult question how this limit is to be determined. It is not possible to lay down any particulars on this subject, because, in this as in other matters, there exists considerable variety in different Jesuit colleges, and Superiors assign that measure of liberty which, con-
- ↑ Truth, November 1891; quoted in the Tablet, November 14, 1891.
