Goodbye, Mr. Chips

From Goodbye, Mr. Chips:

We haven't got the confidence we once had, now that we know about those bombs. It is a hard time to try to write fiction. (After the Soviets acquired the bomb, from the preface)

"Colley, you are a splendid example of inherited traditions. I remember your grandfather, he could never grasp the Ablative Absolute. A stupid fellow, your grandfather. ANd your father, too I remember him, he used to sit at that far desk by the wall–he wasn't much better, either. But I do believe–my dear Colley–that you are the biggest fool of the lot!"

Sometimes he took down Vergil or Xenophon and read for a few moments, but he was soon back and again with Doctor Thorndyke or Inspector French. He was not, despite his long years of assiduous teaching, a very profound classical scholar; indeed, he thought of Latin and Greek far more as dead languages from which English gentlemen ought to know a few quotations than as living tongues that had ever been spoken by living people. He liked those short leading articles in the Times that introduced a few tags that he recognized. To be among the dwindling number of people who understood such things was to him a kind of secret and valued freemasonry; it represented, he felt, one of the chief benefits to be derived from a classical education.

And suddenly, in a torrent of thoughts too pressing to be put into words, Chips made answer to himself. These examinations and certificates and so on–what did they matter? And all this efficiency and up-to-dateness–what did that matter, either? Ralston was trying to run Brookfield like a factory–a factory for turning out a snob culture based on money and machines. The old gentlemanly traditions of family and broad acres were changing, as doubtless they were bound to; but instead of widening them to form a genuine inclusive democracy of duke and dustman, Ralston was narrowing them upon the single issue of a fat banking account.