Sydney’s Reviews > Goodbye Mr. Chips > Status Update

He said, gently: it may possibly seem to you, Robertson - at this particular moment in the world’s history that the affairs of Caesar in Gaul some two thousand years ago are of somewhat secondary importance and that the irregular conjugation of the verb “tollo” is even less important still. But believe me my dear Robertson is not really the case.

Every Sunday night, in the chapel after evening service, chatters read out the names of old boys killed, together with short biographies. Very moving; but chips, in the back pew under the gallery, thought: he only names to him; he doesn’t see their faces as I do…

and then someday you’ll see me somewhere and I shan’t recognize you and you’ll say to yourself, “The old boy doesn’t remember me.”But I do remember you – as you are now. That’s the point. In my mind, you never grow up at all. Never.

I remember… I remember… But chiefly, I remember all your faces. I never forget them. I have thousands of faces in my mind – the faces of boys. If you come and see me again in years to come – I hope you all will – I shall try to remember those older faces of yours, but it’s just possible I shan’t be able to -

He had been left a vision that could clear with each year – of an England, for which days of ease were nearly over, of a nation steering into channels where a hair’s breath of error might be catastrophic

Because always, whatever happened and however the avenue of politics twisted and curved, he had faith in England, in English flesh and blood, and in Brookfield as a place who is ultimate worth depended on whether she fitted herself into the English scene with dignity and without disproportion.