I hope he takes his confirmation seriously. If he does, he will not be content to neglect obvious duties in order to indulge his own tastes, however good in themselves.

我希望他能认真对待坚定礼，如果他真的认真了，他就不应该只顾满足自己，而忽视明确的义务。

To Alan, the 'duties' to translate silly sentences into Latin, polish the buttons on his Corps tunic, and suchlike, were far from 'obvious'. He had his own kind of seriousness. The headmaster's words would more appropriately have been directed at the outward conformity that Alec Waugh had written about:

但是，对艾伦来说，把一堆可笑的句子翻译成拉丁语，擦亮军服上的扣子，这些义务，远远算不上「明确的」，他根本无法理解这些是为什么。艾伦并不是不认真，他只是对「认真」有他自己的定义。而校长的话，实际上更符合艾力克.沃所写的：

As is the case with most boys, Confirmation had very little effect on Gordon. He was not an atheist; he accepted Christianity in much the same way as he accepted the Conservative party. All the best people believed in it, so it was bound to be right; but at the same time it had not the slightest influence over his actions. If he had any religion at this time it was House football. …

就像对大多数男孩一样，坚定礼对高登的影响很小。他不是无神论者，他相信基督教，只是因为所有优秀的人都相信它，所以它应该是正确的。但同时，这对他的行为并没有什么影响，如果说他这时有什么真正的信仰，那恐怕只有室内足球……

These were strong words for a book which had appeared in 1917 when Shirburnians were being sacrificed at the rate of one a week. It was because of such remarks that The Loom of Youth was forbidden at Sherborne, and any boy found with it was subject to an immediate beating.

这段话在1917年是很犯忌的，《青春织机》在舍尔伯尼也是禁书，如果有人被发现私藏此书，常常会立刻遭到暴打。舍尔伯尼的学生们，基本上每周都会有一个人因此挨打。