In this respect Ross urged his sensible opinion that, 'As democracy advances, manners and morals recede', and urged the staff to read The Rising Tide of Colour. He held that the defeat of Germany had come about 'because she thought that Science and materialism were stronger than religious thought and observance.' He called the scientific subjects 'low cunning', and would sniff and say, 'This room smells of mathematics! Go out and fetch a disinfectant spray!'

Alan used the time on something he found more interesting. Ross caught him doing algebra during time devoted to 'religious instruction', and wrote at half-term: inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian, but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament.

He ought not to be in this form of course as far as form subjects go. He is ludicrously behind.

In December 1927, Ross placed him bottom in both English and Latin, attaching to the report an inky, blotted page which clearly indicated the negligible amount of energy conceded by Alan to the deeds of Marius and Sulla. Yet even Ross tempered his complaint with the comment 'I like him personally'. O'Hanlon wrote of his 'saving sense of humour'. At home, Alan's messy experiments might be tiresome, but he had a jolly way of coming out with scientific facts, and of telling jokes against his own clumsiness, naive and free from showing off, that it was hard not to like. He was certainly foolish in not making life easier for himself; lazy and perhaps arrogant in supposing he knew what was good for him; but he was not so much obstreperous as bewildered by demands which had nothing to do with his interests. Nor did he complain at home about Sherborne, for he seemed to regard it as the fact of life which indeed it was.