Kipling portrays school as the first stage of a much larger game, a pattern-maker for the experiences of life. Implied throughout the stories is the question `What happened to these fifteen-year-old boys, and how did the lessons they learned at school apply to the world of warfare and imperial government?` The stories are based on Kipling`s own school, the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, which prepared boys destined for the army or for colonial service; Kipling himself appears as the subordinate character, Beetle. This edition includes five Stalky stories which did not appear in the original volume, and thus constitutes a "Complete Stalky & Co".