BATTLE OF CAPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 45, 22 February 1934, Page 11

BATTLE OF CAPS.

PEAK OR NO PEAK ? NEW AGAINST OLD. MUCH ON BOTH SIDES. There is going on in Auckland just now a "Battle oi the Caps." One secondary school, over the summer holidays, lias changed the style of the boys' caps, supplanting the older, smaller type by a cap, which covers the whole of the head, and is finished off by a peak that is unmistakably a peak. Public opinion has been stirred by this change in schoolboys' headwear. Letters have appeared in the "Star" stating two divergent points of view, views as different, in fact, as the two styles of caps. Some think that the boys look "like broken-down jockeys"; others regard the boys as better dressed and better equipped against the summer's sun. As for the boys themselves, they say, "Let what will be, be," and let it go at that. From the strictly material point of view, the newer kind of cap has much to commend it. It affords greater protection against the sun—though in such weather as we have had lately that would not seem to matter. Its appearance is a matter of taste. However mordant may have been the criticism of the new cap, one suspects that the real protestant is tradition. It has not been so much a question of whether the new cap is better than the old, but that it is different. Schools hate to change. Limitations of the Old. Old boys consider that the cap they wore and their fathers before them, is good enough for the. present and the future. What does it matter that the cap as -a head covering is somewhat inadequate? Viewed impersonally, the older cap has its limitations. It seems to have a natural affinity for the very back of the head, and it is often worn askew. Whether it is set on the front of the head at the beginning of the day is not important. It always works back to the one place. Scarcely large enough to cover the whole of the head, it sticks where best it can —where the head curves most steeply. The new caps nave a peak, which, to use an old colloquialism with new aptness, "sticks out a mile." That is another bone of contention. Jockeys' hats have such a peak; hence the somewhat pointed criticism; but jockeys have sometimes to be able to see in the face of a strong sun. Cricketers' caps are similarly equipped for the same reason—but those who object to the newer caps for schoolboys have no objection to wearing such a cap when they play cricket. The older caps are not without a peak—but it does not assert itself and seldom, if ever, faces the front of the head. It shares with the cap itself a genius for being askew. It is a peak only for form's sake, simply because caps ought to have some sort of a peak. It is neither impressive nor imposing; in fact, it is typical of the cap. One instinctively associates a liarum-searum lad with one of the "older caps. They were .never made for 'dignity; they were never meant to be formal. So the battle wears on, point for and point against. If it were simply a matter of appearance, one might point 'to the great public schools of England. ' Both sides would call a truce to laugh at the hats of Eton and Harrow. There tradition has held the upper hand. The older a school grows the more it dislikes alteration of its ways. Customs small in themselves become symbolic of much that is important. Though the newer hats in many ways are better, the older hats are older; and there it is. As Sir Roger d<: Coverley used to say, "There is much to be said on both sides."