RAGGING IN THE ARMY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3065, 28 April 1917, Page 3

RAGGING IN THE ARMY

A SUBALTERN'S TALE (From the "Daily Mail.") \ Ragging in the Army in its old mi's- | chievous form- has long sinco died a i well-timed death. I say well timed, be- i cause the type of ragging to which I ' refer, and which had disappeared! almost completely some few years beforo ; the outbreak of the present war, was : of a kind which did no good to the ' victim and seriously interfered with : the discipline and efficiency of the Army. The idea of ragging originally was j that it was a moaus of- getting rid of • an unpopular officer. But it has always ; boen quite unnecessary to employ this moans, as there are quieter, nioro orthodox ways of achieving this end. An officer is oither fit to hold His Majesty's commission or ho is not. If ! he is not so fitted, his commanding '■ officer should tell him so; if he is fit, ; then his brother officers should treat ■ him as gentlemen treat gentlemen. ■ They should not givo him an ink batti ■ nor smear him with seccotino, nor ■ break a foathor bed across his back and < protoitd he is a parrot. j However, nowadays, as I havo said, : ragging is of a gentlekind. It is em- , ployed in tho more delioato cases where ; the discipline of the orderly room is | not called for and where hints havo been of no avail. I havo in mind the ■ classic example of the young gentleman , who grew side-whiskers. Ho was quite • a decent youth, tho junior officer or his ■ regiment, but ho got his head turned ■ thrpugh a fortnight's visit to London: ■ There ho saw in a smart restaurant ] a certain super-nut with a growth of ■ hair on either cheek reaching to a point level with tho lobe of the car. ; Ko admired the idea, and a young lady , with him said that she v thought he j would look very nice- too if no grew whiskers. Soapless Shaving. By the time ho returned to his regi- : ment he had done his best to do so. i Tho souior subaltern remarked that ; night in mess that he had not shaved ■ himself properly. Tho next day tho adjutant told him on parade to get his : hair cut; He replied that this bad been dono three days before j to wbioh ] the adjutant answered that it was too : long oyer bis cars. Tho following day, as he was still flourishing tho offending - tuftsj•: ho ■ was sont' for to the' orderly room, and told by tho corri'nianding officer to shave his whiskers off.' Ho answered that ho did not know it was against tho King's Regulations to wear whiskers. • The King's Regulations were sont for, and sure enough it was written in black and white that "whiskers if worn must be of moderate length." The regulation, which. had been framed In tho Early Victorian era, had for some reason never been amendod. For a whole day tho regiment was non-plussed, and -our young gentleman strolled the town magnificent in his side ornaments. But retribution followed swiftly that night. At 10 p.m. i he was arrested in his quarters by the orderly officer and marched to the billiards-room, where a subalterns' court-martial had been hastily assembled. Here ho was tried under Section 17 of His Majesty's Army Act, in that he did on certain specified dates act in a manner prejudicial to the good order and military discipline of tho 190 th Regiment of Foot by wilfully making his appearance grotesque and calculated to inspire fear in the' children of his company sergeant-major. The defence that whiskers were allowed to bo 'worn by military law not not held to be valid, and he was sentenced, to have them removed without soap. AVhich, I may add, was promptly done, much to the amusement of everybody, including—when it was all over —the victim. This sort of ragging is all very well and harms nobody. It goes on in every regiment, and' is ' the unwritten law by which junior officers learn good manners. A wise colonel never interferes with the unofficial authority wielded by the senior subaltern. He draws his own conclusions as to how | things are shaping with his flook. If. on a guest night as he sits ai the head of the" table he oan look down and see nothing but happy, smiling faces round , him, he will not pay muoh attention ! when, later in the evening, his game of bridge is disturbed by yells and cat-calls, and there holts down the corridor a junior officer shorn of most of his clothes, pursued by a 'pack of halloing fellow-subalterns. Not that this is by any means a nightly scene in a well-ordered regiment, but still it has been know to happen. The Teddy Bear Came. A groat game when I joined my regiment was Teddy Bears. This, now I come to think of it, was rather dangerous, but still it was all meant in good part; Providence looked after us, and nobody ever got hurt. Outside the ante-room there was a large coconut mat; inside there were some heavy round match-stands. ■' The game was for the Teddy Bear—usually some unfortunate second-lieutenant—-to go outside the ante-room door, cover himself as well as'Ee could with the mat, and proceed on all fours as fast as possible across the ante-room to the diningroom ■ door. The rest of tho party, who wore the big-game shooters, took pot-shots at him by trundling the match-stands along the floor, he guavd- ' ing himself as well as he could by manipulating the mat. One Teddy Bear, I remember, who though fresn from Sandhurst was of considerable size, got rather annoyed at being hit on the ankle by a match-stand, and I' with a snarl sprang on tho big-game ; shooter who had done it and hugged him nearly to death before he could be pulled off. Another game equally perilous which we used to play was billiards-room ! cricket. The pitch was the. length'of ; the billiards-room, the ball a billiards ; ball, and the hat a short cue From i tip and run tho game quickly dogeno- , rated into boundary hitting, and woo i betido the unlucky bowler if ho could , not reach cover beforo the hall left . the bat. Nowadays, with a stonier i game In play and window glass lit its - prosont price, llinsn nigs havo dropped - out. but they were rowdy, lutpji.v times i' which did no one any harm. The pity . of it- is that so many of the good fel--5 lows wlk used to join in them are now 5 hctoi*en the Mime and Mons.