ALMA MATER

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 69, 20 February 1931, Page 8

ALMA MATER

SCHOOLS OF FAMOUS FIGURES. That saying about the battles of Britain being won on the playing fields of Eton has ceased to be true (says a contemporary). Lord Roberts was the last of the line of great fighting leaders of the days when Eton could almost claim to be the Alma Mater of famous soldiers. Kitchener passed his schooldays at Woolwich, Jelhcoe began at Rottingdean, Beattv went straight to the Navy. Allenby recalls with affection boyhood.days at Haileybury, Haig started school at* Clifton, and French began to train for the sea Oh the Britannia before deciding on an Army career.

The legend was that our soldiers came from Eton, while Harrow had a strong position as the Alma Mater of statesmen. This, too, has changed with the times. Mr Stanley Baldwin is the only Prime Minister of our dav whose Alma Mater was Harrow, but "he paid his tribute to his love'of the old school when he participated in the opening of the memorial to Harrovians who fell in the war. The late Lord Asquith and Oxford was a City of London schoolboy, Mr Lloyd George began his education in the church school at Llanystymowy, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s Alma Mater was a board school. Nevertheless, the old schools make a very fair display, even in a Socialist Government. The present Ministry includes four Etonians, two Wakehamists, and one Harrovian. On the other hand, Mr Snowden, Mr Thomas, and Mr,Henderson retain memories of board school.

Therefore, Our Lady of Memories has many manifestations. All our modern authorities on our language agree that Alma Mater is now rightly used as our name for any place of training or school. But the special honour of Harrow' is that she provided the famous song which all schools sing and all men echo in their hearts whenever they foregather with old associates: —

Forty years on, when afar and asunder Parted .ate those who are singing today, When w'e look back and forgetfully wonder What we were like in our work and our play.

It was Lord Ernest Hamilton who left his schoolboy impression of the historic occasion when the great song was introduced, but no boy at Harrow then realised that school history v'as being made. The boys were assembled at the time for the usual house singing, and a cheerful-looking little man in spectacles, with a round, red, perspiring face, was at the piano playing muffled chords with an abstracted air. After a time simply said: “Now I’ve got something new which I want you to learn. I’ll sing it through to you.’! This was how-John Farmer produced the immortal song, and it made such an immediate impression that all the boys came away humming it.

“Forty Years On” was heard in the trenches. It is sung in the council schools as well as the public schools to-day. Harrovians proudly declare that they hear it in the schools of Germany and America.