ALMA MATER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21258, 12 February 1931, Page 15

ALMA MATER.

That saying about the battles cf Britain being won on the playing fields of Eton has ceased to be true. Lord Roberts was the last of the line of great Sighting leaders of the days when Eton could almost claim to be the Alma Mater of famous soldiers. Kitchener passed his schooldays at Woolwich, Jellicoe began at Rottingclean, Beatty 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 on 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 clay 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 Wykehamists, and one Harrovian. On the other hand, Mr Snowden, Mr Thomas, and Mi Henderson retain memories of board schpol.

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 forgather with old associates: —

Forty years on, when afar and asunder Parted are those who are singing to-day. When we 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 was being made. The boys were assembled at the time for the usual house singing, and a cheer ful-looking little man in spectacles, with a round, red, perspiring face, was at ihc piano playing muffled chords with an ab straetod air. After a time he simply said: “ Now I’ve got something new which I want you to learn. I’ll ;;,”g 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. Tt is sung in the council schools as well as the public schools to-day. Har 7 rovians proudly declare that they hear it in the schools of Germany and America.