Finally, we note a new factor in the composition of the Public School
Type--the military factor. Ten years ago school Cadet Corps were few in
number, lacking in efficiency, and thoroughly lax in discipline. Routine
consisted of some very inert company drills and some very intermittent
class-firing, varied by an occasional and very disorderly field-day.
Real keenness was confined to those boys who had a chance of going to
Bisley as members of the shooting eight. The officers were middle-aged
and short-winded. It was not quite "the thing" to belong to the
Corps--presumably because _anybody_ could belong to it--and in any case
it was not decorous to be enthusiastic about it.
But the Officers' Training Corps has changed all that. At last the hand
of peace-loving and somnolent Headmasters has been forced by the action
of a higher power. Now the smallest public school has its Corps,
subsidised by the State and supervised by the War Office. Three years
ago, in Windsor Great Park, King George reviewed a perfectly equipped
and splendidly organised body of seventeen thousand schoolboys and
undergraduates; and these were a mere fraction of the whole. The O.T.C.
is undeniably efficient. Its officers hold His Majesty's commission, and
have to qualify for their posts by a course of attachment to a regular
body. Frequently the C.O. is an old soldier. Discipline and obedience of
a kind hitherto unknown in schools have come into existence. That is to
say, A has learned to obey an order from B with promptitude and
despatch, not because A is in the Fifteen while B is not, but because A
is a sergeant and B is a private; or to put the matter more simply
still, because it is an Order. Conversely, A gives his orders clearly
and confidently because he knows that he has the whole weight of
military law behind him, and need not pause to worry about athletic
status or caste distinctions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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