THE SCHOOL DRILL REVIEW.
July 25th, 1872.
The Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington had seen many vicissitudes, and been turned to many uses, before it ceased to be the head-quarters of the science and art of gardening. But the ground was never turned to better use than when it was lent for the Annual Review of the thousands of boys belonging to the Training Ships and the Pauper Schools of the Metropolitan District Unions. Two of these annual reviews had been held, under the auspices of the Society of Arts, when in 1872, on the 25th of July, the Prince of Wales was asked, as President of that Society, to take the leading part in the proceedings of the day.
About 4000 boys in all mustered, each little regiment marching on the ground with its own band playing and banner flying. The Greenwich Royal Naval School, of 700 boys, were conspicuous in their nest sailor uniforms. The lads of the Warspite, Goliath, and Chichester training ships also made a good appearance. The Greenwich boys, having the advantage of more thorough training and instruction, were excluded from the competition in the drill exercises for which other schools entered.
Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar watched each school at drill under its own inspector, and adjudged the prizes to be afterwards distributed by the Prince of Wales. A Serjeant-major of the Guards was in charge of the parade, and of the march past the saluting point. The arrangements of the day had been chiefly organized by Major Donelly, R.E., to whom great praise was due.
The boys had been at work for some hours, when at 4 P.M., the Prince and Princess of Wales arrived on the ground, accompanied by their two eldest boys in sailors' costume. The prizes were distributed in the Royal Albert Hall. The Princess went to the Royal box, but the Royal princes went with their father to the daïs, where they were welcomed with great clapping of hands, by the thousands of boys, and the thousand adult spectators of the scene. Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar had adjudged the first prize to the boys of the Goliath; the second to the boys of the Shoreditch School at Brentford; and the third to the Lambeth School at Lower Norwood.
After a short address by General Sir Eardley Wilmot, speaking in the name of the Council of the Society of Arts,—
The Prince of Wales rose, and in an excellent impromptu speech "assured the members of the Council and the boys (addressing the latter in kindly way as 'you, my young friends'), of the pleasure it gave the Princess, his two sons, and himself to be present. Congratulating the schools on their excellent marching, and on the favourable report just read, His Royal Highness added that he hoped the boys had been up to the mark in their studies as well as their drill."
Two boys of each prize school came in succession to the daïs, and received the prize banners from the Prince's hand. The Prince and his sons then joined the Princess in her box, and it was a striking scene when, after some bars of prelude, the words of 'God Bless the Prince of Wales' were taken up by a thousand young and clear voices, the Prince and Princess and the two lads standing in the front of the box while it was sung. The last of the programme was then fulfilled by the bands playing a selection of music.
The sight altogether was most gratifying. Here were 4000 boys, most of them paupers, many of them orphans, receiving an excellent education, a training in physical aptitudes and habits of obedience as well as in mental studies. The Greenwich School is composed of the children of seamen being educated for the sea, but the three thousand and more boys of the other schools must in large part be looked upon as so much material reclaimed to humanity. In fact, these three thousand and more boys may, in the words of a paper put forth by the Society of Arts, "be beheld with confident satisfaction as victims rescued from 'the bad,' and preserved for the good as honest, self-supporting producers, and worthy members of the community."