These are truisms; but in reply to a man who will venture to hold up to ridicule, as a sort of bugbear with a big stick, such men as Captain Digby and other captains of the Britannia, truisms appear to be necessary.
Admiral Richards replies, October 26th, that officers of education, ability, and life-long experience of discipline are the best men to train young officers in their own service, and asks what Wykehamists and Etonians would say if he and others of his service were to dictate as to the management of public schools.
A GROUP OF CAPTAINS (CHRISTMAS, 1890).
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.
The editor of the Western Morning News writes again on October 27th, reiterating his former statements, which he apparently discounts, however, by a quotation from a letter written by the father of one of the cadets who was expelled by Captain Digby. He says that his son and his contemporaries went through it when first they joined, and had their turn at fagging afterwards; and then, seeing that he has, by implication, convicted his son of bullying, proceeds to describe how “one penny was exacted, in a thoroughly good-humoured way, from boys passing a certain bridge; but there was no thrashing or bullying used to extort it.”
Captain Digby, for his part, says frankly:—“It had, no doubt, been going on for a long time, and, owing to the reticence of youth, it took me a year to get to the bottom of it; but I finally succeeded in getting rid of the principal culprits.”
No doubt the “reticence of youth” is a very important factor in all such cases, and it would be safe to assume also that the captain had not been too well served by some of his subordinates, who were either lax in supervision or failed to realise the importance of a growing evil.
This was one of the unsatisfactory cycles or phases through which most schools periodically pass; indeed, it is said that they have recurred with great regularity, and each time, no doubt, experience has dictated some new measures for the future suppression of irregularities.
As a picture of “The Britannia from Within,” a little booklet written by a cadet a year or two later may very well be quoted from here. It is styled “H.M.S. Britannia, the Cradle of the Royal Navy: by one of the Babies,” and sets forth in a light vein the experiences of a few days in the life of a cadet:—