Peacocks v. Saddles

Timid? Cowardly? Vain? Dishonest? Untruthful? Easily bored? Was this, wondered London last week, any way to describe the healthy, cricket-playing backbone of the Empire, the British public school boy? Heaven forbid. But there, in banner headlines in the London Press, glowered those very words. What bounder had dared utter them?

It was Cuthbert Harold Blakiston, 53, headmaster since 1925 of SS. Mary & Nicolas College (Lancing College), one of England's first-rank secondary schools. Headmaster Blakiston, an old Oxonian, has been an assistant master at Sherbourne, a house master at Eton. His reputation as Lancing's head is considerable. Last week he told the British Medical Association that the boy of today is not the boy of 30 years ago. The old spirit of adventure is gone, the old initiative impaired. "In place of the adventurous outdoor sportsman of the past," gloomed Cuthbert Harold Blakiston, "we now have youths who do not know how to saddle a horse and who dress like peacocks!"

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