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By Root 1757 0

it had been a firm favourite, packed with thrilling adventure stories, with articles on science, on new inventions, on hobbies and leisure pursuits, and it was imbued with a healthy ‘moral tone’ that extolled the virtues of heroism and nobility, well-spiced with the thrills and danger that appealed to a boyish sense of adventure. With the advent of the war the ‘moral tone’ had soared higher than ever. Out went the jungle adventures, the narrow escapes from ferocious beasts, the quelling of treacherous native tribes, the tales of derring-do in remote outposts of the Empire. In came the young heroes, the barbarous guttural Germans, the noble martyred French, wicked Zeppelin crews, vile and devious spies. They featured in dozens of exciting lurid sagas to be rescued or outwitted, as appropriate, by a virtuous schoolboy hero. A favourite character was the master whose post as teacher of German in an educational establishment was merely a cloak for his nefarious activities as a spy. It was always a public school, and the public school ethic with its stern message of moral duty oozed across every page and filtered through more mundane levels of society to impressionable schoolboys everywhere. So far as the Boy’s Own Paper was concerned they were all ‘England’s Boys’, and they were left in no doubt that a great deal was expected of them.

On many a college playing-field,

All fleet of foot, and strong of hand,

They speed the ball, the bat they wield,

And win the victory they have planned.

Across the sward they run the race,

The air is full of happy noise;

Supple of limb, and bright of face,

The pride of our country, England’s boys.

Hope of our country, England’s pride,

Boyhood of Britain, true and brave;

Where’er the sun shall travel wide,

Across the lands, above the wave,

The world shall know not, shall not trace

In Athens’ story, Sparta’s, Troy’s,

A fairer breed, a nobler race,

Than the pride of our country, England’s boys!

Under the circumstances, and under such a flattering depiction of their worth, even readers in Scotland, Ireland, or Wales were only too happy to be regarded as ‘England’s boys’ for the duration.

Those who allowed their minds to stray from the obligations demanded of them by the war to the wider question of civilian careers were dealt with briskly in the correspondence columns which, in the past, had been a willing source of advice: ‘We would help you if we could but due to the War there are no examinations for the most promising of the suggested careers. Your best plan is to join the Army and when the War is over you will have no difficulty in finding an opening’ And again: ‘You can get all the information you require at the nearest recruiting office. Go there at once. Your country needs you!’

The editor adopted a milder tone with the many anxious readers who pleaded for advice on developing puny muscles or even increasing their height in order to reach the standards required by the Army. A few eager correspondents were barely in their teens but, as the editor wrote with kindly encouragement, ‘You cannot begin too soon’ It was hardly surprising that so many impressionable readers of these high-minded sentiments had inveigled their way into the Army well below the minimum age and in almost every battalion of Kitchener’s Army there were baby-faced soldiers, sometimes as young as fifteen.

Bill Worrell, who had never been nearer the playing-fields of Eton than a boat trip on the Thames near his home in Isleworth, had joined up starry eyed at the age of seventeen and suffered the humiliation of having his mother arrive at camp to fetch him home. Since Bill had merely left a note of farewell on the kitchen table it had taken the distracted Mrs Worrell some days to track him down and by then Sergeant Hubbard had taken a liking to him.

Rfn. W. Worrell.

Sid Hubbard had been in the Oxfordshire Constabulary. He was a man who looked every inch a sergeant-major – he had a waxed moustache and he was over six feet, and big with it. He must