Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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g TRINITY cottage: gsfnooi. Rnconn gg in FOR BUGHOUSE l tHave you seen The Collegians? l No , said the physician gravely, the boy cannot play for another minute. His skull is cracked right up the back . Can't I, Dr. Jenkins , said Art. Benson faintly, there is only 5 minutes to go and Bughouse needs my kicking . The doctor turned hastily away and buried his head in his black hand bag. Will he be able to do his Algebra study, tonight? asked the Principal. You know, Benson, you are very much behind hand with your work . Gee, Sir , said Coach Jones impatiently, forget- ting his habitual respect, you drive them too hard . You're fired , snapped the Principal, and turn- ing on his heel he walked away. A hush fell upon the little group. Coach Jones fir- ed! and the great athletic week with Midvale beginn- ing in two days! The spare men on the bench looked incredulously after the retreating figure of their Princi- pal and from him to their beloved coach, who stood with bent head and clenched hands. Don't tell the fellows playing , he said suddenly, looking up. It would take all the pep out of them . The game was over and won and the battered team limped off the gridiron. Who should tell them? All hung back. It was the Coach himself who first had the courage to speak. Bad luck, chaps , he said, manly and unselfish as always. Why do you say bad luck, coach , said Red O'Hara, we've won, haven't we? Yes , said the Coach sadly, but for the last time , and with halting words he told them of their im- pending loss. Five minutes later a group of angry boys were standing at the door leading to the Principal's apart- ments. Art Benson, his head covered in plaster of Paris, was at their head. They knocked and were admitted. The Principal sat at his desk facing a bust of Euclid. Well, he said, what do you want? I'm busy. Busiest man around here . We demand, sir, that you immediately recall your rash and utterly unfair dismissal of Coach Jones , said Benson fiercely. I will do nothing of the sort, sir , stormed the Principal, and what is more, you shall go with him . But I am the best all round athlete in Bughouse, sir, and the most popular soph in the college . Yes, sir, and the worst mathematician. Go, sir, and take all these oafs with you . Just let me tell you first, sir, that you are killing the spirit of Bughouse , said Bensonmand with a low gurgling sob he rushed from the room, the team follow- ing With its hand on his shoulder. - - - - That night the boys held a big dance to give their dear coach a fitting send-off. There was not a dry eye as that great man, the hero of all Bughouse men past and present, spoke his farewell speech. He told the simple story of how he had come to the college four years before and found it in a backwater as far as sport was concerned, a nest of candy-fiends and cigarette smokersg how in one year he had made it all different, had kept them to their training and raised them to the first rank in the athletic world. He promised to coach them by correspondence, though, of course, he knew well, he said, the emptiness of the offer, for it was in his personality that lay the secret ot' his success. They gave him a clock. The Athletic week against Midvale began in blaz- ing sunshine. The first event was Ili-avy Apparatus work in the Gymnasium , and Bughouse were cont'id1-nt that Benson's substitute, Sid Fairbanks, could lift a heavier weight than the Midvale representative. Now Sid was a good fellow, while Coach Jones was around. but when the coach had gone he had shut himself in his room with a bottle, saying that he didn't care what happened to him. After a day or so, he didn't know either. They got him as far as the arena and he won the toss. He elected to lift the first weight, but after three attempts Midvale's representative had to lift him and the weight as well. Oh well! The next event is ours at any rate , said the Bughouse boys as they went to watch the chess. Hank Harvey will pull that off . But Hank knew he could do nothing without the coach. He was a good chess-playerg not much inferior to Benson, whose place he was taking, and he was in excellent training. But from the start he was outclassed, not himself . He struggled bravely enough. Twice, when defeat seemed certain, he brought his knee up underneath the table and upset the pieces. Twice the pieces were arranged again and he lost his Queen after the second move. Check , said the Midvale representative at length, hastily lifting the table in the air, Hank's pow- erful kick met nothing but air, and the jar sprained his knee. The game was tip and the 2nd event went to Midvale. Come next week and see the next events in this great sporting contest, the boat-race. the egg-and-spoon race, the tug-of-war, and the girls' tunder sixteen! hammer-throwing contest. Film Star: They offered me 100,000 dollars to stay in America. His Partner: Who offered it, America or Eng- land? Continued From Page 13 quite enjoyable. The Britisher laughs at him because he hunts sparrows and starlings and occasionally appears ridiculous in the light of British ideas of sport, but the Frenchman has just as much right to laugh as we have. It is because he isn't shy of playing tennis on the sands across a piece of string that his countrymen have swept the board at Wimbledon. If we could get our younger generation occasionally to face a rough tennis court or a football ground on a slope, we might produce champ- ionsg not that that is of much importance when com- pared to the other advantages, moral and physical, which exercise has over driving aimlessly around in a fool-proof, noisy and wasteful machine.-Old 'I'n. Although anonymous, we have published the fog going because it has its points, we daresay. from the Old 'Un's point of view. But rather are we inclined to think he has a bee in his bonnet, or his is not an elab- orate set of today or that it is quicker and safer to walk than drive in HIS car. If only for the sake of your and our Radio Corporation and General Motors hold- ings, we should like to see him utterly confounded. What do you say?

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14 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD GREAT MEN AND THEIR WORK BURKE Last month the English speaking world celebrated the biccntenary of Edmund Burke, statesman and or- ator, whose birth is placed with some uncertainty on Jan. 12th, 1729. He was born and educated in Dublin and after trying the professions of barrister and philo- sophical writer in London. entered political life as sec- retary to Lord Rockingham and in 1765 entered the British Parliament as member for a pocket borough. For the next thirty years he was a leading figure in politics. though he was never Prime Minister, or, for that matter, a member of any cabinet. It is not for any practical work that he can claim a place among our greatest statesmen. for. in spite of his great reputation as an orator, he nearly always spoke in vain. Succeed- ing ages are celebrating his bicentenary because they have discovered that on most points he was right and that his political writings and speeches were a precious legacy. to which statesmen of another generation for- tunately paid more attention than did his contempor- aries. When George III. and Lord North insisted upon taxing the American colonies and argued that they had a perfect legal right to do so, the substance of Burke's reply was. Of course you have a legal right, but is that any reason why you should do it, at the cost of war? He based his own views about the solution of the problem. not on legal rights, or abstract ideas. which don't touch men's feelings very deeply, but the force of custom and tradition, which do. The American colonies had not been accustomed to be taxed. he argu- ed. so why annoy them by taxing them now, simply for the sake of enforcing a legal right. It sounds a simple enough argument now, such as would occur to anyone. But the discovery of today is the common-place of to- morrow. No British political thinker before Burke had argued in this way. They had referred all their politi- cal disputes to law on the one hand and to abstract ideas of right on the other, never to custom and senti- ment. The proof that Burke's arguments were new lies in the fact that another century was to pass away be- fore they were properly understood and appreciated, and then they became the cornerstone of British Im- perial Policy. So if he failed to keep America within the Empire. he did as much as any man to keep what was left. The American speeches show him at his wisest. There were two other subjects into which he threw him- self with enormous energy but with less calmness. One was the reform of British rule in India, with which is connected Burke's management of the impeachment of VVarren Hastings: the other was the French Revolu- tion. Burke has been accused of inconsistency because he supported the claims of Liberty, Fraternity. fthough never absolute Equalityi , in India and America, but bit- terly opposed these principles in France. The charge is unfair. In all three cases he was following the same principle. that it was fatal to make too sudden a break from custom and tradition. VVe have explained how he applied this principle to the American problem. In India he advocated studying the Eastern attitude which East- ern history had evolved, building up gradually on what was there already. not sweeping it all away at once and starting a completely new system. After years of trouble and misunderstanding British politicians have begun to pursue his method. If King Amanullah had read Burke he might still be king of Afghanistan. He condemned the French revolution because it was simply one of these sweeping changes. Every trace of the old social and political system of France was rooted up at once. and the break-away from tradition and custom was complete. Burke prophesied for the new French constitution a life shorter than that of the paper on which it was written, because it had no foun- dation in custom. He said, if you obliterate all the ranks, orders and ancient corporations of France, you are merely levelling the way for, the most complete- ly arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth . And in a very few years Napolean had destroyed every vestige of liberty in France. Outside of his political wisdom Burke has another claim to fame. A leading authority on English literature has placed him next to Shakespeare as a master of the language, and he would probably get the vote of the majority as the greatest of all English orators. Burke was a dramatic speaker. He once brought a dagger into the House of Commons and threw it on the floor while he was delivering his speech. His strength, however, seems to have lain more in his fluency than his delivery. His speeches are so full of fine periods that they are al- most tedious to read. but their effect, when spoken, must have been dazzling. In his later years, when his feelings were nearly always too strong for him, he sometimes went beyond all the bounds of parliamentary language. The speech against VVarren Hastings, whom he described as a captain-general of iniquity, one in whom all the fraud. all the tvrannv of India are embod- ied. disciplined and arrayed , and a man whose origin was low. obscure and vulgar, and bred in vulgar and ignoble habits , is an outrage in modern eyes. We can- not read it without feeling indignant sympathy for the great man who had to sit and listen patiently while one unjust abuse was piled upon another, till great gentle- men and ladies sobbed and fainted and he was looked at from all sides with loathing and horror. Once or twice. we are told. he started from his seat, protesting, only to be borne down again by the storm of denuncia- tion. Even on his bicentenary let us frankly admit that here Burke behaved like a bully. a liar and a hvpocrite. He showed that the art of rhetoric can be easily abused even by its best exponents and prove itself onlv too worthy of the sneer which Plato first put upon it and which it has never since shaken off, of obscuring the truth in a mist of fine words. But he must be judged in his time, a time when such scandalous abuse was not only tolerated but ad- mired. Nor was he the first voluble politician who ever held forth about the right wav to govern a country which he had never even seen. His indignation was un- doubtedly genuine. though he lashed it beyond all the bounds of reason. There is no reason why this admitted- ly discreditable episode should seriously tarnish his good name. His vices. such as they were. were the vices of his time while his virtues and his wisdom were far in advance of his time. Probably, too. he would have been the last man to speak with insufficient knowledge of any subject. His views about India were, as we have said. as sound as could be, and backed by a great deal of study. Where he went wrong was in making a scapegoat of a man who had been as much a victim of the system as any Hindu, and who had been forced by the stupidity of some people in great places and the jealousy of others into courses of action which could not be understood by a politician comfortably reading about them in London. A hostess wants a simpler name for the women's afternoon tea-party. -l-VVell, why shouldn't we call it a Talkie ?

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16 g Yi TRgIT'r'gggCOLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD LETTERS TO THE EDITOR llear Sir: Your editorial on the subject of pronunciation and spelling of English takes no account of the fact that America has set herself to remove certain faults in the English language which England is content to put up with. English is a notoriously difficult language for foreigners to learn and the Americans, realizing that such difficulties bring no profit to the country which speaks such a language, have set themselves to simplify it by removing some unnecessary inconsistencies. The spelling thru for through, to which you object, is an instance of this, as is catalog, honor and others. The American language can no more be blamed for Governor Al Smitli's Foist come foist served than the English for the Cockney Ity-ite , for eighty-eight. The Englishman will find more variations of pronuncia- tion in his own country than in any part of America of the same size, but he is only intolerant, it seems, of the American pronunciation. Every other is pictures- que . Yours faithfully, -P. E. R. Editorial Note: The editorial in the last issue of the Record did take account of the American efforts to remove certain faults and welcomes them provided the improvements are substantiated by rules of deriva- tion or phonetics . Honor, catalog and program are not objected to, but to thro there is an objection because it is an abbreviation, and in any case does not pro- nounce through : and to thru , because the final u , pronounced properly, has a narrower sound than ou in through , tExam candidates, note that whatever your own feeling in the matter may be, the English examiners have decided to mark thro, thru' and thro' as spelling errorsl. Our correspondent does not take us to task con- cerning refered for referred , so we assume that he agrees with us. U The pronunciation foist come foist soived is probably the outcome in the beginning of peculiar cli- matic conditions and a different regimen in nutriment, and no blame is attached to anyone so speakingg but just as the Cockney child learns with difficulty that t'paper is not piper , and painfully says payper to show that he is no longer a Cockney, so we expect educated men in English-speaking countries to say first and not foist after the manner of Calvin Cool- idge and Herbert Hoover. After all, in the educated classes of Britain the picturesqueness arises from variety of intonation and not false pronunciation. Dear Sir: I note with interest the position you are assuming in an attempt to amalgamate the English and American languages in a logical manner I will refrain from making any comment as to the Gargantuan nature of the task, but will pass on to a point suggested fpronounced sujestedj by your ob- jection to the abbreviations tho and 'tthru . Far be it from me to defend such a habit, any more than one which would spell through as Uthropmorganbor- ough while still retaining its present pronunciation. You must admit, dear Sir, that even this might have supporters who bear in mind the well known name of Cholmondeley , and base their defence on its pronun- ciation. To come to the point. In the interests of foreign- ers particularly. who wish to master our difficult tongues tEnglish and Americanj, could nothing be done to make it an easier task by standardizing the pronunciation of the syllable Hough as in plough cough , through , and thorough , I must admit that I do realize the supreme difficulty in attempting this. If the syllable were always pronounced as in plough some confusion might arise as to whether a patient were suffering from a mild disease or from that domesticated quadruped which supplies us with cream Cpronounced milkj If, on the other hand we as- sumed its pronunciation as in cough while ploff might sound all right, on attempting to pronounce through some malicious individual would be sure to suggest that the speaker had been over indulging in froth-blowing If tl apologize for all the ifs l, on the third hand it were pronounced as in through , there would always be the danger of the speaker being ac- cused of being a Scotsman, though, undoubtedly this is preferable to the other evils. I will leave it at this, and conclude that it might be better to pronounce it silently Cas the P in FISHJ. Yours, hoping that this germ will bear fruit, but very much doubting it. WAHNSINN . Editorial Note: VVahnsinn is evidently replying in the spirit in which the editorial in queston was writ- ten, that of harmless banter, therefore no comment need be made except this: that his last conclusion is not the least of the three evils, as he says, in witness whereof consult the nationality of the majority of Lon- don Editors. MATHEMATICS, OR LANGUAGES, OR BOTH? Dear Sir: Why should a boy who has no ability in the pursuit of mathematics be obliged to do them, and why also should a boy who cannot make anything of languages be obliged to do them? There you have the question to be discussed. Of course, up as far as the Junior Matriculation, all subjects should be compulsory. By the time that the average boy has passed his Junior Matriculation, he knows what he likes best, and what he is best at, and so do his instructors. When he proceeds further, and begins to work for his Honor or Senior Matriculation, he should be allow- ed to specialize in the type of work which he has prev- iously shown himself to be best suited for . As far as I can see, it does a boy absolutely no good to spend so many unwilling hours every week at French verbs or Latin proses, when it is manifest to all concerned that he would be a better-employed and more willing scholar if he were busy in the Science lab. Again, what on earth is the purpose in obliginf, a boy to learn long pages of Trigonometrical ratios, or puzzle over Geometry riders, when the master who is taking him knows that not only is he not even interest- ed, but that he hasn't even a mathematically-inclined brain? Of course, there are those who will say that when I make the above statements, I say that in other words no boy should be made to do that which he doesn't like, and that if that were to be allowed, no characters would be formed, but that is not what I mean. At most schools, the examination-marks are kept, I should imagine, or at any rate, should be kept, as should all reports, so that by the time that a boy has been attending a school