Saltus Grammar School - Yearbook (Hamilton, Bermuda)

Page 7 text:

5 Empire Day Celebrations On May 25th. the school was most fortunate in having aa its dis- tinguished Visitor and speaker Vice-Admiral Sir J. Felgate Stevens, K.B.E., C.B., who was accompanied by Lady Stevens. Vice-Admiral Stevens is Deputy Allied Supreme Commander in the Atlantic, and in command of the American and West Indies Station. At the beginning of his speech, he stressed that Empire Day should be a day of particular pride to Bermuda, as she was the oldest British colony, possessed the oldest representative parliament outside West- minster, and had always been British. Referring to his own schooldays, he remarked how he had looked at Mercator ' s Projection, and noted the vast areas of red denoting the British Empire; since then- there had been great changes, and a Com- monwealth of Nations had sprung into being, with self-government and independence by constitutional agreement the keynotes. The last revolutionary success in Empire history was in 1776, with the conse- quent loss of our American colonies; but it was a fine thing that we shared our history with the United States; he felt that some inscruta- ble providence had made that beginning of the States develop to its present power to redress the evils of the world. The Commonwealth of Nations was unique in its freeness, having no written rules, and possessing a coherence that had never been matched before. The touchstone of the whole organisation was the binding power of the Crown. Wherever Empire in the strict sense of the word had passed, we had left another empire behind. Long years before the changes, Macaulay had foreseen the ultimate destiny of the Empire of British India, when he wrote: The sceptre may pass away from us, but there is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay — the imperishable empire of our arts (by which he meant our ' skills ' ) and our morals, our literature, and our laws. Although British Imperialism and Colonialism had sometimes met with opprobrium, our record was one to be proud of; we had brought good government and better conditions wherever we had gone, and the members of the Empire had grown by gradual degrees to a state of greater responsibility, while the Mother Country still remained the centre and heart, as it was also the centre of communications. Today these communications between one part of the Empire and Great Britain were still largely carried on the seas, which both divided and linked those foreign stations that covered the whole globe.

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Editorial The functions of a school magazine are threefold: to record the activities of the past year: to publish original work indicative of th« intellectual life of the school: to link the Present with the Past. As far as the first is concerned, the magazine performs its func- tion adequately: in the second case, ONE voluntary contribution has been made to this issue, and one suspects that the articles are culled from the English Examination Papers: the third — and entirely ne- glected — aspect of Saltus life should be remedied forthwith. In front of me I have a High School magazine, edited by the pu- pils, not the staff, in which I read that X has just been demobilised from the Royal Marines, that Y was married at such-and-such a church to Z, and that A passed his final examination for the degree of B.Sc. Would it be too much to ask that Old Boys kept the Editor (better still, the Headmaster, as the most permanent institution) informed of their wanderings, promotions, and marriages, so that the maga zine might become a true record of the life of the school? THE EDITOR.

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6 Referring to the Lesson for the day, Let us now praise famous men ... he spoke of the great days of exploration, in which English- men such as Drake, Anson, and Cook had shown the greatest courage, enterprise, and endurance. In India, men like Clive had laid down the pen to take up the sword. Such men were typical of the Empire- builder, living a lonely life in a foreign clime; typical of the thousands, unhonoured and unsung, the district officers, civil servants, doctors, and police who made the British Empire a decent, ordered, well-run place, often at the expense of their health, and faced with family separation, for no great material reward. Speaking to the boys alone, Vice-Admiral Stevens reminded them that all that they had been thinking about — History and Growth — de- pended upon persons and personalities, in short, on guts . He im- pressed upon them that they must not be insular; they must look wide, and, while taking pride in Bermuda, must also remember their share in the Mother Country and the Commonwealth. As a goal, the finest thing after school would be to go to one of the great universities at home, or in Canada. They must travel, and see the world. He left one last thought with them. Whatever career, trade, or profession they might adopt, they must say to themselves, that, be- sides success, they owed it to themselves to make at least one purely personal achievement of enterprise or endurance; to cross an ocean, or climb a mountain. A great ocean sailor had written; If sometimes lives of yourself and others have depended on your decisions, your initiative, and your leadership, when you were soaked seasick, and rather frightened, then, with that experience . . . (and there Kipling ' s If would provide the fitting conclusion). You ' ll be a man, my son! . The Debating Society From fireworks to flying saucers, the Society ' s discussions during the past season have ranged over a number of problems which are irk- ing the world to-day. The programme has included at least one in- novation — a Mock Court-Martial : we venture to liope that this unique case may provide military jurists with valuable precedents, though no communication has been received from the War Office up to the time of going to Press.