AGS Magazine December 1942

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THE

ABERDEEN GRAMMAR SCHGDL MAGAZINE

ABERDEEN Pupils' Club at-The University Press • prinMcl forlhe Former PRICE ONE SHILLING, Volume XLVI, No. 1.

December 1942.

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS .;) •

JAMES

Cy)

'

G. BESSET

CONTINUES to supply all the Class Books (New or Second-hand) suited for the requirements of the Higher Educational Institutions in the City, at the Lowest Prices.

N.B.—Best Value in Students' Note Books.

JAMES G. BISSET, Classical, Medical, and

85

BROAD

Educational Bookseller,

STREET

(Opposite Marischal College)

•

PHONE 753 •

GOOD HEALTH demands

GOOD BREAD For the children especially is it necessary to ensure their stamina and energy with good, wholesome, nourishing bread. In Hutchison's bread you'll find all these requirements are fully met. Phone or give instructions to have it supplied daily.

A►.B.HUTCHISOHI nit MORAL BAKtstr

BRANCHES THROUGHOUT THE CITY

OLD GOLD •

is

Urgently Wanted Out-of-Date JEWELLERY WATCHES CHAINS COINS and Odds and Ends of every description realize

HIGH PRICES to-day

Full Value received at

A. & J. SMITH 191 Union Street ABERDEEN

LITITIES Dave just what you are looking for Something to wear that is well cut, smart and practical and not too expensive -~a

SUITS TRAVEL COATS MODEL COATS FROCKS DRESSES GOWNS FUR COATS

Sizes to fit all figures from 36- hip to 56" hip

A. C. LITTLE & SONS, LTD. 105 UNION STREET

•

ABERDEEN

NAVY RAINPROOF COATS in Sizes — 24" up to 42" length

Campbell's Rubber Co., Ltd. 18 BRIDGE STREET

'Phone 157

CE-- STAINED GLASS &

A. D. COPLAND. Phone 8%.

For Better Footwear

JAMES LORIMER & SON (BOOTMAKERS), LTD.

CIVIL and MILITARY BOOTMAKERS

8 CHAPEL ST.

ABERDEEN

(Late of 162 Union Street)

'Phone 724.

Go to . . .

KENNAWAY'S of course RESTAURANT--I73 UNION STREET Here you get the finest of food, daintily served, and at a reasonable price. The Restaurant is comfortable and commodious, and is just the place to entertain your friends. Our rooms are available for all types of functions. 'Phone 2371, and ask the Manageress for quotations

WM. iKENNAWAY LTD. Quality

Bakers, Confectioners and

Caterers,

Aberdeen

Telephone No. 1891.

ARCHIBALD MAELLAR Family Grocer and Wine Merchant,

454-456 Union Street, Aberdeen.

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-

. . We Specialise in . .

Cooked

Gammons, Finest Belfast Smoked Hams, Wiltshire Bacon.

Medicinal Wines—Vibrona, Hall's, Wincarnis, Phosferine.

THE VALUE OF RECOMMENDATION 19

"We have been recommended to you by Every day that phrase is being used by Customers on their first visit to our showrooms.

THE

REASON-

OUR STOCK is of good quality and our prices are reasonable.

OUR SERVICE is of a personal nature and we study the requirements of every Customer.

SATISFACTION IS OUR AIM

ROBERTS (Abdn.) LTD THE FURNISHING HOUSE

CABINETMAKERS AND UPHOLSTERERS

OF ENTERPRISE

419 UNION STREET, ABERDEEN 'Telephone 2695

Established 1873

JAMES FYFE & SON PAINTERS AND GLAZIERS. '

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OFFICE AND SHOWROOMS :

11 DEE STREET, ABERDEEN. Telephone 304.

Telegrams

" Fife, Painters.''

•

NNW

It's an economy and a convenience to register with ALEXANDER . . . for your BUTCHER MEAT and BACON. You can then be certain of supplies of FISH and POULTRY--and you can place your order for all these food-stuffs either in person or at the cost of only one 'phone call. The 'phone No. is 5172

A. X W. AILIEXAMIDIEU FISH, GAME AND MEAT MERCHANTS

492 UNION STREET

•

+

ABERDEEN

FARM: CUI.TER Tel. 6

DAIRY: ABERDEEN Tel. 1215, 7013, 7014

KENNERTY DAIRY

FARM •

WILLIAM REITH Sole Proprietor: JOHN REITH •

46-48 ROSE

STREET, ABERDEEN

. . . . . . .

Editorial Notes News from Enemy-Occupied Shanghai (Geo. A. Buyers) Ethiopian Journey. By A. C. . . . .

• . . .

The " Magazine " .

Barbados—" Little England." By Archibald Young The Early 'Eighties. By Howard A. Gray, M.A. . . . . . . .

Notes About Old Boys . . . . . . . . .

Marriages . .

• . . . . . . . .

Obituary . . . . . . . . . .

Pro Patria Mortui . . . . . . . .

Roll of F.P. War Service . . , . . . . . . . .

Missing . . . . . . . .

An Honour for the School . . . . . . .

A Former Rector Charged . . . .

Glimpses of an Army Officer's Life in India Journeying to Southern Rhodesia. By Kenneth Hood Robertson .

Do more Work in Less Time. By Campbell Connon, M.A. School Section— . .

School and Random Notes . .

A Visit to Haworth. By Alastair Brown .

School Sport—A Résumé of the Term's Activities .

• School Rugby Notes . .

• The Air Training Corps .

The School Army Cadets . .

The Literary and Debating Society The Dramatic Society . . .

Scout Notes The Former Pupils' Club— The F.P. Club Boarding House • The Cricket Section .

The Rugby Section .

List of New Members •

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SCHOOL OUTFITS ARE A PROBLEM Owing to manufacturers being wholly

employed on

Govern-

ment contracts we are at the moment unable to supply many of

the Grammar

Garments.

We

School

will do our

utmost to fit your boy with a serviceable school outfit.

ESSLEMONT & MACINTOSH (RETAILERS) LTD. UNION STREET, ABERDEEN

W. M. McPHERSON Baker and Confectioner 15 FOUNTAINHALL ROAD AND

8

ST.

SWITHIN

STREET

ABERDEEN

Established 1843

WM. CAY & SONS (FUNERAL DIRECTORS) LIMITED 415 UNION STREET and

209 GEORGE STREET,

ABERDEEN

BARGAINS are difficult to-day but I still have good value in typewriters, safes, desks, chairs, and other office equipment.

It's remarkable how many Safes seem to be required. People like to protect their papers from that man Hitler.

You know what Mr. Churchill called him over the wireless.

Dashed appropriate, I thought.

•

But, to get back to come in and see me

business,

All Funeral Requisites Supplied

C. H. WEBSTER

Cremations Arranged

489 Union Street Talegrame—"Cay, Aberdeen."

Telepbon• Nos. 93 and 54.

ABERDEEN

Telephone: 8811-2

Telegrams : ' Blake Builders'

JAM ILS 113 II_ AU IL 11_1111U,.

Jolliet% Mill Building

Contract

On.

106 CROWN STREET Works-23, 25, 29 SUMMER STREET,

All classes of Building Joinery

ABERDEEN

Enquiries courteously solicited

DRAWING

STRACHAN

INSTRUMENTS COMMERCIAL

PAPER

&

COLOURS

PORTRAITURE

&

PHOTOGRAPHY

BRUSHES

•

at

Telephone 851

•

Octylors,

416 UNION STREET

49-51 Scboolbill

ABERDEEN

'Phone 2870

PHONE

1219

We Buy OLD GOLD SILVER AN D

GEM-SET JEWELLERY HIGHEST PRICES PAID

JAMIESON & CARRY • e .

-

EST°

-:-

JEWELLERI • WATCHMAKERS • SILVERSMITHS

142 UNION STREET,

ABERDEEN

(NEXT unnoN ell,DGE)

TO OUR CUSTOMERS We regret that the present restrictions on both men and materials make it impossible for us to maintain the usual high standard of service which we have carried on for nearly a century. We can assure you that we are doing our utmost to please you and trust that you will be patient with us.

J. & A. OGILVIE 369 UNION STREET ABERDEEN Telephone No. 433

Telegrams : " Interiors"

Your Happiest Hours are spent at your own fireside, and the choice of your Fireplace deserves the utmost consideration.

-

From the range of Modern and Period

Fireplace

Arrangements

we are showing, you will find it easy to select exactly the style you desire.

James Scott & Son (Aberdeen) Ltd. 483-485 UNION STREET ABERDEEN Phone 1 881—2

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,....d°° EVERY MAN TO HIS CALLING In these days everyone has, or should have, a job of work to do. However humble the task, let him do it well for his own and his country's sake.

The task in front of Collie's of Aberdeen is to facilitate the fulfilment of the desire to get good quality Groceries and Provisions at reasonable prices. That we have succeeded is the verdict of thousands of satisfied shoppers.

May we have the pleasure and privilege of serving YOU?

awe,. Geta ?g,y.eate FAMILY GROCERS AND ;WINE MERCHANTS

269-271 UNION

STREET

4

ABERDEEN

Telephones: CENTRAL 4800 (4 lines) Branch Shops at CULTS, BALLATER, and BRAEMAR Telephones: Cults 28; Balloter 14; Braemar 212

0

I

Assets

Established 1836

L28,700,000

•

Northern Assurance Company Limited •

•

FOR ALL CLASSES OF INSURANCE •

•

LIFE ASSURANCE BRANCH The Company's tables of rates for Life Assurance include every class of Policy SPECIAL LEAFLETS ON-

The " Optional " Policy The Educational Endowment Policy Child's Deferred Assurance Policy Death Duties Policy Life Annuities

CHIEF OFFICES:

ABERDEEN . .

LONDON

1 UNION TERRACE 1 MOORGATE, E.C. z

Branches and Agencies throughout the World

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine -

58th year: No. 151 (New Series, 49118 year, No. 142) DECEMBER 1942

Vol. XLVI

No. I

The " Grammar School Magazine" is issued under the auspices of The Former Pupils' Club, twice a year in war-time—in June and December.

All communications with regard to the " Magazine" should be addressed to the Editor (the Secretary and Treasurer of the Club),

--

THEODORE WATT, M.A., LL.D., The University Press, 6 Upper Rirkgate, Aberdeen.

•

Editorial Notes.

This is the ninth number of the Magazine that has been issued since the outbreak of the War, now more than three and a quarter years ago. Throughout that period Former Pupils of the School have undoubtedly been undergoing thrilling experiences in many areas of the conflict. Unfortunately, only an occasional account of these has reached the Editor, and the information has been fragmentary, with the result that the War record in the Magazine has been rather disappointingly meagre. In this number the veil is raised a little, and some account is given of an escape from Singapore, evacuation from Burma, release from Manchuria, and of experiences in Shanghai under the Japanese occupation. One F.P. is recorded as having made a thrilling landing from the air in the Atlantic; of anther's life as an Indian Army officer some glimpses are given; and a third contributes an account of his war-time journey to Rhodesia. It is hoped that similar material, in greater quantity, will be available for the next issue. * * * The melancholy list " Pro Patria Mortui " is lengthening rapidly, the names of no fewer than 2r appearing in this issue. In addition, there are a number of Former Pupils who are missing and believed to have been killed, but whose deaths have not yet been officially presumed.

The School has suffered very grievously: indeed, we know of no school in Scotland that has a longer list of the fallen. * * * and the fall of Singapore, Malaya of invasion Japanese the to Owing the fate of a large number of F.P.s is in doubt. Some fortunately escaped and others are believed to be prisoners of war. The Editor is anxious to receive information about all Former Pupils who were in Malaya, whether members of the F.P. Club or not, and hopes that relatives will communicate with him when authentic news comes.

2

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

News from Enemy-Occupied Shanghai.

The Glorious Story of H.M.S. Petrel. [fVe are privileged to publish the following extracts from a letter, dated

8th August 1942, from GEORGE ALSToN BUYERS* (/.906-08), 272 Rue Ferguson, Shanghai, who has been for over twenty years a chartered accountant in that city and was one of the donors to the School of the Shanghai Clock.

—Ed. A.G.S. Mag.]

This is the first letter I have sent off to you and it may be the last, but I hear there will be a third evacuation ship of Britishers going off later. The first went off yesterday and took letters from me. I had to write them in one evening, as a fellow going with the first boat suddenly agreed to take letters, subject to confiscation. This letter is going with the diplomats and consular crowd on the second ship, which leaves in a week's time. In addition to this I have written a a s-word Red Cross letter once a month to you, beginning April, each of which will be apparently four months on its journey. I was delighted to get the first news from your side from G. ten days ago, when I received his as-word letter telling me you were all well.

I hope you all have not been unnecessarily anxious over us out here. We have been extremely fortunate and have been treated in a most common-sense manner. I have resided at home these past eight months and will continue to do so I am sure, provided I can renew my lease, which goes on only for six months at a time, according to the landlord's wishes. We have been fortunate living in the French Concession, but our " friends " over here are filtering in and have already established their gendarmerie headquarters. We handed over our cars long ago. Bicycles are at a terrific price. - I've cycled for eight months on a broken-down old British one, which we bought for our cook. We've still got our radios. I heard Lady MacRobert on 27th July telling us how Alasdair, Roderic, and lain were lost.

We've been allowed to go on working and had lots to do during the first eight months, due to carrying out the audits of last year's accounts of clients, but we are reduced now to a little accountancy work. We have stored up our cash reserves and with these, and what little we earn, we estimate to last until the end of the year. We pay ourselves a minimum living wage each month.

Our life is not particularly interesting. I am confined to the limited borders of our Western district for exercise, which extend to a railway line about a mile and a half from here, whereas folk who can claim a bit of garden beyond the railway, or a room as residence in somebody's house beyond, have managed to get passes, and so have the whole countryside available to them for another 6 miles. I don't worry very much about it. I seem to be overwhelmed with the upset, and am quite content after an 8-mile cycle-ride each day (4 to office and 4 back) to sit down at home on my veranda. Between 7 and 8 my mess-mate and I stroll along the road (very peaceful these days without motor-car traffic) and meet others out strolling. We have

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 3 for house in the to 93° 9o been through a month of heat now, between eight or ten days steady recently. I love the heat, however. I think it is due to the fact that I have always in mind the dreaded winter without coal or electric heaters. We just scraped through last winter with the greatest economy in coal. This winter I shall retire to bed and hide there with a hot-water bottle. One gets very exhausted freezing at one's desk in an office. We have got a lot of readingmatter. The many " Penguin " books you have sent out to us have come in very useful. The enforced idleness in the evenings has given me the opportunity to read heavier literature—I've even resorted to Shakespeare. Our Amateur Dramatic Club was allowed to carry on.

It has got a very good theatre of its own. The Club announced in May last that they would produce Richard III, so I arranged to complete my annual audit of the Club's books when I thought the rehearsals would be becoming interesting. After the very first evening's work I turned up at the bar in the rehearsal room, and before I had time to give an order, I was asked to be one of the Dukes, with a small part and a few lines. I assented and was immediately raised to the Peerage and became the Earl of Oxford, accompanying Richard in Act V. The show was a tremendous success and highly spoken of by all nationals, including G's and J's.

I have no idea of my prospects after the war. It is impossible to tell. We may be very much in demand or we may be right out of it.

I will no doubt have sufficient to pay off my debts. At the same time conditions will be pretty impossible for a family of young people out here.

We have a small vegetable garden at the far end of our lawn these days, and got a tremendous lot of tomatoes and cucumbers. . . .

P.S.—I feel I must tell you the story of our little gunboat, H.M.S. Petrel, which was lying off in the river opposite my office. I have never heard it mentioned over the radio. When war was declared at 4 a.m., a Japanese officer called at 4 a.m. on the Captain, informed him of the news, and asked him to surrender, which he wouldn't do.

Half an hour later the J's lined up their small-pounder guns (in the dark) opposite the ship, on the Bund, and just let blaze and practically blew the ship out of the water. Three or four sailors were killed or died later of wounds in hospital. About nine got ashore, including the Captain. When interviewed by a J. correspondent later and asked (per local newspaper account) why he did not surrender against such overwhelming odds, the Captain replied, " We naval officers are not in the habit of surrendering our ships." I think this incident will prove to be an epic. For days beforehand I used to look across at the little ship and wonder what would happen to her if the balloon went up. I knew the Navy never hauled down its flag, and what I expected did happen, but all the next day, when we thought the whole ship's complement had " gone west," I felt terribly sad.

4

Aberdeen Grammar School Alagazine

Ethiopian Journey.

Prickly heat, the scourge of the Red Sea littoral, covered every inch of my body, the sweat poured down in rivulets even into my shoes. The shade temperature stood at 1 x 8° F., not the semblance of a breeze stirred the moisture-laden air, and the brazen sky gave no hint of respite. Little did I care, for after two years of arduous toil, of raids, of black-outs, of alarms by land and sea in this furnace of a climate, I was packing, or rather my dripping Nubian boy did the work whilst I directed : packing and off to a land which I'd long surrounded with a halo of romance, of adventure, and of opportunity ; the land of the Lion of Judah, of the King of Kings, that central Christian stronghold ringed by Moslem states—Ethiopia: Ethiopia whence went the King of Wisdom, Solomon, to daily with the far-famed beauty, the Queen of Sheba, and so found a royal race.

The train slowly climbed up into the barren Red Sea hills and by day and by night steamed across a dusty desert. The fish which had been delicious for breakfast, and was edible for lunch, cried aloud in the sweet desert air at dinner, and not even masquerading as a j4/I could its vintage be hidden next morning. On such occasions the African chicken with its diminutive egg comes to the rescue. The train halts, the head sufragi or butler, a portly, brown gent., descends and bargains with little brown maids, dressed only in string kilts, for a basket of eggs. Each egg is solemnly tested in a gourd of water for freshness, a deal struck, and away we go again.

At the Eritrean border we came on a river we couldn't get across.

Instead of a crocodile an " angareeg," or string bed slung on a parlouslooking wire, had to be mounted, and so across the flood we were ferried. My boy in his excitement dropped a shoe into the torrent and in anger or disgust tossed its fellow after it. That night we spent in a transit camp—tents grouped round a tin shed, which was the mess : a motley crowd—nursing sisters, young subs., and grizzled colonels, even a civilian, a Greek cinema-proprietor taking films to the troops.

Next morning a large Italian omnibus with a cockney driver rattled us over the loose shingle roads to the railhead of the narrow-gauge Eritrean line. At a well-appointed mess we had a slap-up lunch, and as the officer in charge happened to be an old patient of mine, this meant a special and very welcome glass of cold beer. Cast your bread upon the waters!

The little Diesel rail-coach driven by an Italian and laden to capacity shot round corners, roared down slopes, pulled up stiff gradients past the great mountain battlefield of Cheren, till chilled to the bone we reached Asmara, 7,000 feet above sea-level, and drove through the deserted streets to a hotel. Curfew rings at 8.3o p.m.

Asmara is a well-built town with wide roads, churches, cinemas, and hotels. It is difficult to imagine one is in Africa. A three-ton Ford truck awaited me with a Sudanese driver. The latter was given an advance to buy food for the road. Next morning, after prolonged search he was found in hospital a mass of bruises as the result of a drunken brawl. An Italian driver was then dug out, but when

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

5 detailed to drive an officer to Addis, he promptly fainted in the office.

Finally, a wild-looking Eritrean called Haile was found to take the wheel, rations and petrol were drawn, and off I set, accompanied by my somewhat bewildered Sudanese retainer. Followed an uneventful run to Adowa, the scene of more than one battle, and on through fertile country to Axum. What a quaint old place! From the village green springs a giant stone obelisk verdant with age. Surrounded by great stone walls is an ageless church. Big trees shade it. Inside resides the regalia of four kings of Ethiopia. Axum was Scone.

Little winding lanes separate the snug stone huts of the natives, each hut in its own compound with an entrance guarded by a heavy, much studded door. The Tigre inhabitants of Axum were frank and cheerful and communicative and most proud of their town and church. The whole place reeked of history.

A pleasant evening was spent with some South African pilots, billeted in what had once been the Governor's house. The bathroom was enormous, with every conceivable gadget, none of which worked, and walls and ceiling were so painted with sickly mermaids and fishy fish that one felt in a second-rate aquarium.

Next morning, after breakfasting on M. & V. ration and coffee, we crossed by a rough and steep mountain path on to the main road at Adigrat. There I found a barrier across the road and out rushed a sergeant and enquired where the rest of the convoy was. I had to admit I was alone. He said there was a strict convoy rule that not less than two cars containing a minimum of five armed men was allowed and that the road I had just come was one of the worst for brigands. Where ignorance is bliss, . . .l Since the war bands of brigands, called " Shifto," armed with rifles, Tommy-guns, and even machine-guns, infest the roads, and there have been one or two tragedies —hence the wise convoy rule.

The Café de Roma was opposite and the sergeant volunteered that you could get a good feed there. A somewhat grubby Italian served an enormous plate of bean soup and coarse brown bread, followed by musty macaroni, and excellent coffee—certainly a feed.

Eventually a Ford saloon with three officers and two lorries arrived and I was requested to proceed with them, and we went all out on a fairly level stretch of road to arrive at Qu-iha at dusk. Another transit camp. It was cold, we were tired after our zoo-mile drive, so after a quick dinner, at which bully took pride of place, we slipped into bed to the howling of innumerable hyenas.

Off at dawn—a miserable, cold dawn. Breakfast had been ordered for 5 a.m., but the boy slept in and we had to start without. In the village, however, an early Italian provided us with most grateful steaming café as lait. Our escort consisted of two lorry-loads of smiling black troops, and we bowled along through lovely mountain scenery and fertile valleys till the road started to rise sharply, i,6oo feet in five miles, to a height of 9,842 feet—the pass of Amba Alagi—the scene of one of the fiercest engagements of the recent campaign. The descent was even abrupter, and we turned a corner to find that one of the lorries had gone over the precipitous edge. A great boulder had

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine by good fortune barred its drop to the fatal depths below, but even so, it took me two hours to splint the fractures, stitch the cut heads and give morphia, and dress the many wounds of the once grinning blacks.

Petrol boxes were chopped up as splints, and a precious unread copy of The Times requisitioned as padding. The lorry was a write-off, and the other had to be sent back to the nearest hospital with the wounded. This left two cars but only four armed men. To make up the complement I produced my shot gun and armed my servant with it.

From Amba Alagi onwards it was pathetic to see the lorry cemeteries, hundreds of vehicles destroyed by war or rendered useless by the Italians or looted by the Shifto. The roadsides were lined by these scarred monsters, the fair landscape marred by their ugly presence.

The road passed through scenery Alpine in its grandeur—red and white clover, Scotch thistles, wild thyme, and marigolds blossomed bravely. We stopped by the wayside and ate a hurried " brunch " of tinned herrings and army biscuits. On through giant euphorbias, past shining Lake Ascianghl, and down by a series of the most spectacular and alarming zigzags to the plain of Allomata. Poor Haile got so giddy swinging round corners that I had to relieve him at the wheel.

Then started a series of punctures to the saloon, and only then did Haile tell me that he had no jack, no pump, and no tools, but we'd get them at Addis. Even punctures were mended. The Mai Amara Tunnel should have been the next landmark but it had been blown up, and a long tedious rough diversion had to be negotiated. In the dusk we passed Lake Haic, with a gem of a monastery on a wooded island setting. Satiated with mountain scenery and punctures, at 9 p.m. we rolled into Dessie, found an excellent hotel, and dined well.

Next morning, after a frugal breakfast of bread, butter, and coffee, we filled up tanks and 40-gallon spare drums with petrol for the last lap of 250 miles to Addis, and were on the high road by 8 a.m. The road, after skirting the precipitous sides of Dessie hill, just drops away, 2,2oo feet in 53 miles down to thick acacia forests, till the lowest part of the road was reached at 3,497 feet above sea-level. A flat stretch of cotton soil flanked by marshes allowed us to cruise along at a steady fifty. Once across the plain the most spectacular rise of all occurs5,60o feet in 22 miles. It is a low-gear job the whole way, but the road is very well graded. Half-way up we stopped to cool off and have lunch of bully beef, cold sausage, biscuits, and tinned peaches. The final climb winds up the side of the Termaber mountain to io,OO40 feet, and here the road pierces the mountain by the Mussolini Tunnel—as fine a piece of engineering as is to be seen in Africa. What a breathtaking view, and breath is rather precious at 1o,ooo feet! On the other side the road emerges on the main Abyssinian plateau, an undulating, almost treeless region of very fertile soil. Great fields of wheat, of beans, of blue-flowered flax, of eleusine were ripening in the sun, and herds of cattle, horses, mules, and donkeys fattened on the luscious pasture. Bands of Amhara natives were encountered. The men, armed with rifles and enormous, coloured leather bandoliers, looked picturesque but alarming.

A wild-looking Abyssinian suddenly jumped out of a ditch and 6

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 7 raised his hand, about to throw a hand-grenade, I feared. I stepped on the gas and shot out of range, drew up, and slipped a round into the breech ready to destroy the brigand but decided to have a look at him first through field-glasses. There was a glum-looking tough disconsolately holding a tin of stolen Army milk which he had hoped to sell me!

Addis, my Mecca. A motley of Abyssinians, Italians, men and women, black troops, brown troops, white troops, donkeys, mules, horses, carts, cars, lorries, bicycles, street urchins, dignified chiefs, red-tabbed officers, beggars, and buggies thronged the muddy eucalyptus-lined streets. Tin shanties, mud hovels, pretentious bungalows, and European shops all jostled each other. Loud-speakers blared in the market square. Cheap Jacks tried to sell gold watches and Japanese carpets ; smart black policemen controlled the traffic: a tawdry mingling of East and West, of modern and ancient. The one hotel was a dismal place. Mosquitoes buzzed and bugs were not unknown. Night was the signal for dark deeds to start, and rarely a night passed without shots being heard around the town. I had arrived at the end of the long rains and this cheerful event is celebrated by a special religious service held in the Palace grounds. Only a limited number of spectators could be accommodated, tickets were eagerly sought and finally balloted for. Quite accidentally I gatecrashed. I was looking for my truck when a padre passed and said, " Its round this way and about to start." Surprised, I hurried after him to find myself in the Palace grounds and decided to stay. Priests in cloth of gold, in shimmering purple, in green, in red, in blue, in yellow, in black, some carrying golden umbrellas, golden crosses, golden staffs, and most with silver sweet-toned rattles in their hands : they filed slowly into the quadrangle, chanting. The sun shone on their brilliant trappings. The head priest, in unrelieved black, officiated, and intricate dances and singing and chanting and refrains went on and on. The great Holy Book was then presented with dignified ceremony by the head priest to the King of Kings, the Emperor Haile Salassic, who had but recently reoccupied his throne.

He stepped out and kissed the Book. The chanting and stamping and intricate movements went on. The H.P. seemed to be getting restless. At last it was over. . The clergy, glittering in the sunshine, filed out. The H.P. bent down, swiftly whipped off his European boots, and with a sigh of relief heaved them to the multitude.

After a short stay in Addis I was asked to go into the wild West to deal with an epidemic of typhus and relapsing fever (both carried by lice). An escort of seven police was deemed necessary and I was issued with a large revolver and a tiny Italian doctor. The latter was keen to restart his work among the people, which had been interrupted by the war. The police were wild-looking Abyssinians and scared me more than the lack of an escort would have done. Off we set in the truck, loaded with medical stores and rations. At first the road was an excellent tarmac one, but it suddenly stopped, and we struggled along a tortuous, hilly, overgrown path. A mist and then a drizzle came on, and in spite of chains the lorry slithered alarmingly.

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Unsafe wooden bridges were crept across ; at one the back wheel went through and a policeman fell into the torrent. I learned many flowery and expressive Amharic words before car and man were extricated. Weary, cold, and hungry after i a hours' hard driving, I descended in the dusk at a lovely house with a great overgrown garden, but through the grass could be seen roses, lilies, carnations, and there were borders of large violets. Inside, the house was dark, damp, and cheerless, and bare save for a table and chair. I regret to state a little sabotage occurred, and soon a warming fire was roaring in the grate and steaming hot sweet tea produced.

Of my experiences amongst the wretched Galla population, the dirt, the lice, the sores, the indifference but also the gratitude, I shall not tell ; just one incident, then back to the Sudan. Day after day I badgered the local overlord for workmen to cut the grass round the deserted hospital and swore none of the numerous sick would have any attention till this was done. At last a party arrived, but it started to rain within half an hour and they all retired home. Day after day I repeated my requests, and one bright morning a goodly party turned up and attacked the head-high grass in earnest. Suddenly, uproar and panic ; I thought snakes. It was worse—a wasps' bike. From the veranda I chortled at the antics of the slapping, yelling mob. Next minute I was in full flight with a sting in my nose and a savage horde round my ears. The 'cute little Italian was already hidden in the only room with shuttable windows and in there I dashed. As we gazed out at the frustrated swarm two Army lorries with some signallers and much-needed rations drew up, the men chatting happily. Suddenly, with oaths, engines were revved up and away shot the lorries. I never got that grass cut. It had to wait till it was dry enough to be burned.

I left the little doctor established, returned to Addis, made my way through Southern Abyssinia to the Kenya border, crossing the most forbidding stretch of country in Africa—the black lava desert. En route we paid a visit to the, interesting hill oasis of Marsabit, which has a flora and fauna of its own. Thence through the pleasant land of Kenya to Mombasa and by flying-boat to Khartoum and back to toil on the torrid Red Sea coast.

A. C.

The " Magazine."

Here are two " small tributes of appreciation " recently received :— (i) " Thank you for sending me the School Magazine. You know how I loved to get it when I was at home. Well, that feeling is tremendously increased by my present circumstances : I have never felt anything like it before. I can now understand a little about how F.P.s overseas feel and why they are such keen members of the Club, with its Consuls, etc., all over the world."

(2) " Very interested to receive the copy of the Magazine : makes more interesting reading than ever."

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Barbados—" Little England."

Every youth has exulted in reading of the heroic deeds of our own great makers of naval history in the West Indies, stories of frigates-of-war and the eventual outwitting of the enemy by strategy ; he has gloated over stories of the sea which made him exclaim, " Yo ho I and a bottle of rum," thereby suggesting that there's perhaps a streak of the pirate in all of us.

With the exception of Barbados all the West Indian Islands have changed hands more than once, and the British, the French, the Spaniards and the Dutch have each been mixed up in the grabbing process.

Barbados is about the size of the Isle of Wight, has a population of 185,ooo (around 170,0oo negroes and 15 ,ooo whites), and is situated about one hundred miles east of the chain of neighbouring islands.

It has always been British and its inhabitants are intensely loyal and proud of their heritage.

We drop anchor in Carlisle Bay and our ship is immediately surrounded by small boats and dug-outs in which are negro boys in bathing trunks who noisily beseech us to throw coins in the water so that they may dive for them.

After getting clear of the Customs ashore we drive through busy wharves, dodging cars, donkey carts, and female hucksters with nicely balanced trays on their heads. The traffic holds us up sometimes and a dusky, good-humoured face may appear at the car window and we are asked whether we want oranges, or home-made sweets, or green vegetables.

The shops and department stores in the capital, Bridgetown, are quite up to date, and we are pleasantly surprised at finding it possible to get just what we have perhaps dubiously asked for.

The street pavements are rather appalling—very narrow and with dangerous traps for the unwary.

We are not sorry to complete our few purchases and step into our car again, as we are hot, wet, and thirsty and are anxious to reach our destination, a hundred-year-old hostelry on the other side of the Island, though distant only fifteen miles.

We pass the Nelson Monument and continue dodging obstacles—black folk getting on and off the ramshackle buses, more hucksters—but we are presently on the glary road leading towards Hastings, where the tourist hotels are situated. On the way we pass the Savannah Race Course and " the Garrison " —now turned into residential flats but where, over forty years ago, I saw red-coated soldiers. Past the Royal Barbados Yacht Club with its spacious lounges, tennis courts, and its lovely stretch of private beach shaded by almond and sea-grape.

Adjoining the Yacht Club is the Aquatic Club, less exclusive as to membership, with its amusement pier and private beach.

What an ideal place for youngsters I Some of them are provided

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with glass-bottomed boxes and light harpoons and are expert in spearing fish and eels.

We leave the coast for a time and are now passing through restful open country with long stretches of green sugar cane ; pass an occasional sugar factory with a picturesque windmill ; with glimpses, too, of some beautiful houses with generous gardens alive with flamboyant hibiscus, colourful bougainvillaea, and approached through avenues of feathery casuarina. Presently, away to our left, we see the hills of St. Johns, where the Public Schools are situated and to which people all over the West Indies send their children to be educated.

Our hostelry by and by comes into view, situated on low cliffs which remind one of the Cornish coast. But what surprises and delights us most of all is the superb colouring of the sea— pure sapphire—and the delightful peacefulness of our environment. What a privilege it is, and how fortunate we are, to find such a spot in this war-crazy world. In the early morning, from our beds in fact, the flying-fish fleet can be seen tacking just below us ere making its way through the coral reef out to sea. With joy in our hearts we get up and make our way in the morning sunshine down to the long stretch of coral sands and plunge into the inviting sea.

Away to the south of us can be seen Sam Lord's castle— a great, gaunt, square, Georgian building—which has a queer history. You can read all about it in Colonel Drury's book, " A Regency Rascal," although Sam and the castle go under different names.

Sam Lord was a pirate who, about a hundred and twenty years ago, lured ships on to the rocks by fixing hurricane lamps to the coco-nut trees, ships' captains and their crews believing that they had reached their anchorage and that the swaying lights were on the masts of the vessels in Carlisle Bay. The packet, Dover Castle, from England, was wrecked here and had on board a number of boxes of gold consigned to the Colonial Bank in Barbados, which Sam Lord was successful in getting ashore.

In the belief that it was undesirable to stow the boxes in the castle dungeons he buried them hurriedly outside, just when a terrific hurricane hit the island. The bank people and the authorities became suspicious, and after a search one of the boxes was discovered. The game was up. Sam arranged his passage by a vessel just on the point of sailing for England. His wife refused to be left behind, so he locked the castle gates from the outside and left her to her fate. She got out, however, and caught the following boat for England and, because her packet was faster than the cargo boat by which her husband had travelled, she was able to confront him scornfully when he turned up at his relatives' home in England, to his extreme discomfiture.

Sam was no heavy-jowled roughneck ; on the contrary, he was debonair, elegant, and was well connected in England.

Ile was in fact one of the most popular men in Barbados, and

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine even the Governor of the Island was induced to be present at the grand house-warming stag dinner he gave when the castle was completed. Sam's beautiful niece remained in hiding during the meal, only to be discovered later to the delight of all the guests, who snapped the stems of their wine glasses in her honour.

My wife and I were shown through all the rooms of the castle by the chatelaine, old Mrs. Cook, who lived there all alone.

(The whole property has just been sold to a syndicate for a ridiculously small sum.) She immediately drew our attention to the marvellous ceilings with their decorative plaster-of-paris work, which one might expect to find in Fontainbleau or Versailles but hardly in a little West Indian island. Sam had imported Italians for this delicate work.

We saw the bed he had slept in ; his wardrobe was the largest I have ever seen. The house was more of a museum, however, than a residence, as the old lady and her late husband, who had travelled all over the world, had collected curios of all sorts wherever they went.

A monument with a suitable inscription has been erected on the spot in Barbados where the first English people landed around 165o (not "British," for there have never been very many Scots here), and the Island—known throughout the West Indies as " Little England "—has continued to be English in its general outlook and sympathies for three centuries with very little influx of fresh blood to keep up the tradition. The Anglican Church has a very strong hold here.

Codrington College, the Lodge School, and many of the old country houses are of great historical interest, and one cannot but take particular notice of the massive, old, mahogany furniture one comes across, some of it one hundred to two hundred years old.

Most of the houses belonging to the upper classes are built of pure white coral limestone, which can be cut with a saw.

Large blocks cost only around ninepence each, and it is merely necessary to lay them like bricks with a layer of cement between.

The northern part of the Island is volcanic, whilst the southern is of coral formation. A trip round the north is full of interest and one drives through beautiful, rugged, undulating country, over hills and dales, with arresting views of the sea beyond. We make for the " Scotland " district, as it is there one sees some queer characters known as "red legs "—degenerate whites, sunk very low in the social scale and many of them showing evidences of hookworm.

Their ancestors fought for the Duke of Monmouth and fell into the hands of James II. In July 1685, after Sedgemoor, Judge Jeffreys conducted the Bloody Assize, when 3zo executions were ordered by him, whilst many were sentenced to be sent to the plantations. They were accordingly shipped to Barbados and driven to toil in the cane fields with the black slaves. To their credit be it said that they have never mated

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with the negroes, but they are, nevertheless, poor specimens of humanity with their pink eyes which cannot stand the glare.

Barbadians are interested in their ancestry, and one of our friends told me that he and his family possessed a number of Royalist relics of the Cromwellian period.

Another friend with a Scottish name and a Scottish background reverently placed in my hands a long parchment roll showing his direct descent from Robert the Bruce. I remember thinking of the story of the two Irishwomen who were telling each other, over the fence, exactly what they thought of one another. Mrs. O'Flaherty said to Mrs. Murphy, "And who do the Murphys spring from anyhow?" Mrs. Murphy flashed back, " The Murphys don't spring from, they spring at." The occasion, however, was not suitable for the passing on of the story.

In the district of Christchurch, near the Parish Church, there stands a vault where there were uncanny on qoings some years ago. When the vault was opened all the coffins were found to have been pitched about by some unknown agency in an extra' ordinary manner. It was then, as the story was told to me, that a stronger padlock was fastened to the door, the key of which was kept by the vicar and put in a place of concealment. The same thing happened again, although the coffins had all previously been put in position. A thorough examination was made by the authorities on this occasion and strong double padlocks were provided, the keys of which were kept by two separate and responsible custodians. After an arranged interval the vault was once more opened, when the coffins were again found to have indulged in acrobatics. They were then removed and the vault door now remains wide open. As the people resident in the locality can offer no explanation of these occult happenings, I leave the problem to the reader to solve. (Perhaps some indiscreet individual outside had been uttering unkind things about his deceased mother-in-law inside.)

Barbados is frightfully over-populated and it is a sore problem to decide what should be done with regard to the steady increase of the negroes. Birth-control has been argued but nothing has come of it. Hundreds of so-called skilled workmen, however, have lately been absorbed by the neighbouring West Indian Islands, where the Americans have established bases, but this does not solve the problem in respect of the remainder.

The black man never worries overmuch about anything, and to-morrow will take care of itself. Why cross your bridges before you come to them ? They say that when the white man worries he sits with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees and presently goes out and shoots himself, but that the black man, similarly worried and in a like posture, falls asleep.

One old fellow, a waiter at our hotel, amused us. His hair was really white but, to keep up a semblance of youth, he rubbed black shoe-polish into his head each morning. To the makers

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of a celebrated brand of shoe-dressing I renounce all rights to this fresh and novel use for their product. This old negro followed the war news on the radio very closely, and if anything went wrong, his mouth slid down at the corners.

The white population all seem to be related in some way or other. They are a delightful, hospitable, lovable people and my wife and I received great kindnesses from them in their homes and wherever we went. There is something in their attitude towards life and their way of living which carry one back fifty years. So many of the eligible youths, however, leave the Island that one wonders where all the lovely girls find husbands. I asked a lady this question and the answer I got was, " They don't."

And so we come to the end of our story of an island of sunshine which changes little with the years and of a warmhearted people accustomed to a simple code of life, who live near to nature at its loveliest. We bid them good-bye with regret and take a long, last look at " Little England " over the ship's rail ere returning to our home in busy Trinidad.

ARCHIBALD YOUNG (1885-93), F.P. Club Consul for Trinidad.

The Early 'Eighties.

It was a moving experience for a small boy of ten to be led up to the Grammar School to be enrolled in that six-centuryold institution. I was always susceptible to history, and the School building itself was impressive—appearing almost to bask in its memories of Thomas de Bennum. And I knew that it had been capable of generating history of another kind. Had not William Duthie [1857-58], of Collynie, given me a vivid account of the " Evanst riots," of which he himself had been the explosive agent? It was a properly academical disturbance.

The question had arisen of whether the plural genitive of a warlike Italian race was Samnitilm or Samnitium. The master had appealed to Livy, and the pupil had presented three confutations of the pedagogic view upon a single page of that author. The consequence was that—well, that work was over for the day and the master was pursued home to his lodgings by a howling juvenile mob. Duthie's part in the affair is not mentioned in any account that I have seen, and I think the details ought to be preserved.

At any rate I was entering an arena whose present might be equally momentous with its past. On the surface, indeed, nothing could seem more regular and mechanical. The School went like a clock that had been wound up. Mr. Martin, the Rector, never visibly interfered (except on the annual Prize Day) with anything but the regulation of his own classes. I was with the picturesque Legge for Latin, along with such class-fellows as John Lendrum, Willie Findlay, George Walker, t See Page 50.

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 14 Jim Salmond, John Roy, Frank Kelly, and Erskine Jameson.

Sleigh, the preceptor in Arithmetic, was a bit of a terrorist, but I saw him thrash only two boys during the four years I was in his hands. But the English master, John Beaumont, was at this period the pick of the bunch. A year later he was transferred to the head-mastership of a Board school, on the ground, it was understood, that he did not lay proper emphasis on Bain's " Grammar." That treatise was the futile plague of its generation. It seemed to me a set of excursions into the obvious.

I never could make any marks in it, and most of those who did could not write a decent sentence to save their lives. The Aberdeen temperament is sufficiently analytical of its own accord.

Where education can benefit it is on the constructive and aesthetic sides.

As second prizeman in the Second Class I got a charmingly bound copy of the " Lays of the Cavaliers," which has since become my chief personal link with a murderer. Some dozen years later it was stolen from my Birmingham lodgings by my landlady's son, and I rescued it from a second-hand bookseller's window. The culprit was hanged the other day for the slaughter of a lady in Kensington.

My second year at the School produced a transformation scene. Dr. Moir became Rector, and the upper section of the School was divided into Classical and Modern. We Classicals scoffed at the Moderns without stint, and that department did seem to be recruited at first by a rush of dunces of every description in search of a " soft option." I have no doubt conditions are very different to-day.

The various alterations made did seem to infuse the School with more vivacity. Mr. Campbell, the new English master, was a man of the world, and broadened our atmosphere from that angle. Mr. Harvey, a new classical master, was very shy, but a treasure to those who discovered his sympathies and enlisted his help in their studies. From a brother in the junior section I began to hear of " Alec Mackay " (now Lord Mackay), of whom Dr. Moir used afterwards to speak as the cleverest boy he had ever taught. Lord Meston's last quarter at the School had been my first, but he left behind him Edward Fiddes and George Carmichael, and among interesting boys in front of me were John Nicol Farquhar (who had come back to the School at the age of twenty-one and went on to be First Bursar, to have a fine career at Oxford, and to become a Professor of Comparative Religion), John Wight Duff, the eminent classic, and Lindley Scott, the eminent surgeon. I must not forget to mention the popularity of Mr. Lothian, the junior mathematical master (the first pedagogue to show a kindly interest in sport), or the stimulus that the newly founded Literary Society gave to our mental activities.

Dr. Moir himself was a force in every direction. He was an inspiring teacher, he loved the School, and he had a way of

15 Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine shooting forth some unpremeditated observation that set the mind working in entirely new regions. Yet, sad to say, he was . foredoomed by the clash between his temperament and his environment. It was a period when there were far too many dislikes abroad—political, religious, and personal. His eager, candid, unsuspecting disposition laid him open to the malice of those who differed from him on any plane, and there were too many ready to lie in wait for the harvest of their grudges. This came to a head some years after I had left the School but was still in Aberdeen.

A majority of the School Board resolved to evict him from the Rectorship. The stoutest opposition to this step came from many of his old pupils. The Board were a formidable body of men, but we demanded a hearing from them on his behalf. It fell to me to address them in the icy stillness of a private sitting.

Among those who accompanied me I seem to remember John Lobban, George Watson, and John Rae, but I do not recollect if any one else spoke. At any rate we were all youngsters.

I talked to these eminent citizens temperately but strongly, and next day old John Bulloch (father of " J.M.B."), who was a member, told me privately that we had made a considerable impression.

Two letters with the dust of nearly half a century upon them bring the issue back to me as vividly as ever. Dr. Moir wrote to me on a3rd December 589z :— My dear Gray, I wish to send just a line to express my heartfelt thanks -

for the very kind way in which you have taken up my cause. You could not have conducted the matter with greater energy and prudence. There is need of the whole question of Secondary Education in Aberdeen being faced, especially in view of the allocation of the Equivalent Grant. There is no use of making me a victim—the circumstances should be considered which have produced the crisis,

Professor Minto (one of the most active of Dr. Moir's friends) had written to me a week earlier in a letter occupied with various topics :— I must congratulate you on the excellent speech you made last night,

as well as on the leaders in the Daily Newt. The more I think over the action of the Board, the more I think that they arc transgressing in spirit, if not in letter, the measure of their powers. A Board that has not been specially selected to deal with such questions has no business to play ducks and drakes with the officials of such an institution as the Grammar School.

Nor can their action be defended in refusing to make public the grounds of their decision. They have no right as a representative body to constitute themselves into a little Star Chamber and pass sentence of ruin on a man without an open inquiry.

As everyone knows, the Board eventually revoked their first decision and compromised by making Dr. Moir Co-Rector.

It will always be a satisfaction to feel that I may have done something to mitigate the blows of Fate upon one of whose gifts the School ought to have made more use than it was allowed to do.

HOWARD A. GRAYt (5880- 84). t See page 37.

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** * The Editor is glad at all times to receive from any quarter items of information for this section of the " Magazine."

The dates given in parentheses after names indicate the sessions of attendance at the School.

Spending £6,000,000 a Day. Patrick Ashley Cooper* (1896-1901), B.A., LL.B., for reasons of health relinquished in August the post of Director-General of Finance and Contracts in the Ministry of Supply, which he undertook, without remuneration, in September 1939. He rendered particularly valuable service to the Ministry over a period of three years, being responsible for the Departments of Finance, Contracts, and Accounts.

Beginning, as he has said, as a " pretty small affair," this has now become far bigger than anything of the kind that has ever been in this country before.

Some account of the organization which our F.P. controlled will be of interest. There came immediately under him the Deputy Director-General of Finance, the Deputy Director-General of Contracts, and the Accountant-General. Under the Deputy DirectorGeneral of Finance came four Directors ; under the Deputy DirectorGeneral of Contracts there were four Directors and a Controller of Costings; under the Accountant-General came the Director of Accounts, the Director of Store Accounts, the Controller of Ordnance and Agency Factories Audits, and the Controller of Special Investigation. The total staff amounted approximately to 5,ooo. The work covered all munitions, i.e. guns, shells, tanks, motor transport, and all types of soldiers' equipment ; the building and equipping of Government-owned and Agency factories, and the erection and extension of Contractors' factories. The organization also handled all the raw materials purchased or made at home and abroad, including the building and equipping of factories for the working up of raw materials.

The functions of the Finance Department were to examine and approve all sorts of schemes, and was divided into a General Section, which handled foreign exchange, inter-departmental adjustments, Parliamentary questions, Public Accounts Committee and Select Committee matters, and a score of odds and ends ; a Production Branch, Raw Materials Branch, and a special section which acted as a friend, adviser, and financial assistant of many small contractors. * Member of the Former Pupils' Club.

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zi

In the Contracts Department anything from 1,000 to 1,200 contracts were handled per week, and a special legal section turned out weekly about ioo complex legal agreements. In the summer of this year the Director of Accounts was paying out over £40,000,000 a week, or roughly £6,000,000 a day—about half the national budget.

He was sending out over 40,000 payments a week, and the Complaints Section recorded not more than 12 to 15 complaints a week, many of which on investigation were found to have arisen from the fault of the contractor and not of the Department. The Director of Accounts also handled the Priced Vocabulary of Stores—the famous Gro98 (Ten nincty-eight).

The Audit Department carried out the whole of the audit for the many Government factories and Agency factories. A small Special Investigation Department, consisting of a number of very highly qualified accountants, carried out complex investigations into many problems relating to the working up of raw materials.

What the Director-General tried hard to do—and what was something new in a Government Department—was to instil a " spirit of service" towards the Production Departments and also to the contractors. It was his constant aim that the Contracts Department, for example, should recognize that, except at the moment when they were fixing the terms of a contract, they and the contractors were partners together in one great enterprise of getting the goods to the Services.

According to The Times, Mr. Ashley Cooper visited hundreds of firms personally. This was a very strenuous part of his work, and he was travelling usually two days a week and sometimes as much as ten days at a stretch, visiting contractors all over the country, investigating their difficulties, and asking for their complaints and their suggestions. This has always been his approach to his industrial problems and has led him to the Arctic and to the Tropics. The creation of a spirit of service and the personal contacts which he made he rightly regards as much the best service that he rendered to the country during the three most arduous years of his life.

Robert Aitken* (1928-37), Bombardier, is at present attached to an Artillery unit in Kenya.

Theodore Martin Allan * (5930-36), M.B., Ch.B., has been awarded at Aberdeen University an A. W. Garden Fellowship of Lzoo a year in the Bacteriology Department.

William Dallas Allardice* (5934-39) is a prisoner of war in Italian hands. He has taken part in several Commando raids.

Alexander A. N. Bain* (1916-29), M.B., Ch.B., Captain, R.A.M.C., was for a time interned in French Morocco. He had been in the Middle East, serving in Egypt, Greece, and Libya for over two years, and having been invalided home, was fortunate to be a survivor from a vessel on which he was a passenger.

David McLean Bishop* (1928-38), who in July graduated M.A. at Aberdeen University, with First Class Honours in Mathematics •

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and Natural Philosophy, has been awarded a Fullerton, Moir and Gray Scholarship of £165 for two years. He is now and Lieutenant, R.C.E.M.E., as a Radio Maintenance Officer.

Benjamin Booth* (z935-39) has been in the Civil Engineer-inChief's Department at a Royal Naval Air Station in Scotland, and has recently been transferred to East Africa.

ESCAPED FROM SINGAPORE. George Rettie Burns* (5925-35) went out to a rubber estate in Malaya in 5935 and became a member of the Malayan Volunteer Rifles.

When Japan entered the war, the Volunteers were mobilized and eventually reached Singapore. Two days before Singapore fell Burns was one of a small body of men selected from his battalion to make their escape, along with similar groups from all the fighting forces in Singapore. On the night on which they were due to leave, their ships were so badly bombed that they had to depart after taking on board only a very small proportion of the force. On the following night those left behind were split into little parties and put into small craft of various types. Burns's party, numbering 67, were on a 5o-foot launch with twin Diesel engines. Their outlook was distinctly grim, as not one of them had done any navigating before ; they had no charts, instruments, or tide tables : all they had was an ordinary school map of the East Indies (r" = roe miles), a pocket compass, and a hazy idea of the way through the inner minefields but not through the outer ones. Needless to say, the voyage was full of incident. Eventually they reached the East coast of Sumatra, and having proceeded up a river as far as they could, they left the launch and crossed to the West coast by road and rail. They next boarded a Dutch ship, which took them to Java, and thence another ship took them to Perth, Western Australia, about the beginning of March.

After some dilly-dallying, the Volunteers were disbanded and most of the men had to fend for themselves. Burns's firm forwarded his name to the Colonial Office for a planting vacancy in West Africa, and while waiting for something to turn up, he got a job with the U.S. Navy at Fremantle. He found that the Americans " were a grand crowd to work with," but after a time, deciding that he would have a better chance of a job in West Africa if he were on the spot, he signed on with a Norwegian ship, and working his passage in the engineroom and by stewarding the engine-room staff, he reached Freetown, Sierra Leone, in August, and was there and then awaiting further developments.

Gordon Burns* (5926-33)—younger brother of George R.— who had been in the London office of Messrs. Steel Brothers & Co., Ltd., from 5933, went out to Rangoon, Burma, in the autumn of 5935.

On the outbreak of the war he tried, in vain, to get home, in order to join up. Later he joined the Army in Burma, and by the spring of this year had received a commission in the Burma Rifles, in which he was soon promoted to be Captain. At the time of the Japanese invasion he was stationed at Moulmein, and was sent to Mergui in Southern Burma, where he got very badly burned by petrol flames while engaged

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on demolitions. Ile was brought to Rangoon, and just before this town fell, was evacuated to Poona. After some time he was given sick leave, which he spent up in the hills. In July last he rejoined his battalion, somewhere in India, just six months from the time he had been injured.

Andrew Campbell* (1902-04), M.B., Ch.B.(Edin.), F.R.C.S.E., who was in practice in Johannesburg for twenty years, has recently, on medical advice, removed to Walmer, Port Elizabeth.

Alan Chalmers* (1915-19), of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, was reported in the last Magazine to have spent long leave in 1941 in California and then to have been posted to Colombo. He was, however, unable to sail for Ceylon on account of the war in the Pacific, and as most of the offices of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank are meantime in enemy hands, he has temporarily joined the staff of Barclays Bank.

(Canada) in Montreal.

Douglas Paterson Cochran* (1906-15), the Secretary of the London Centre of the F.P. Club, has been granted a commission in the Air Training Corps, with the rank of Flying Officer. He is still carrying on in his civilian post with the Royal Exchange Assurance at Streatham, London.

George Francis Collie* (1916-26), Captain, R.A.S.C., was in September made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.), " in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the field."

In civil life he is a partner in the firm of Messrs. James and George Collie, advocates, Aberdeen, being a son of GEORGE DUNCAN Comm* (186975), advocate, and a grandson of the late JAMES COLLIE (1827-32), one of the founders of the firm.

Bramwell W. H. Cook* (1936-30, who was in the service of the Petroleum Board at Fulham, London, is now an Aircraftman in the R.A.F. and serving with Intelligence Headquarters in the Middle East. While in Cape Town he was entertained by the Club Consul there, Professor WILLIAM S. MAcKte (1895-1901), and he broadcast an organ programme from the Cathedral. He was for a time Assistant Director of Music at St. Machar's Cathedral, Old Aberdeen.

William John Cramb* (1915-25), who is in business on his own account in Montrose as a watchmaker, jeweller, and optician, having been rejected, owing to a disability, by the Army Medical Board, has joined the Intelligence Section of the local Home Guard.

Kaimakam Alexander Cruickshank* Bey (1911-17), O.B.E., M.D., Senior Medical Inspector, Equatorial Province, Sudan, wrote in August from the Sudan Defence Force Base Hospital that he had been fortunate to get away with the Sudanese Troops serving abroad and was running a hospital for them with his own " toughs." " They need a lot of fathering in this wicked city, and I am very jealous that

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

they should not let the reputation of the Sudan down." In October 1941, when in the wilds of Abyssinia, he wrote rough notes for a short article to the Magazine, and these have since developed into the very welcome contribution that is printed elsewhere in this issue.

James S. Rowland Cruickshank* (5924-21), B.A., LL.B., W.S., advocate in Aberdeen, who has been Administrative Officer in Charge of the Chemical Inspection Department of the Ministry of Supply, has recently been promoted to the post of Superintendent of Inspection Administration at the Headquarters of the Ministry.

Maxwell Duncan Deans* (1923-25), who was in the service of Messrs. A. J. and A. Graham, writers, Glasgow, has since March 1941 been an Assistant Principal in the Ministry of Information.

John Wight Duff* (5877-82), D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., was in May of this year presented by the Northumberland and Durham Classical Association with a very beautifully lettered address to mark the celebration of its thirtieth year. The address records Dr. Wight Duff's services ever since in 5952 he proposed the foundation of the branch to promote the interest in Classical culture shared by professional scholars, expert archaeologists, and many members of the intellectual public. At Newcastle-upon-Tyne in October he gave an address entitled " My Touch with Scholars," in which he paid tribute to his teachers in Aberdeen, Oxford, and Leipzig, and afterwards referred to many fellow-examiners with whom he had been associated and many Classical professors with whom at various times he had come in contact. The Grammar School teachers recalled in the address were the Rev. James W. Legge and the two Rectors, Martin and Moir.

James Catto Duffus* (5897-5904), M.C., M.A., LL.B., advocate in Aberdeen, who was Deputy Chief Warden and Officer-in-Charge of A.R.P. Report Centres for Aberdeen, was in July appointed Officer-inCharge of Control and Report Centres.

Sidney Wardlaw Duguid* (5922-27), who served his apprenticeship as a civil engineer with Messrs. Henderson & Nicol, Aberdeen, and became a civil engineering assistant with the Admiralty, served before the war at Trincomali, Rosyth, and Singapore, and is now stationed at Colombo.

Robert John Esslemont* (5920-23), Chief Officer, Merchant Navy, was reported in the last Magazine to have been made M.B.E. This was in recognition of " exemplary work when attacked by the enemy." It was in the North Atlantic some time in 5945 that a ship on which he was serving was torpedoed, and twelve of the crew lost their lives. On another occasion his ship was the first to sight and report the presence of the Bremen when she passed North Cape on her dash to Murmansk and eluded capture by British warships.

During another exciting voyage he was at Narvik just before the first naval battle there.

Alan Flockhart Esson* (1929-34) has been promoted from Midshipman to Sub-Lieutenant, R.N.R., and is at present serving in a submarine.

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Ernest Reeves Evinson* (x 921-25), Trooper, Royal Armoured Corps, was wounded in the shoulder and taken prisoner during the Libyan campaign in June, and was reported as being in a military hospital at Caserta in Italy. After leaving the School he was on the staff of the North of Scotland Bank, then the Chartered Bank of India in London, and latterly was assistant superintendent with the Prudential Insurance Co. at Sutton-in-Ashfield, Notts.

James Raffan Fiddes* (1924-37), who in December 1939 was elected to a Snell Exhibition in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, was in July of this year awarded a First Class in Classical Moderations.

He has been resident at Balliol since October 1941 and graduated with First Class Honours in Classics at Glasgow University in May of this year.

Sir George Stuart Forbes (1860-64), K.C.S.I., who for many years was a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service and died in April 1940 in his 91st year, left £sOO to the University of Aberdeen for the encouragement of study and research in Physical Chemistry by Aberdeen undergraduates.

LArthur Alexander Fox* (1923-29) was in the service of Barclays Bank in Southern Rhodesia and is now a Flying Officer in the R.A.F. He served in the Bomber Command in England and in Malta, and later was transferred to the Coastal Command, Ireland.

George Sutherland Fraser (1924-33), M.A. (St. And.), son of the Town Clerk of Aberdeen, is at present serving in the Middle East.

He early displayed a talent for the writing of both prose and poetry, and two of his poems, published in Service papers in the Middle East, are declared to be among the best work he has done. These are "Rostov," called forth by the Russian campaign, and "City of Benares," which was inspired by the sinking of the ship of that name with its " seavacs."

Edgar Reuben Gauld* (1917-23), M.B., Ch.B., of the West African Medical Service, is a Captain in the Gold Coast Regiment, West Africa Command, and served through the entire Abyssinian Campaign.

Robert Imray Alexander Gray* (1932-35) has been in the R.A.F. since March 1939. He is now a Leading Aircraftman and has been serving in Iceland.

Kenneth Terence Gruer (1927-32) is a Lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery and has been serving in Libya with the 8th Army. He went through the long siege of Tobruk and was wounded but made a good recovery.

Hamish Thomas Burns Hall* (1927-32) and Lawrence Graham Murray Hall* (1927-32), sons of Rev. J. T. Hall, O.B.E., B.D., formerly minister of Holbum Central Church, Aberdeen, are both serving as Sub-Lieutenants in the R.N.V.R., the former being in a corvette in the Far East and the latter in " Combined Operations."

"A WEE FELLOW WHO USED TO PLAY FULL BACK." Laurence Leslie Huss* (1909-18) was an apprentice with the Harbour Engineer, Aberdeen, and in 1923 entered the service of th-

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 22 Sudan Plantations Syndicate Ltd. in Egyptian Sudan. He returned home on the completion of the engineering works there in 1931, and thereafter was engaged in the designing and constructing of the new Trossachs Road from Aberfoyle to Callander. In 1932 he bought and managed a motor garage in Stirling, but sold out in 1936, on accepting a job with the Perthshire County Council as Chief Surveyor (later Resident Engineer) in the reconstruction of the road from Six Toll to Crianlarich, at an approximate cost of Lz5o,ooo. In June 1939 he put his name in for the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve, and was called up in January 1940 as a and Lieutenant. He proceeded to France with his company, the 663rd Artisan Works Coy. R.E. He says that they had a fine time in France, plenty of hard work, too, but picked the wrong ship for the evacuation, the ill-fated T.S.S. Lancastria. " I was never so thankful for a quiet sea and reasonably warm water, date i 7th June 1940—a date that I will remember as well as to66." In August of that year he went overseas again—this time to the Faroe Islands, becoming the Garrison Engineer, until relieved in January 1941. During his term as G.E. he had the use of an 8o-foot Norwegian motor vessel, with which he used to visit some of the other zz islands in the course of his duty. " The ship was a grand tub, but did she roll and pitch ? She was used for other purposes too— accidental target for the torpedoes of a German seaplane, helping with whale hunts, and destroying fixed British mines which refused to be fixed. The Faroese were very friendly, the majority talked quite good English, and gave us a pleasant time generally." Huss was promoted Captain in February 1941 and posted as second in charge to a General Construction Coy. R.E. In May of this year he was sent overseas and is now Officer-in-Charge of a West African Artisan Works Company. " ' Join the Army and see the world at the Government's expense ' is very apt in my case, and I trust that Germany will be included in the itinerary (but not as a prisoner of war)." Some F.P.s, he thinks, will remember him as " the wee fellow who used to play full back round about 1,918 to 1923 and called then ' Hussy '— happy days."

James Graham Irvine* (1927-38), who was a veterinary student, was commissioned Sub-Lieutenant (A), R.N.V.R., in July 1941. He is now a Pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, serving on an aircraft carrier.

Sir William Wilson Jameson* (1892-1902), M.D., LL.D., Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health, in October delivered the annual Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians, London. At a Press conference in August he gave a heartening account of the nation's health after three years of war. There was no gloomy picture to point to, he said. The feeding of the people was wisely done, and if we went on following the advice given us, we could stand greater restrictions, if necessary. The Times in a leading article in October said: " The campaign against diphtheria, into which Sir Wilson Jameson has thrown himself with enthusiasm, is making excellent progress. A provisional estimate puts the number of children who have now been immunized at well over 3,000,000." He is the ViceChairman of a Medical Advisory Committee recently set up to advise

Aberdeen Grammar School Magatine

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the Minister of Health on the medical aspects of problems relating to the health of the people.

In November it was announced that the President and Council of the Royal Society had awarded the Buchanan Medal to Sir Wilson Jameson, for his distinguished administrative service to hygienic science and practice. It is interesting to recall that this medal was instituted in recognition and appreciation of the work of the late Sir George Buchanan, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., the father of Lady Adam Smith, who was for so long associated with the University of Aberdeen.

Francis Henry King* (1916-26), of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, is a prisoner of war at Stanley Camp, Hongkong. His brother, Charles F. King* (1912-23), of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, is a prisoner in Manila.

James Elsmie Lawie* (19o2-12), Pitcaple, has recently been appointed Chairman of the County of Aberdeen Road Board. He is the head of the firm of Messrs. George Elsmie & Son, coal merchants and shipowners, Aberdeen, and has been a member of the County Council since 1935.

John Lendrum (1879-84), M.A., D.D., who retired from the charge of the South Church, Elgin, in 1937, after a ministry there of 37 years, was in October entertained to a complimentary luncheon on the occasion of his ministerial jubilee.

OUR ERIC. Eric Linklater* (1913-16), M.A., Major, Royal Engineers, wrote the official history of " The Highland Division " for the War Office series of booklets " The Army at War." With it, The Observer said, " Eric Linklater adds to his sterling achievement as the chronicler of the Army.

The Army, so often faced with the impossible in this war, needs the historian who can put down with steely simplicity the great fights it has made. Linklater, a ` young old soldier,' taken by Col. Walter Elliot from an artillery officer's routine to keep such chronicles of glory, has splendidly justified the choice, and his story of the 51st unbroken in retreat to the last stand at St. Valery, with its hard core fighting to the end, has the right glint of granite in its prose with just an echo of the pipes. The 51st has been reconstructed. He must tell of it in the victory to come. " Linklater is an Orkney man who went to Aberdeen University and thence to America, and has made his home in his native islands. He has been an authority on Ben jonson and Scottish Nationalism as well as on the U.S.A. He has a rugged grandeur of skull worthy of his native cliffs and a terrific sense of humour.

His laughter, however, is remote, almost invisible, a great inward and downward roar, something away under the inscrutable cliff, like the clamour of the waves in the famous ` Bullers ' of his own granitic Buchan."

In October " The Raft " and " Socrates Asks Why " came from our F.P.'s running pen. The first, a conversation of dying men on a raft, reviews and attempts to explain the undying and dauntless spirit of Britain. In the second, Socrates, Voltaire, Dr. Johnson, and Abraham Lincoln have a talk with two of the recent dead, an American sergeant and an Argyll and Sutherland piper. Again an endeavour is made to assess Britain's part in the war, and the nation's capacity for dealing with the future. According to one reviewer " Mr. Eric Linklater has put into his little hook some of the finest patriotic writing of the war." Another wrote: "Linklater blows Britain's trumpet

Aberdeen Grammar School ltraga:zine 24 with a nice discretion of judgment and austerity of style. . . . Listeners have had Linklater as Sunday Companion on the air. Now they can have him to read. He has the knack of turning sense into good listening and righteousness into lively reading."

In July it was announced that the Nazis had just published in German Linklater's " Juan in America." Zeesen Radio described it as " this finely written and excellent book." Unfortunately the author will get no royalties on sales!

Alexander Macdonald* (1921-27), M.A., M.B., Ch.B., has been awarded for the fifth and last year a Garden Fellowship of £400 in the Bacteriology Department of the University of Aberdeen.

David Alexander Ross Macgregor* (1910-II), M.A. (Edin.), has been appointed junior assistant minister at St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. He was for a time voluntary assistant in the East Church of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, and thereafter a hut worker under the Church of Scotland's Committee on Hut and Canteen Work for H.M. Forces. The senior assistant at St. Gi'es' is also an F.P.—se: note on IAN A. Mont below—and the elders includf: ALEXANDER FIDDES* (1870 75), D.D., and JAMES GRAY KYD* (1891-98), C.B.E. Ian Wyness Macgregor* (1907-18), M.B., Ch.B., Acting Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander, R.N.V.R., and his brother James Wyness Macgregor* (1910-23), who is Town Engineer, Umtali, Southern Rhodesia, and Lieutenant in the Southern Rhodesian Forces, had some months ago the unexpected pleasure of meeting in Durban by accident after thirteen years. Neither knew to begin with that the other was there. In the course of his naval duties Ian arrived at Durban. He tried to get into communication by telephone with his brother in Rhodesia and found that James and his family were on holiday near Durban. It was not long before they were together, and their joy at meeting can be imagined.

AN ATLANTIC THRILL.

Lewis Alexander Mackay* (1919-28) of Birse Lodge Hotel, Aboyne, who is a Flight Lieutenant in the R.A.F., had a thrilling experience recently, when he put down on the Atlantic a Coastal Command aircraft, which had developed engine trouble, as smoothly as though he were landing on an aerodrome. Dinghies were got out and the crew spent the night adrift. Next afternoon a Sunderland flyingboat alighted beside them and brought them back to this country. The only thing that had worried them was that they did not know whether their SOS had got through to their base, for the radio had broken down just before they had to force-land. This worry was soon dispelled, however, for a neighbouring 'plane had picked up the signal, found them shortly before dark, and wirelessed their position to base before leaving. Another 'plane was sent out to keep watch during the night. " We could hear his engines a long way off," said Mackay, " for there is no sound at all when you are on the sea and far from land. As the engines came near we flashed a little torch. The aircraft put on its landing lights and the beam cut right across our dinghy. Then the pilot flashed us his name and his navigation lights.

25 Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine He was one of ours, and he flew round us until his petrol began to run short. All the time he was flashing messages." With the dawn came another aircraft. It dropped floats, and by lamp messages told Mackay and his crew that a Sunderland flying-boat had taken off to pick them up. The sea was no longer as calm as it had been, and the dinghy crew began to wonder whether the Sunderland would be able to alight successfully. Some hours later the Sunderland appeared and spied them. " The landing was wonderful," said Mackay. " The Sunderland captain put her down beautifully and taxied over to us ; one of the crew came out on the wing and threw us a rope. We were brought alongside and, as soon as we were on board, the Sunderland turned into wind and took off. A few minutes later we were eating a hot meal of tea, sausages, and steak."

Archibald McKenzie* (1922-31), who was on a tea estate in Dooars, India, and received a commission in the Gurkha Rifles, while serving in the Middle East was first of all reported missing and then officially identified as a prisoner in Italian hands. His commanding officer reported that on the evening of 28th June they were attacked but came out of the engagement on top and with comparatively few casualties. " I then set about re-organizing," he wrote, "and sent ' Wee Mac '—that is how he was always known with us—off to collect our transport. While he was away, I received information that we were surrounded and orders to the effect that I was to get the Battery out the best way I could during the night. We did not see Mac again, but I subsequently heard that he had joined up with another column and had started safely on his journey. This column apparently ran into an ambush, but Mac got away safely in his truck and was doing well until he unfortunately ran on to a minefield.

This resulted in the complete wrecking of the truck, but luckily no damage to himself or to any of the personnel with him. They then had to take to their feet, but were overtaken by an enemy armoured car and captured. He was last seen being taken away in a lorry with other British officers."

Douglas Nelson Mackinnon* (1921-34), M.A., who is at present studying medicine at Aberdeen University, has been elected President of the Students' Representative Council for 1942-43, in succession to another F.P., IAN DUNBAR INNFS* (1933-38). The President of the Students' Union is JAMES WATT MCALLAN (I 925 -3 z)—also continuing the F.P. succession.

Gordon Maxwell McMinn (1923-27), Flight Lieutenant, R.A.F.V.R., had the degree of M.A. (Hons.) conferred upon him, in absentia, at the autumn graduation at Edinburgh University. He served in France with the R.A.F. from October 1939 until the fall of France.

John William Martin* (1924-34) is farm manager at South Ythsie, Tarves, Aberdeenshire.

Thomas Menzies* (1905-10), M.B., Ch.B., who holds a regular commission in the R.A.M.C., has recently become a full Colonel. His

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

brother, William Menzies* (1922-25), who was a chartered accountant in London, is with a Heavy A.A. Battery in Northern Ireland and is now a Major.

Robert Charles Cruickshank Miles* (1923-3o) has returned to this country after being for two years at Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. In September of this year he gained the diploma as a qualified masseur of the College of Swedish Massage, Chicago. He is serving as a Leading Aircraftman in. the R.A.F. Thomas Gordon Milner* (1925-37), Lieutenant, Madras Sappers and Miners, R.E., who was stationed at Singapore when that city fell, was in November officially reported as being a prisoner of war in Japanese hands.

William Mitchell* (1919-3z) is a Major in the R.A.O.C., and Chief Ordnance Officer in command of a depot in England.

Ian Alexander Moir* (1924-32), M.A., B.D., was ordained by the Presbytery of Edinburgh in June last as Assistant in St. Giles' Cathedral. He has just been awarded the degree of Ph.D. by the University of Cambridge for a thesis relating to the Palaeography and Textual Criticism of the New Testament.

James Glegg Moir* (1928-34), M.B., Ch.B., Captain, R.A.M.C., who graduated at Aberdeen in 5939, has been serving as a medical officer in India.

James S. C. Monro* (1920-32), B.Sc., M.B., Ch.B., was an Assistant in Anatomy in Aberdeen University and is now a Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. and Assistant Surgeon in the Ear, Nose and Throat Section of a Military Hospital in England. In January of this year he was awarded the Diploma of Laryngology and Otology by the Royal College of Surgeons.

Frederick David Morgan* (1917-33), who was a bank clerk in Aberdeen and received a commission in the Gordon Highlanders in 1937, was taken prisoner in Belgium in May 1940. His platoon was cut off north of Brussels early in the fighting, and he was reported " missing." Later, information came that he was a prisoner and was quite fit. He was recently at Ofiag VI B and greatly interested in news about. his friends, culled from the Magazine and sent to him.

He was promoted Lieutenant about the time of the retreat to Dunkirk but did not hear of this till last December.

Charles Mitchell McQuibban Murray* (5914-26), M.B., Ch.B., F.R.C.S. (Edin.), Captain, R.A.M.C., is surgeon in a hospital at Colombo.

William Robertson Myers* (1895-99), who joined the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1904, was along with his wife and daughter among the British subjects from China who were released by the Japanese and arrived in September at Lourerco Marques, Portuguese East Africa, in the Kamakura Maru.

George Alexander Paterson* (1920-30) was trained as an accountant in Aberdeen and Dundee, and in 5937 was appointed accountant

WAL1ER CILURGE

BENZIE

B.Sc. Major, Royal Tank Regiment

)p1 .)

..cAuN 4uuti:uaiN: NONNO:)

\

a IVNT

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

27

in the Traffic Department of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway Co. Ltd. Having been released from his post, he came home in September of this year to volunteer for military service, and immediately joined the Gordon Highlanders as a Private.

William Peters (1900-06), C.M.G., M.A., Senior British Trade Commissioner at Cape Town, figured in a Reuter's press telegram in November as having told the British Manufacturers' Association there : " I am not one of those who think that after the war there will be a terribly difficult time for everyone all the time. The factories in Britain and elsewhere that produced goods in the past will produce them again. There has been an industrial development in all the Dominions, and after the war there will be more goods to sell and, I hope, more people wanting them."

AUTHOR AT NINETY. (1864-67), M.A., B.D., who was minister of the Pixie Philip parish of Kells, Kirkcudbrightshire, from 1879 until his retiral in 1921, has, in his 91st year, completed a book entitled " A New Interpretation of the Cross," recently published by James Clarke. Like many other people, he has become dissatisfied with the traditional interpretation of the Cross, and feeling the lack of some positive alternative to this tradition, undertakes in the book to supply one.

Herbert G. Pope* (1890-1902), City Assessor and Registration Officer for Aberdeen, in November intimated his resignation as Food Executive Officer for the city, as he found that the increase in work at the Food Office made it impossible for a part-time officer to carry on.

Donald Fraser Proctor* (1908-1z), M.C., who for a considerable time has been a farmer and flockmaster at Tillyfour, has recently sold that famous estate in the Vale of Alford, which was the original home, under the late WILLIAM MCCOMBIE 0810-10, M.P., of the AberdeenAngus breed of cattle.

Oswald George Prosser* (1907-18), M.B., Ch.B., of Anlaby, East Yorks, is a Major in the R.A.M.C., and was in August reported to be a prisoner of war in Italian hands, having been captured in Libya. He was at Dunkirk, and has been in the Middle East since April 1941.

Harry James Rae* (1898-1904), M.A., M.B., Ch.B., Chief Medical Officer of Health of the City of Aberdeen and the Counties of Aberdeen and Kincardine, has been appointed President of the Royal Sanitary Association of Scotland.

James Rannie* (1910-16), M.B., Ch.B., Beckenham, who holds the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the R.A.M.C., has been presented with the Territorial Decoration. He is at present Director of Medical Services to an Anti-Aircraft Division.

James Douglas Scott* (1904-15) served as an apprentice to Mr. George Anderson, chartered accountant, Aberdeen, and after being an ambulance driver with the B.E.F. in France in 1917-18, managed for five years his late father's business—Guthrie's Stores, Union Street, Aberdeen. Thereafter he took up salesmanship as a career and held various positions until 1938, when he joined Northern Aluminium Co.,

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Aberdeen Grammar Scbool Magazine

Ltd., as salesman at their head office in London. In May 1940 his services were lent for the duration of the war to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, Light Metals Control (Sheet and Strip), as Accountant and Mill Controller. In a recent letter he says that some two years ago he had a few calls from a former classfellow at the School, Ronald Cartwright (1907-14), who was at that time a liaison officer for VickersArmstrong. His brother, William Walker Scott* (1903-13) is a Flight Lieutenant in the R.A.F. and is at present in India.

A CAVE-DWELLER. James Richard Scott* (1895-19oz), who before the last war was in the Military Accounts Department, Government of India, and served with the Cameron Highlanders in France until wounded and taken prisoner in March 1918, is now in the Development Accounts Department of an aeroplane company. He works in an underground office, going down in a lift that accommodates fifty, and then walks through tunnels for about 300 yards to the office. He says that, were it not for the absence of windows, one would not know one was down under the solid rock. As will be seen from another page, he was married in June.

John Alexander Trager Simpson (1919-28), who has been in the service of Lake Shore Mines Ltd., Kirkland Lake, Ontario, for about ten years, came back to this country about the end of last year with a contingent of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and is now Flight Sergeant Observer on operational flights.

Charles William Sleigh* (1874-79), C.B.E., M.A., LL.D., was in July appointed Convener of the County of Aberdeen. For more than forty years he has served in public life. He was the first and only Chairman of the Aberdeenshire Education Authority, and the first and only Convener of its successor, the Aberdeenshire Education Committee. For nineteen years he has been Chairman of the Aberdeen Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, and for more than thirteen years was Vice-Convener of the Aberdeen County Council.

The last F.P. to be Convener of the County of Aberdeen was the late HENRY DURWARD MCCOMBIE (1861-66), who for over fifty years was tenant farmer at Milton of Kemnay.

Robert Arthur Smart* (1919-31), M.B., Ch.B., Major, R.A.M.C., has been mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service. After graduating in medicine at Aberdeen in 1937, he spent a year at Foresterhill and received a regular commission in the R.A.M.C. He spent two years in Palestine, serving as Medical Officer, first with the Royal Ulster Rifles and then with the Second Rifle Brigade. Early in 1940 he was transferred to Libya.

Ian Lewis Smith* (1918-30), who was commissioned as a znd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in May 5939, was posted shortly after the outbreak of war to a Field Park Company of the 51st (Highland) Division. In January 1940 he went to France with his company and returned unscathed at the Dunkirk time, after many exciting experiences. Soon afterwards he was posted to an English Fiel-

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29

Company as second in command, with the rank of Captain. In February of this year he was transferred to his original unit, again as second in command, and is now serving with the new 51st in Egypt.

James L. Douglass Smith* (1885-9o) has recently become a Life Member of the F.P. Club. Early in 19O he retired from the Aire and Calder Navigation, after eighteen years' service. During part of that time he was Resident Engineer on the Navigation's docks at Goole, supervising the construction of the new entrance lock. Shortly after retiring, he was offered and accepted an appointment with the Yorkshire Hennebique Contracting Co. of Leeds as engineer on Government contracts. During the last war he was in charge of the construction of the " Island Forts " of the Humber.

James Drummond Smith* (1900-08), M.A., is a Director of the Westbourne Engineering Co., Ltd., Daventry.

Sydney Robertson Smith* (1924-3o), B.Sc., A.M.Inst.C.E., who when war broke out was Senior Engineering Assistant to the Burgh of Motherwell and Wishaw, is now in the Air Ministry Works Directorate. .

George Stewart (1889-92), M.A., B.Sc., retired from the Rectorship of Strathaven Academy, Lanarkshire, in 1939, on reaching the official age-limit He has now come back to the Grammar School as a temporary teacher in the Mathematics and Science Department.

He was Gold Medallist of the School in 1892, and in July an interesting picture appeared in Bon-Accord, showing him congratulating Edward Borthwick,* the Gold Medallist of the School, on the Classical side, fifty years later.

HOME FROM MANCHURIA.

John Stewart* (1898-1905), M.A., who has been a missionary in Manchuria since 1914 and for three years before the outbreak of war in the Far East was General Secretary of the Scottish and Irish Presbyterian Missions in Manchuria (which meant chiefly being the representative of the missions in all dealings with the Government), has arrived in this country, having been included in the party that was released by the Japanese. On the day that war broke out he was arrested with some others and ultimately lodged in a good flat in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Buildings in Moukden. They were there for six months, spending their time in doing chores, reading, playing cards, etc. Early in June, along with the other Britons in Manchuria, they were transferred to Kobe in Japan, where they spent seven very pleasant weeks. They left Japan on 3oth July in the greatly overcrowded Tatuta Maru, calling at Shanghai and Saigon to pick up more people, and then went on to Lourenco Marques, where they exchanged into an Egyptian ship, which brought them home by Cape Town.

On the Japanese boat there was enough water to allow a consumption for washing and drinking of only x35 tons a day. They began by using over i6o tons a day, so the water was cut off in the cabins and wash-rooms except for an hour in the mornings and half an hour in the evenings. All the non-official people were travelling steerage

30

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

(including between thirty and forty bank managers), and the scramble for basins mornings and evenings constituted the big effort of the day.

In the Egyptian ship they had a wonderful mixture on board : most were British, but there were also Dutch, Norwegians, Fighting French, Czechoslovaks, Belgians, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, and Russians— all with British passports.

Douglas Still* (1932-35) was on the Rangoon staff of Messrs.

Steel Brothers, Ltd., from the end of 1938. When Rangoon was threatened by the Japanese, he assisted in the evacuation of the firm's native employees to Maymyo and ultimately to Mandalay. He had been in the Burma Defence Corps, and at Mandalay was called up for service, becoming a and Lieutenant. From Mandalay he ultimately went to India. The long and arduous journey was accomplished mostly on foot. When last heard of, he was spending a month's leave at Lahore.

Edward Hastings Still (192o-33), Captain and Adjutant, Reconnaissance Corps, has received a Certificate of Honour (awarded for gallantry or good service).

Robert Still* (1924.-27), M.A., Aboyne, has recently been granted a commission as Pilot Officer in the R.A.F.V.R. Training Branch for A.T.C. duties, and is in command of a Flight of an A.T.C. Squadron.

Ernest Strachan* (1923-24 and 1929-36) is now a Squadron Leader in the R.A.F. He has been serving abroad with the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

David Landsborough Thomson* (I9II-18), M.A., B.Sc., Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry in McGill University, Montreal, has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.

He has been on the staff of McGill University since 5928, when he became a Lecturer in Biochemistry. Like his father, the late Sir J. Arthur Thomson, he has won recognition as a writer and research worker. He is the author of " The Life of the Cell " and of many scientific articles. He has played an important part in Canada in recent years in developing public interest in nutrition.

George Findlay Walker* (1907-2o), who served his apprenticeship as a chartered accountant with Messrs. Bower and Smith, C.A., Aberdeen, and qualified in 1926, had been in the employment of a firm of accountants in Hongkong for ten years when it fell. He was a member of the Hongkong Volunteer Defence Corps and is now definitely known to be a prisoner of war.

George Forbes Walker* (1923-34), who is a B.Sc. of Aberdeen University with First Class Honours in Geology, is on the staff of the Scientific Research Laboratory, Lynwood, Staffs.

George Tod Wright* (1901-06), M.A., B.D., minister of St. Serf's, Edinburgh, is now Senior Chaplain to the Forces, Glasgow Area, and was " mentioned " in the last Birthday Honours.

James Fenton Wyness (I955-zo), A.R.I.B.A., is the author of " Aberdeen : Phases of the City with Brief Historical Notes," which has recently been published at the price of zs. 6d. It is a delightful

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

31 little book consisting principally of thirty black-and-white drawings of various buildings and places of historical interest in Aberdeen, some of them no longer in existence. The drawings are unusual in treatment and will appeal to all Aberdonians who love their native city.

THE SEVEN INCORPORATED TRADES OF ABERDEEN.

Among the office-bearers recently elected for 1942-43 at a meeting of the Convener Court, were the following F.P.s :— Hammermen—John A. Lewis* (1914-20), Boxmaster ; Douglas George Milne (1904-08), Hospitals Man. Bakers—Ian Gowanlock McPherson* (5910-17), Deacon. Shoemakers—John Marcus Raffan* (1912-24), First Master. Weavers—David Main Ross* (1884-88), Late Deacon. Factor of Trinity Cemetery—Stephen James Hunter* (1889-99). Joint Clerk and Assessor—George Robb* (1892-97), solicitor.

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY DEGREES AND PRIZES.

At the Summer Graduation at Aberdeen University on 9th July 1942 degrees were conferred' on the following F.P.s :— Degree of Doctor of Medicine (M.D.)— Alan Hamilton Cruickshank (1920-31), M.B., Ch.B., with Highest Honours for Thesis—" Investigations into the Physiology of the Lymphocyte." (In absentia.)

Degree of Master of Arts (M.A.) :— Robert Scott Couper* (1932-39), with First Class Honours in Classics.

Robert Alexander Esslemont Mennie* (1924-36), with First Class Honours in Classics.

David McLean Bishop* (1928-38), with First Class Honours in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.

Gordon Frederick Hendry* (1928-39), with First Class Honours in Economic Science.

William Cranna Bain* (1930-39).

George Campbell Massie* (1924-38).

Degree of Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)-Charles Michael Maclntyre Begg (1932-36), M.A., with First Class I lonours in Zoology.

Harry Spark Cardno* (1925-39).

Ian Leslie* (1927-39).

Arthur Smith Rattray* (19z3-3 5 ).

Degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (M.B., Ch.B.)— Harold Ian Cameron Bowie (1932-37).

James Rankine Wilson Catto* (5923-36).

Ian George Logan Craig* (1932-36).

William Young Laidlaw (5925-35).

John Cumming Lightbody* (1925-37).

William Barber McGowan* (5926-37).

Alexander Fraser Ross* (1923-27), B.Sc.(For.).

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

George Innes MacDonald Ross (193o-31).

Louis Seton Rusack (1926- 37).

James Knox Russell* (193z-37), In the Faculty of Arts David McLean Bishop* (1928-38) was awarded the Arnott Prize in Experimental Physics and the Boxill Prize in Mathematics ; and Robert Scott Couper* (1932-39) was awarded the Black Prize in Latin.

In the Faculty of Science Charles Michael Maclntyre Begg (1932-36), M.A., was awarded the Lyon Prize (for the Most Distinguished Graduate in Science of the year 1941-42).

In the Faculty of Medicine Alan Hamilton Cruickshank (1920-31), M.D., won the Thursfield Award (for the Best Thesis for the Degree of M.D. which has attained the Standard of Highest Honours of the year 1941-42).

At a Graduation Ceremony at Aberdeen University on z8th October 1942 degrees were conferred on the following :— Degree of Master of Arts (M.A.)— George Scott Skakle* (1927-39).

John George Moncur Watt (1934-39).

It is noteworthy that this year, in spite of war distractions, no fewer than five F.P.s have graduated in Arts with First Class Honours : three in Classics (including Harold M. Robertson Watt* (1926-38), who graduated in April), one in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and one in Economic Science.

Marriages.

Bannochie (19m-I3).--At Aberdeen, on loth June 1942, HARRY BANNOCHIE, youngest son of the late William G. Bannochie (188o-8z) and of Mrs. Bannochie, ;o Anderson Avenue, Aberdeen, to Margaret Eileen, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Peter Benzies, Aberdeen.

Brown (1918-27).—At West Church of St. Andrew, Aberdeen, on 3oth September 1941, NEIL BROWN (Captain, Merchant Service), eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, 39 Cranford Road, Aberdeen, to Evelyn, daughter of the late A. Simpson and of Mrs. Simpson, Chapelhill, Fraserburgh.

Cameron (1921-34).---At St. Luke's Church,. Chadderton, on 3rd October 194z, Lieutenant Scorr CAMERON,* R.A.M.C., younger son of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Cameron, I3 Richmondhill Road, Aberdeen, to Eileen Marischal, M.B., Ch.B., youngest daughter of the late Mr. James R. Duthie, Fraserburgh, and of Mrs. Duthie, 469 Middleton Road, Chadderton, Oldham.

Cardno (1929-32).--At St. Stephen's Church, Hampstead, on 3rd July 1942, JAMES ALEXANDER CARDNO, to Kathleen F. T. Murray.

Christie (19o8-2I).—At St. Andrew's Church, Bamsbury, London, on zznd August 194z, Dr. HARRY DONALD CHRISTIE,* SOD of Alexander James Christie* (1883-87) and Mrs. Christie, 14 Carlton Place, Aberdeen, to Doris Ada Hampton, elder daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Hampton, 19 Sinton Drive, 1Iigham Park, Essex.

Christie (I919-23).—At St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, on 3oth October 1942, WILLIAM CHRISTIE,* son of Mr. and Mrs. W. Christie, 341 Great Western Road, Aberdeen, to Daisy Irene, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Harper, Ballater.

Cockle .(1 9z3-36).—At Holburn West Church, Aberdeen, on ist July 1942, Sgt. Navigator ALASTAIR MACKENZIE COCKLE,* R.A.F., eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Cockie, 33 Hammerfield Avenue, Aberdeen, to Elizabeth Wood Reith Middleton, Aberdeen. [See p. 49.]

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

33

Coutts (19z4-3z).—At Aberdeen, on 31st July 1942, JAMES PARK COUITS, Royal Navy, son of Mr. and Mrs. James Coutts, granite merchant, so Carden Place, Aberdeen, to Elizabeth Agnes, daughter of Mrs. Hopper, to Thomson Terrace, Stonehaven, and of the late Mr. J. W. Hopper, C.A., Trinidad.

Craig (i922-32).—At King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, on 9th September 1942, JAMES CRAIG,* M.A., LL.B., only son of Mrs. Craig, S4 King's Gate, Aberdeen, and the late Mr. James Craig, Craigard, Ardrossan and Pinwherry, to Alice Norris, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Leith, 48 Gladstone Place, Aberdeen.

Donald (19zo-32).—At the Scots Kirk, Calcutta, on 14th September 1942, JAMES ALEXANDER DONALD,* C.A. (Captain, Gurkha Rifles), son of Mr. and Mrs. G. A. Donald, 2o Allan Street, Aberdeen, to Isobel Stuart, Q.A.I.M.N.R., daughter of the late Mr. Richard Wilson and of Mrs. Wilson, 169 Queen's Road, Aberdeen.

Duff (1924-34).--At the Old Parish Church, Dumbarton, on 4th July 5942, Flight Licut. STEWART DUFF,* M.B., Ch.B., R.A.F.V.R., only son of Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Duff, 99 Whitehall Place, Aberdeen, to Sheila, younger daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Percy Wharrier, Dunain, Alexander Street, Dumbarton.

Duncan (t924-3x).—At St. Mary's Church, Wetherden, Suffolk, on 26th September 1942, Captain THOMAS DUNCAN,* R.A.M.C., elder son of Mr. and Mrs. T. Duncan, 16 Calsayseat Road, Aberdeen, to Dorothy Elizabeth, second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. Rand, Sunnyside, Wetherden, Suffolk.

Forbes (1924-28).—At Rubislaw Church, Aberdeen, on 17th October 5942, WILLIAM LUMSDEN FORBES,* second son of the late Mr. Francis W. Forbes and Mrs. Forbes, 434 King Street, Aberdeen, to Mary Begg, only child of Mr. and Mrs. James Stewart, Viewfield, Rhynie.

Gauld (7923-3o).—At Cairo, on ioth October 1942, Captain Wimusat ROBERTSON GAULD,* R.A.M.C., elder son of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Gauld, 19 Beechgrove Terrace, Aberdeen, to Vivian, daughter of Col. and Mrs. H. Vernon-Jarvis, Gezira, Cairo.

Gilchrist (i929-36).—At St. Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen, on 24th September and Mrs. 1942, WILLIAM Scorr Guzman-T.,* Sub-Lieut., R.N.R., youngest son of Mr. W. J. Gilchrist, 3o Abergeldie Terrace, Aberdeen, to Freda, youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Mitchell, 76 Beaconsfield Place, Aberdeen.

Gordon (1925-39).—At High Church, Hilton, Aberdeen, on 15th July 1942, CHARLES WIIIIAM GORDON,* only son of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, 75 Beechgrove Terrace, Aberdeen, to Agnes Sim, youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. Butler, 22 Hayfield Place, Aberdeen.

Officer Gray (19z1-3z).—At Shenfield Parish Church, on 4th July 1942, Flying Louisville TREVOR GRAY,* R.A.F.V.R., elder son of Mr. and Mrs. Tosco Gray, 72 Avenue, Aberdeen, to Dorothea, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. T. Walmsley, Ashley Crossways, Shenfield, Essex.

Hay (19z8-38).—At All Saints' Parish Church, Loughborough,WILLIAM TULLOCH Hay, HtrrroN HAY, son of George Edward Hay* (1895-5902), M.A., and Mrs. G. E. H. of Mrs. M. 169 Forest Avenue, Aberdeen, to Marjorie Jean Cooke, daughter Cooke, of Loughborough, and the late Mr. Arthur C. Cooke, of Nottingham.

June Hutchison (1927-33).—At King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, on 3oth and Mrs. A. 1942, ALEXANDER CANTLAY HUTCHISON,* M.A., B.Sc., son of Mr. M.A., Hutchison, Danestone Farm, Woodside, to Annie Margaret M`Kcssar, B.Sc., daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. Davidson, 448 King Street, Aberdeen.

1942., Hyslop (1897-197o).—At St. Mary's Church, Selkirk, on 9th July

Winifred ARCHIBALD FORBES HYSLOP,* M.A., Ph.D., Tweed House, Melrose, to llelen, daughter of the late Mr. William Reid, Bertrohill, Shettleston. on 27th June Inns (t921-32).—At Torphins North Church, Aberdeenshire,Inner, 74 Burns S. 1942, JAMES ALEXANDER INNES,* eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Hill, Belle Vue, W. Mrs. Mr. and of daughter elder Vera, to Road, Aberdeen, Torphins, Aberdeenshire.

September Mackenzie (1930-3z).—At King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, on 15th and Mrs. John Mackenzie, Sydney 1942, JOHN Mitmativz1z,* C.A., elder son of Mr.

Wm. Stewart, Cottage, Balmedie, to Eileen Dowman, elder daughter of the late32Mr. Duthie Terrace, granite merchant, Orrock House, Balmedie, and Mrs. Stewart, Aberdeen.

34

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine Mackie (1924-29).—At St. Helen's Church, Sandal, Wakefield, on Toth October

1942, ALEXANDER GEORGE ANGUS MACKIE,* son of the late Mr. C. J. Mackie and of Mrs. Mackie, 20 Ashley Road, Aberdeen, to Joan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H.

Froggett, 1 Carr Lane, Sandal, Wakefield.

Macrae (1911-38).-At St. Jude's Church, Kensal Green, London, on 31st October 1942, JoHN KENNETH MACRAE,* R.A.F.V.R., son of the late Mr. John Macrae, Eileandonnan, Elgin, and of Mrs. Macrae, Aberdeen, to Florence Ann, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Treahy, 6 Portnall Road, Paddington, London.

Merson (1918-28).—At Zanzibar, E. Africa, on 8th October 1942, GEORGE POISON MERSON,* M.B., Ch.B., only son of the late George Merson, Lourenco Marques, E. Africa, and Mrs. Merson, 49 Kingshill Avenue, Aberdeen, to Norah, only daughter of Captain Miles Houghton, R.A. (retired), and the late Mrs. Houghton, Higher Walton, Preston.

Mollison (1917-25).—At St. Stephen's Church, Inverness, on 25th June 1942, GEORGE CROLL MOLLISON,* only son of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Mollison, 4 Carlton Place, Aberdeen, to Eileen Helen Anne, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Huntly Fraser, Dalneigh, Inverness.

Rebecca (x923-35).—At Gilcomston South Church, Aberdeen, on 3rd November 1942, EDWARD SUTHERLAND PRYOR REBECCA,* only son of Mr. and Mrs. A. Pryor Rebecca, 12 Ashley Park Drive, Aberdeen, to Evelyn May, younger daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Strath, 4 Hammersmith Road, Aberdeen.

Scatterty (1925-30).—At Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen, on and September 1942, and Lieut. IAN HAMILTON SCATTERTY, of the West African Frontier Force, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. A. Scatterty, 198 Queen's Road, to Isobel Thomson Douglas, second daughter of Mr. John Douglas, 136 King's Gate.

Scott (1895-1902).—At Filton Parish Church, Bristol, on zoth June 1942, JAMES RICHARD Sccrrr,* to Norah Lightbowne, Bristol Aeroplane Company.

Shennan (1924-30 and I933-34).—At a Garrison Church, Middle East, on 9th May 1942, EDWARD THEODORE SHENNAN,* younger son of Emeritus-Professor Sherman, Aberdeen, to Elsie Lillian (" Vicky "), daughter of Mrs. Trew, Dagenham, Essex.

Shepherd (I923-32).—At Mount Tabor Church, Luton, Beds, on 16th October 1942, Private DOUGLAS CHALMERS SHEPHERD, R.A.O.C., second son of the late Mr. John Shepherd and of Mrs. Shepherd, 35 Osborne Place, Aberdeen, to Mary, second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Patterson, 35 Justice Street, Aberdeen.

Simpson (1884-89 and 1893-95).—At the Manse of St. Laurence, Forres, on 2nd September 1942, JOHN TAYLOR SIMPSON, solicitor in Stornoway (advocate in Aberdeen), to Nellie Paterson, younger daughter of Mr. Charles M`Naughton and the late Mrs. M`Naughton, Aberdeen.

Stephen (19o2-04).—At Haddo House Chapel, Aberdeenshire, on nth July 1942, WILLIAM LEGGE STEPHEN,* M.B., Ch.B., D.P.H., Springbank, Methlick, to Lilias MacKenzie, Haddo House Maternity Hospital, daughter of Mrs. MacKenzie, late of Glastullich House, Tain.

Stevens (1927-32).—At Iloly Trinity Church, Mcir, Stoke-on-Trent, on 18th September 1942, Rev. DAVID ALAN JOHN STEVENS, M.A., C.F., son of Rev. Alan W. and Mrs. Stevens, late of Aberdeen, to Miss Mary Leitch, M.B., Ch.B., daughter of Mr. John Leitch and the late Mrs. Leitch of Meir.

• Still (1922-33).—At Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen, on loth October 1942, OSWALD HASTINGS RITCHIE STILL, Lieut., R.N.V.R., son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Still, 16 Anderson Drive North, to Dorothy, elder daughter of the late Dr. Archie Reith Fraser (1902-07) and of Mrs. Fraser, 23 Hazledene Road, Aberdeen.

Thomson (1920-32).--At King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, on 19th September 1942, WILLIAM EDDIE SPALDING THOMSON,* to I idell Donaldson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. Campbell, 78 Whitehall Road, Aberdeen.

Williamson (1923-26 and 1928-29).—At St. Mary's, Cadogan Street, S.W. x, on nth August 1942, Captain ALISTER GORDON WILLIAMSON,* London, Gordon Highlanders, eldest son of Mr. W. B. Williamson* (190o-o2) and Mrs. Williamson, Scofield Cottage, Scofield, Aberdeen, to Mary Patricia Bisseker, elder daughter of Mr. F. D. Bisseker and Mrs. H. C. Debes Davies, late of Singapore.

JOHN MACKENZIE MACH H I \N M.B., Ch.B.

Major, R.A.M.C.

JAMES RONALD COULTER

ROBERT ALBERT RAINNIE

Corporal, The Hussars

Malayan Volunteer Force

•

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

35

Obituary.

FORMER F.P. CLUB CONSUL AT COLOMBO.

David Scott* (1886-94), elder son of the late Mr. Ronald Scott, Aberdeen, died suddenly at Bieldside, Aberdeenshire, on 4th July 194z, aged 63 years. On leaving the School he entered the service of Messrs.

Edmonds & Ledingham, advocates, Aberdeen, anti after seven years went out to Ceylon, where he joined Messrs. Lewis Brown Sc Co., Ltd., shipping, insurance, and estate agents, Colombo, eventually becoming Managing Director. Latterly he was a director of Messrs.

Taylor, Noble & Co., Ltd., of London, and spent much of 1-is time in London, where he experienced a serious " blitz."

David Scott took an extraordinary interest in the Grammar School, and particularly in the F.P. Club. It was very largely at his instigation that the system of Club Consuls was started in 19z 2, and he himself proved to be an ideal Consul at Colombo from 1922 to 1938. Being a racy and amusing talker, he was always very welcome at Club dinners, and made a memorable speech in proposing the toast of " The Club " at the dinner in Aberdeen in 192 1, when he dealt with the proposal to establish Consuls and pronounced a eulogium on the Magazine from the point of view of an F.P. " exile." He married in Kandy in 1907 Gertrude Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. James Mackenzie, Aberdeen, by whom and two sons he is survived.

David Scott was my senior by a few years, but circumstances brought us together at an early age and our friendship ripened with the years. To me he was one of the big chaps at School, but there was no atmosphere of condescension, no suggestion of patronage when he mixed with some of us youngsters at the " short inty " or after School hours. This friendly, brotherly attitude to his juniors was constantly maintained all through life, and I am only one of many F.P.s who will continue to remember him with profound respect.

Of David's successes or failures in the classroom I can say nothing, nor do I recall anything outstanding during his career in a law office in Aberdeen, but I do remember very clearly with what open-eyed enthusiasm he ventured from these shores for his life's work in Ceylon.

From then onwards, directly or indirectly, I was in close touch with him, and I always looked forward with great pleasure to his home leaves, as we had many things in common. His affection for the old School 'vas a very real thing, and lots of Grammar boys must regret the passing of one who not only placed them in good positions, but also kept a watchful eye on their development and frequently guided them in their early problems. On one occasion, when on the outlook for some one to fill a junior position in Colombo, he said to me : " I don't want a ' star turn ' in scholastic achievement, but a good, honest fellow of fair all-round ability, with a keen, open mind and a genuine desire to learn. That's the sort who will never give me an anxious moment, and what is much more important, he will be a success, and a credit to the ' Grammar '."

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine Loathing anything that was shady, David regarded " integrity " as one of the most important words in our vocabulary. He was always cautious, never hurried in his decisions ; and an almost stealthy generosity was one of his most notable characteristics. His political views were decidedly pronounced, and he was brimful of pithy yarns concerning most of the Government celebrities of the day. He was naturally jovial and'extremely amusing on occasions, could tell a story better than most, with a humour that was clean and wholesome at all times.

David was a hard worker, with wide business interests, and I imagine there arc few men who could speak with greater knowledge on rubber and tea, which were the commodities in which he specialized.

While always willing to give a carefully considered opinion on any point where his experience might prove helpful, he invariably emphasized the distinction between opinion and advice. Together with other East India merchants, he experienced many ups and downs, but the specially difficult period immediately preceding the present war told heavily on his health. He refused to give in and struggled • hard to keep a grip of things, believing that responsibility to his immediate business associates demanded unwavering attention. It is no exaggeration to say that he wore himself out for others.

David Scott was at his best and completely happy when out with the gun or fishing rod, and I am glad it was my good fortune to share many delightful days with him on river and loch. The School has lost a staunch supporter, and I have lost a very good friend.

ALFRED SMITH ( I 889-96).

George Alexander Angus, who was at the School for a short time in 1894, died at Cults, Aberdeenshire, on land October 1942, aged 67 years. He was Aberdeen manager of the Commercial Union Assurance Co., Ltd., from 1906 until his retirement in 1940.

Henry Sinclair Bain (1900- 03), son of the late Mr. Ebenezer Bain, journalist, died at Aberdeen on 16th July 1942, aged 55 years.

On leaving the School he joined the staff of Messrs. Stephen and Smith, advocates, Aberdeen, as a clerk and rose to the post of cashier.

George Taylor Bruce (I87o-71), M.A., died at Regina, Sask., Canada, on 3oth May 1942, aged 85 years. After graduating in Arts, with First Class Honours in Classics, at Aberdeen University in 1880, he became Classical Master in Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen, and in 1888 Rector of Inverness Royal Academy. For ten years from 1894 he was Principal of New Glenmoriston College, Inverness.

In 1904 he and his family went to Canada, where he engaged in farming near Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, until he retired in 1928. Thereafter he resided at Kelliher, Sask.

Alexander Cromar* (1878-85), L.D.S. (Edin.), son of the late Mr. John Cromar, 5 Gladstone Place, Aberdeen, died in a nursing home in Aberdeen on 25th November 1942. After qualifying as a dental surgeon in 1894, he continued his studies at the University of Penrsylvania. He had been in practice as a dental surgeon in Aberdeen for over 35 years.

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

37 John Forbes Fraser* (1879-83) died in London on 8th May 1942, aged 76 years. He went to Ceylon in 1887 and engaged in tea-planting there, mainly in the service of the Travancore Tea Estates Co., Ltd., until his retiral in 1929. For many years he was stationed at Peermade, Southern India, where, he used to say, the climate was splendid, the scenery magnificent, and the sport grand (the game including elephant, bison, ibex, tiger, leopard, and sambur). When the F.P. Club consular system was started in 1922, he was appointed the Consul for Travancore, and remained in that post till 1929.

Richard Ogilvie Girdwood* (19o7-15), M.B., Ch.B., only son of the late Mr. George Girdwood, Braeneuk, Bon-Accord Terrace, Aberdeen, died there on 22nd June 1942, aged 46 years. On leaving the School in x915 he served for a time in the R.N. Auxiliary Sick Berth Reserve, and then joined a Special Company of the Royal Engineers as a Pioneer Chemist, serving in France from November 1916 to May 1918. Having decided to go in for medicine, he graduated M.B., Ch.B., at Aberdeen in 1923 and then worked for about two years on insulin research with Professor Hugh MacLean in the William Dunn Laboratory, St. Thomas's Hospital, London. While there, he received an appointment under the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and after a period as Senior Assistant Pathologist at the Royal Sussex County Hospital at Brighton, he was appointed Assistant City Pathologist at Bradford, becoming subsequently Lecturer in Biochemistry at Bradford Technical College. In 1937 he was appointed

by Liverpool City Council to be Pathologist to three Liverpool hospitals, and continued there till his death.

John Charles Grant (1868-69), M.A., minister-emeritus of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Nottingham, died at Torquay on 26th June 1g42 at the age of 88. Born in Grantown in 1854, he graduated in Arts at Aberdeen in 1876, and then took his Divinity course at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, and at New College, Edinburgh. He was elected minister of the Free Church at Loanhead, Midlothian, and ordained in 1880, and after fifteen years was called to Nottingham, where he ministered for 37 years. After his retiral in 1932 he lived at Torquay. In October 1940 he celebrated his diamond jubilee as a minister by preaching from the pulpit of his first charge. As a native of Grantown, he was a contemporary and life-long friend of the late Mr. George Harvey, who will be remembered by senior F.P.s as a Classical Master in the School in the 'eighties.

NNW Howard Alexander Gray* (1880-84), M.A., for many years of the editorial staff of the Observer, died at Hounslow, member a Middlesex, on 3rd October 1942, aged 7z years. He was the elder son of the late Mr. Henry Gray, merchant, Aberdeen. After graduating M.A. at Aberdeen University, with Honours in Mental Philosophy and winning the Seafield English Medal, in 1888, he started his career as a journalist in i 890 on the Aberdeen Free Press, and was later engaged successively on the editorial staffs of the Scottish Leader, Edinburgh, the Northern Dai0 News and Northern Evening News, Aberdeen, and the Birmingham Daily Mail. From 1894 to 1899 he was Assistant Editor of the

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

Birmingham Daily Mail, and from 1899 to 1902 was Editor of th7 Birmingham Daily Argus and the Birmingham Evening Dispatch. In

the latter year, when there were still four first-class evening newspapers in London, he joined the Pall Mall Gazette, and for a long time was one of the chief members of its staff. Then, during the period from 1912 to 1915 when Mr. Garvin edited both the Observer and the PallMall Gazette, he became more and more closely connected with the former newspaper. He was appointed one of its Assistant Editors in 1927, and held that post until the autumn of 1941. A correspondent in The Times wrote : " As leader-writer, reviewer, and able hand in most kinds of emergency, he combined his genuine Aber- donian scholarship with quick versatility and was one of the best all-round journalists of his time. As a personality he had a niche of his own. He was courteous and punctilious in manners, kindly at heart, genial and racy in private intercourse. His friends remember him with equal affection and respect. To his family he leaves a very honourable name."

Mr. Howard Gray maintained a life-long interest in his old School and in the F.P. Club and its London Centre. As a journalist he appreciated the Grammar School Magazine, testifying to this in a message to the recent Centenary Number, and only a few months ago wrote a short article for it, which is printed in this issue. It was intended that this article should appear in the last issue, and when the Editor wrote explaining that owing to war-time exigencies it had to be held over, he replied immediately : " 1 have been in your position too often not to understand." He frequently spent his summer holiday at Colquhonny, Strathdon, but in his last post card to the Editor he wrote : " I'm afraid the deterrents of travel are too numerous to let me think of Strathdon this year."

Ernest N. M. Johnstone (1888-89), fifth son of the late Mr. Charles Johnstone, wholesale merchant, Aberdeen—he had eleven sons who attended the School—died at Vancouver, B.C., on loth August 1942, aged 6i years. He served as an apprentice engineer with Messrs. Hall & Co., Aberdeen, and went out to British Columbia i 191o, becoming a general merchant in Westminster.

Andrew Ledingham (1897-1903), son of the late Mr. John Ledingham, Rosemount Bakery, Aberdeen, died in Leeds on 3oth July. 1942, aged S3 years. He was for a considerable time associated with the family business in Aberdeen. In the last war he served as a gunner in the R.G.A. at Gibraltar. In his younger days he was a keen rugby player. He married in 1924 Agnes Spence, daughter of Mr. John McKay, 91 Argyll Place, Aberdeen. " SHON CAMPBELL."

William Andrew Mackenzie (1886-87), K.S.G., died in Geneva on 18th November 1942, aged 7z years. He studied medicine at Aberdeen for three Years and then turned to journalism, working in Aberdeen and in London. In 19zo he was appointed SecretaryGeneral of the Save the Children International Union at Geneva and

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

39 war.

The continued in that post until the outbreak of the present Union represented national child-welfare organizations in more than thirty countries. In 1922 he received the Knighthood of St. Gregory from Pope Benedict XV. He was the author of a number of novels and poems. In these Northern parts he will be best remembered as the author of the students' song Shon Campbell " (specially associated with the University of Aberdeen), with its singularly beautiful and haunting verse— " Shon Campbell lies in Gairloch, unhoodcd and ungown'd, The green quadrangle of the hills to watch his sleep profound, And the Gaudeamus of the burns making a homely sound."

Reginald Charles Mackie* (1903-14), younger son of the late DAVIDSON HACKIE (1870-72), died at 14 Royfold Crescent, Aberdeen, on 29th October 1942, aged 44 years. On leaving the School he started as an apprentice with Messrs. James Abernethy and Co., Ltd., engineers, Aberdeen, but in 1915 joined The Gordon I-fi hlanders as a Private, and in 1917 received a commission in the 3/1st Highland Brigade, R.F.A. (T.F.). He served in France with the R.F.A. from November 1917 to zist March 1918, when he was severely wounded. He lay in the open for almost three days, untended, before being picked up by German stretcher-bearers and taken to a German hospital. The injuries he had received permanently affected his health. His elder brother, JAMES CECIL D. HACKIE (1898-1909), who was a Captain in the R.F.A. (T.F.), was also wounded in March 1918, and having been badly gassed in the following September, died in August 1919.

Reginald Mackie succeeded his father in the firm of Messrs: Mackie and Dewar, advocates, Aberdeen, and in the present war, until his health declined, was Assistant Divisional Food Officer, North-East of Scotland Division, Ministry of Food. He married in June 1928 Miriam, younger daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander R. Dawson, Tomullachie, Logie-Coldstone. " His was a singularly gracious and kindly personality, enriched and purified in the crucible of suffering, and drawing its strength from unseen sources."

Edwin Salisbury Macleod* (1881-89), O.B.E., R.D., Commander, Royal Naval Reserve (retired), eldest son of the late Mr. Alfred Macleod, who taught Elocution in the School, died very suddenly in Blackpool on 2nd November 1942, aged 66 years. Shortly after leaving the School he went to sea as an apprentice in the Aberdeen Line, and having worked through the various grades, obtained his certificate as Extra Master. After commanding several large vessels, he passed a competitive entrance examination and became a Nautical Surveyor under the Board of Trade. He held appointments in this capacity and also as a Senior Nautical Surveyor at various ports, and was eventually promoted to be Principal District Officer and Emigration Officer for the Port of London. In the last war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the R.N.R., and one of his most interesting jobs was to lay a line of anti-submarine nets across the entrance to Suvla Bay for the protection of the transports carrying troops for the landing there.

He was also employed evacuating the troops from Suvla Bay and from JAMES

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 40 Cape Helles at the end of the campaign. He retired from the Active List of the Royal Naval Reserve with the rank of Commander, and was awarded the Reserve Decoration. In the present war he was Assistant to the Professional Officer at the headquarters of the Ministry of Shipping, later the Ministry of War Transport.

Alexander Lawrance Miller* (1876-80), M.A., died at Glendavan House, Dinnet, on 7th October 1942, aged 76 years. He was the second son of the late Mr. John Miller, who founded the well-known chemical works of John Miller & Co., Ltd., at Sandilands, Aberdeen, and was associated with that firm for nearly forty years, first as a partner and latterly as chairman of the directors. He graduated in Arts at Aberdeen University in 1887, and served as a law apprentice with Messrs. C. & P. H. Chalmers, Aberdeen. After a period with an Edinburgh legal firm, he became a member of the Society of Advocates in Aberdeen and practised his profession until 1903, when he entered his father's business. For a long time he was a Volunteer with the ist Aberdeenshire Artillery, in which he attained the rank of Major. He was a keen golfer, and was for a term Captain of the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club. Keenly interested in Masonic affairs, he was at one time Provincial Grand Master for Aberdeen.

James Allan Mitchell (1925-31), second son of the Rev. D. C. Mitchell, formerly of the North U.F. Church, Aberdeen, was killed in a climbing accident in the Cairngorms on ist October 1942, aged 24 years. He was a Divinity student at Glasgow University, and was one of a party of four fellow-students who set out to climb the Shelter Stone Crag, overlooking Loch Avon. One of the young men gave up the task after proceeding part of the distance. Mitchell, roped to his other two companions, was leading the attempt to climb the crag, but lost his footing and fell a distance of about 140 feet. He disappeared out of sight of his companions over a projecting part of the crag. News of the tragedy was brought to Aviemore by one of the students, and a search party was organized. The rescuers had to wait for daylight and made the dangerous climb to a rocky ledge, where Mitchell was found lying dead, with the rope still round him. He was a graduate in Arts of Glasgow University and was student-assistant in Fairbairn Church, Glasgow.

James Crawford Noble (1885-86), son of the late Mr. James Shirras Noble, died at Aberdeen on 29th October 1942, aged 67 years.

James Petrie (1874-77), M.B., C.M., eldest son of the late Canon James Petrie, Alford, died at Melmoth, Zululand, Natal, on 25th -September 1942, aged 81 years. He was one of five brothers who attended the School, and one of six who all. graduated at Aberdeen University. After taking the degree of M.B., C.M. in 1882, having qualified at the age of 19, he was appointed Medical Missionary at Magila, East Central Africa, and later became District Surgeon at Melmoth, Zululand, where he remained until his death, having retired in 1926.

Edward John Savage* (1875-79) died in Aberdeen on znd November 1942, aged 8o years. When he left the School he entered the service

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

41

the of the Aberdeen Steam Navigation Company as an apprentice in office and rose to the position of Manager in 1902, holding the managership until his retiral in 194o. In this position he did much towards making Aberdeen an important goods and passenger port. He was a member of the Aberdeen Harbour Board from 1919 to 1940.

SENIOR MEMBER OF THE F.P. CLUB.

William Alexander Smith* (1861-65), son of Mr. James Smith, died at Aberdeen on 23rd November 1942, aged 9z years. Until quite recently he carried on the business of Messrs. James Smith and Son, wholesale watch and clock makers, 37 Market Street, Aberdeen.

He shared with PATRICK REID* (1861-65), retired commercial traveller, Aberdeen, the distinction of being the senior member of the F.P. Club and probably the oldest surviving former pupil of the School.

He was the last of the ten F.P.s, pupils at the School either before or at the time of its transference in 1863 from its site in the Schoolhill to the present buildings in Skene Street, who were present as guests at the Annual Dinner of the F.P. Club held in the School Hall in October 1923 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of that historic event.

Beddie Macdonald Stephen (1896-98), third son of the late Captain John Stephen, Aberdeen, died suddenly at Haifa, Palestine, on 18th October 1942, aged 58 years. He served as an apprentice in the Mercantile Marine with the Loch Line of Glasgow. He became a shipmaster about twenty years ago, first with the Baron Line, Glasgow, and later with Messrs. J. Langdon Rees, Ltd., shipowners, London.

In the last war he was a chief officer in naval transports, and was torpedoed in s.s. Baron Vernon in the Mediterranean in 1916.

William Walker (1896-? ), M.C., M.B., Ch.B., Lieut.-Colonel, R.A.M.C., a son of the late Mr. William Walker, bookseller, Aberdeen, died at Newcastle about the end of July. He graduated in Medicine at Aberdeen University in 1914, and on the outbreak of war in that year was mobilized as a Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. (S.R.). He served in France with the znd Cavalry Division from October 1914 to March 1919, and after the war was in command of an Egyptian stationary hospital at Haifa, Palestine. He was awarded the Military Cross in May 1918, having " proceeded to a village under heavy fire and succeeded in attending and evacuating several wounded. He desisted only when the enemy entered the village. Later he succeeded in releasing a party of stretcher-bearers who had been cut off." He retired from the R.A.M.C. in 1932, and in the same year received the degree of M.D. from Aberdeen University for a thesis on cerebrospinal fever in the Northern Command of the Army during 1931.

Latterly he had been a medical practitioner in North Shields. He married in 1919 Margaret Muriel, eldest daughter of Mr. Arthur B. Harris, English master, Dumfries.

Archibald William Willet (1869-74), M.Inst.C.E., son of the late Mr.-John Willet, 3o Albyn Place, Aberdeen, died in Aberdeen on i ith October 1942, aged 84 years. He was formerly engineer of the Preston Division of the London and North-Western Railway.

42

Aberdeen Grammar School Maga:zine

Pro Patria Mortui. " So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchres, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by."—Tmucrnmes, II, 43.

Walter George Swan Benzie* (1917-19), Major, Royal Tank Regiment, fourth son of the late Mr. A. Emslie Benzie, Morkeu, Cults, and of Mrs. Benzie, 13 Forest Road, Aberdeen, was killed in action in the Middle East in June 1942, aged 31 years. After graduating B.Sc. at Aberdeen University in 1933, he became a znd Lieutenant in the Royal Tank Corps, his commission being ante-dated to September 1932. For three years he was seconded for duty under the Ministry of Supply, becoming Assistant Inspector (Tanks), Mechanization Inspection Department. After rejoining his regiment, he was in Tobruk for eight months and was wounded there in November 1940. He was subsequently mentioned in dispatches (31 December 1941). His death occurred when the fighting in Libya started again in June of this year. Both at the School and at the University he took an active interest in rugby, and while an undergraduate helped to revive the University Boxing Club, of which he'vw•as the secretary. He married in May 1938 Miss Joan Balcomb of Lydd, Kent, who died two years later.

Andrew H. Bruce* (1922-37), Lieutenant, The Gordon Highlanders, youngest son of the late Mr. William R. Bruce, and of Mrs. J. A. Bruce, ;z Morningside Avenue, Aberdeen, was killed in action in the Middle East in November 1942, aged 25 years. Before enlisting he was on the staff of the Car and General Insurance Corporation, Ltd., Aberdeen. He took a keen interest in rugby and was a member of the F.P. ist XV. [We hope to reproduce a portrait of Lieut. Bruce in e- e next issur..—Ed. A.G.S.11~ag.]

James Whyte Connon* (1928-39), Cadet Officer, Merchant Navy, died in Liverpool after a short illness on 17th November 1942, aged 19 years. He was a son of Mr. William Connon, solicitor, zz Hosefield Avenue, Aberdeen, and on leaving the School in 1939 joined H.M.S. Worcester to prepare himself for a career in the Merchant Navy.

Excellent progress there gained him the highest certificate on the completion of his two years' course, while his love of sport and outdoor life led to his representing Worcester in rugby, cricket, and swimming. He went to sea as a Merchant Service apprentice in September 1941. During his first trip his ship was torpedoed in the Northern Atlantic. He was picked up by a Free French corvette and taken to Iceland, and thence got back to this country. Having lost none of his desire for a life at sea, he did two more trips, and he was just starting out on his fourth trip when he suddenly became ill and was put ashore for treatment. He died in hospital a fortnight later. . He was a member of the 9th (Grammar School) Troop of the Boy Scouts and played rugby for the F.P.s.

-

Ok -.;,;, ,, ri

,....oct;

101

• tab. alllb 0

JOHN DAVIDSON FROST

JOHN WILLIAM PAUL

Sergeant Air Gunner, R A.F V.R.

Sergeant Pilot, R.A.F.

IAN ALEXANDER BRUCE JOHNSTONE NLA , LL B.

Pilot Officer, R.A.F.

JOHN BRUCE MACLEOD Pilot Officer, R.A.F.V.R.

•

\\ It I IAM

MCDONALD MENZIES

Pilot Officer, R.A.F.

GORDON BOWMAN WILL M.B., Ch.B. Flying Officer, K.A.F.

LAWRENCE HAROLD GRUER

JOHN PATERSON SMITH WORLING

Sergeant Pilot, R.A.F.

Sergeant Observer, R.A.F.V.R.

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

43 His brother, CAMPBELL CONNON* (1926-38), M.A., who is serving in The Gordon Highlanders, writes : " Jim has made his last voyage— over the curtained horizon—but his surely epitomized the spirit of them ' that go down to the sea in ships,' and his surely added its little contribution to the truth now appreciated as seldom before that ' the history of navigation is the history of human martyrdom.' A bright, devil-may-care, vigorous personality, he radiated fun and cheerfulness wherever he went, attracting to himself many friends, especially among the more spirited of his own age. To have known him has been an exhilarating and stimulating experience, and to have been his brother a privilege among the most cherished. Although the flame of life has been so abruptly and sadly quenched, the stream of Time shall in no way modify the boldly etched impression of him that I shall always retain."

James Ronald Coulter* (1923-32), Corporal, The Hussars, son of Mr. James G. Coulter, 44o Clifton Road, Aberdeen, died of diphtheria at Ranchi, Bihar, India, on 5th June 1942, aged 23 years.

Before the war he was in the service of British Insulated Cables, Ltd., electrical engineers and cablemakers, Aberdeen, and when called up in July 1939, was posted to The Hussars. In August 1940 he was sent to the Middle East and served in Libya, getting as far as Benghazi.

Later he was transferred to Burma, and went through the retreat there at the beginning of this year. Having contracted malaria and diphtheria, he was taken to hospital on ist June and died four days later.

John Davidson Frost* (1927-39), Sergeant Air Gunner, R.A.F.V.R., son of Mr. William D. Frost, 316 Broomhill Road, Aberdeen, was killed on active service in September 1942, aged zo years. Before joining the R.A.F. he was serving his apprenticeship as a civil engineer under the Aberdeen Harbour Board.

Lawrence Harold Gruer (1927-32), Sergeant Pilot, R.A.F., younger son of Mr. Justice Harold G. Gruer, Indian Civil Service, was reported missing on 3oth July 1941, and he is now officially presumed to have died on that date, aged zo years. He received the latter part of his school education at Merchiston, Edinburgh, and was studying medicine at St. Th ,mas's Hospit 11, Lond -m, when war broke out. He joined the R.A.F. in May 194o, and was piloting a Blenheim bomber when he was lost in operations.

Ian Alexander Bruce Johnstone (1923-27), M.A., LL.B., Pilot Officer, R.A.F., eldest son of the late Mr. Alexander Johnstone and of Mrs. Johnstone, Forest Lodge, King's Gate, Aberdeen, was killed in action on 12-13 March 1942, aged z6 years. He graduated M.A. at Aberdeen University in 1936 and LL.B. two years later. While at the University he was President of the Debating Society and of the Unionist Association, and was a Sergeant in the O.T.C. He served his law apprenticeship with Messrs. Patrick Cooper, Son and Hav, advocates, Aberdeen, and then went South to Glasgow and Galston, Ayrshire. In December 1941 he was admitted a member of the Society of Advocates in Aberdeen. He was married in October 1941 to Miss Joan Charlton of Woodford Lodge, Kettering.

44

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

John Macpherson Macdonald (5924-26), Lieutenant (A), Royal Navy, son of Mr. G. G. Macdonald, Ingham, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, died on active service in October 1942, aged 24 years. He was appointed a Midshipman (A) on 4th July 1938, and after training in H.M.S. Hermes, began his course for Pilot in the Fleet Air Arm at Rochester in October of that year. He was promoted to SubLieutenant (A) in March 1940, and Lieutenant (A) in February 5942.

He was a grandson of the late Mr. John Macpherson, Mains of Mulben, Banffshire, and had started the study of medicine at Aberdeen University.

John Bruce MacLeod* (1936-39), Pilot Officer, R.A.F.V.R., Bomber Command, only son of Dr. John Farquhar MacLeod, Eastleigh, Peterculter, was reported missing in December 1941, and in August 1942 was officially presumed killed in action, aged 2r years.

Born in South Bank, near Middlesbrough, in August 5920, he moved with the family to London in 5924. He attended his first school in Dulwich, afterwards passing on to Dulwich Preparatory College.

Later he came north to Aberdeenshire, and entered the Grammar School in 5936. Having no wish to follow his father's profession, on leaving the School he worked for a year with his uncle, JOHN BRUCE* (1896-1903), in the firm of Marshall & Co., Ltd., preserved provision manufacturers, Aberdeen, and then volunteered in September 1940 as a member of an air crew. After ten months he gained his " wings " and was commissioned Pilot Officer in July 1945. He was a keen lover of sport, enjoying all outdoor games and playing rugby in the School and XV, with the ambition to become a member of the F.P. XV. He took a keen interest in scouting, and in company with two other scouts spent a holiday in Scandinavia, visiting the Northern Capitals. It was in these Northern waters that his aircraft met disaster.

The tribute paid to him by his Group Captain is a fitting epitaph : " Efficient and resolute in his devotion to duty."

John MacKenzie MacMillan (1922-29), M.B., Ch.B., Major, R.A.M.C., died on active service in the Middle East on 28th July 1942, aged 3o years. He was the only son of Mr. John MacMillan, formerly teacher at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen, and of the late Mrs. MacMillan, 239 Rosemount Place, Aberdeen. He graduated in Medicine in 5936 at Aberdeen University, where he was a member of the O.T.C. He later received a commission in the Territorials, and when war broke out held the rank of Captain. He served overseas from the beginning of 1940 in Palestine, Iraq, and Syria, and was mentioned in dispatches on ist April 1941. He married in September 5939 Margaret Ross, ,daughter of Mr. Peter Ross (now deceased) and Mrs. Ross, 2 16 Mid Stocket Road, Aberdeen.

William McDonald Menzies* (1933-36), Pilot Officer, R.A.F., was killed during air operations in the Middle East in September 1942, aged 24 years. The only son of Mr. William M. Menzies, 37 Craigton Road, Aberdeen, he passed from the Grammar School to the Aberdeen Savings Bank, being employed at the Head Office, where he quickly showed outstanding ability. He was an accomplished violinist, and when sixteen years of age won the cup for violin

Aberdeen Grammar School Afagazine

45 playing at Aberdeen Music Festival. He was also a Trinity College exhibitioner, and won its silver medal in the same year. On the outbreak of war he immediately volunteered for the R.A.F., and when ultimately called up, rose quickly from Aircraftman to Sergeant, gaining his " wings " in Rhodesia, where he had been sent for training.

Returning to this country he was promoted to the rank of FlightSergeant, and later granted a commission. In the spring of this year he was sent-to Egypt, where he was delighted with the prospect of " getting on with the job," in spite of all the discomforts of the desert.

He married in June 1941 Audrey Jean, daughter of Mr. Ben Fletcher, 97 Forest Avenue, Aberdeen, and is survived by her and one child.

Donald Noel Boyd Orr (19z7-56), Sergeant, R.A.F., was reported missing at the end of November 1941 and in January of this year the information came that he had been killed in action and was buried at Brest. fle was aged zo and was the only son of Sir John Boyd Orr and Lady Orr, of Wardenhill, Bucksburn. After being for nine years at the Grammar School, he was for a time at Gordonstoun School, Morayshire, and volunteered for the R.A.F. on his 19th birthday.

John William Paul, Jun.* (1929-36), Sergeant Pilot, R.A.F., eldest son of JOHN WILLIAM PAUL* (1901-03), formerly banker at Ellon, was reported missing in September 1941, and later officially presumed killed by enemy action, aged 23 years. He joined the R.A.F. as a volunteer in July 1940. While at the School he was, like his two younger brothers, resident at the Boarding House.

Robert Albert Rainnie (1914-18), a member of the Malayan Volunteer Force, was lost by enemy action off Singapore in February 1942. A son of the late Mr. Robert Rainnie, 76 Forest Avenue, Aberdeen, and of Mrs. Rainnie, Glenelg, Ballater, he left the School at the end of 1917 to become an air mechanic in the Royal Flying Corps, and was demobilized from the R.A.F. in March 1919. He then took a planter's course at the South-Western Polytechnic Institute, Chelsea, London, and going out to Malaya, eventually became manager of the Langchang Rubber Estate. He married Jean Eleanor, daughter of \VILLIAM J. CRUICKSHANK* (1887-92), dentist, 71 Beechgrove Terrace, Aberdeen, who with her son was evacuated from Singapore and is at present in Australia.

Thomas Campbell Reid* (1933-39), L.-ince-Corporal, The Gordon Highlanders, elder son of Captain and Mrs. Thomas Reid, 28 Lilybank Place, Aberdeen, died of wounds in the Middle East on .23rd October 1942, aged 22 years. On leaving the School he started as an apprentice with Messrs. George Watt & Stewart, architecs, Aberdeen, and attended Gray's School of Art. He received training in the O.T.C. and then joined The Gordon Highlanders.

Basil John Allan Rennie, M.C., Flight Lieutenant, R.A.F.V.R., second son of Mr. and Mrs. George Rennie, Johannesburg, who died on 19th October 1942, aged z6 years, was at the School for a few months in 1927.

John Moir Robertson (1923-29), Private, The Gordon Highlanders, elder son of the late Mr. John T. Robertson and of Mrs.

Aberdeen Grammar School Alagazine 46 Robertson, 261 Great Western Road, "Aberdeen, was killed in action in the Middle East in October 1942, aged 31 years. On leaving the School he entered the service of the North of Scotland Bank and was on the Head Office staff at Aberdeen. He was a keen cricketer and became Captain of the Aberdeenshire Cricket Club.

•

John Robertson was a man of exceptional character and a cricketer of great ability. His mind was at once original and well balanced, fertile and profound. His opinions on politics and world affairs were his own and were always well worth listening to.

When a " Grammar" boy of 15 he was selected to represent Aberdeenshire in County games, an honour no other schoolboy has achieved. A sturdy fellow with a steadfast defence, Robertson maintained his position in Aberdeenshire's First XI, and presently blossomed into a stylish batsman and one of the finest fieldsmen in Scotland.

Many a time, by judicious and gradual methods, he scored freely when others failed, and hope always survived while he remained at the wicket. When really forcing the pace, he gave hostages to fortune, .his favourite shot being a terrific slash which despatched the ball high and hard anywhere on the off side of the wicket, bringing large numbers of runs at a great speed and rarely causing the batsman's downfall. Latterly, when Captain of Aberdeenshire, Robertson was prone to keep his splendid hitting powers in reserve, but he remained one of the most reliable batsmen in Scotland, and was honoured by an International " cap."

John will, however, be best remembered by his magnificent fielding close in at forward short leg. Only three or four yards from the batsman, he seemed devoid of fear, pouncing forward to catch a ball falling gently as a leaf at the batsman's feet, or standing like a rock and safely imprisoning a red-hot drive which appeared likely to go right through his body. He never let down his side or a friend, and was much loved by all who knew him.

C. H. W. Wynne jarvie Scott* (1924-36), Lieutenant, The Border Regiment, son of the late Mr. Alexander Scott and of Mrs. Scott, 44 Fonthill Road, Aberdeeri, died on active service in India in July 1942, aged 23 years. At the School he was outstanding in drawing, and won the Pope Medal for Art. He attended Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen, for one year, and then studied at the Slade School of Art. Before the outbreak of war he was in the University of London O.T.C., and volunteered as a Private in The Gordon Highlanders. Shortly afterwards he received a commission in The Border Regiment and served with it in Syria and in the first siege of Tobruk. He was later transferred to India, attached to the Army Camouflage Corps. His death was due to infantile paralysis.

John Hall Davidson Sharp* (192.5-27), M.A., B.L., Captain, The Gordon Highlanders, son of the late Mrs. Sharp, Ordeans, Banchory, was killed in action with the 51st Division in Egypt on z6th October 1942, aged 32 years. He graduated M.A. at Aberdeen University

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

47 in 1931 and B.L. in 1937. He served as a law apprentice with Messrs.

Morice & Wilson, advocates, Aberdeen, and continued in the service of that firm, being admitted a member of the Society of Advocates in Aberdeen in October 1938. He was an officer cidet in the Aberdeen University Contingent, Senior Division, O.T.C., and in December 1938 was gazetted a znd Lieutenant in the 5/7th Battalion The Gordon Highlanders.

Gordon Bowman Will (1929-31), M.B., Ch.B., Flying Officer, R.A.F., was reported missing in April 1942, and in July officially presumed to have been killed in air operations, aged z6 years. He was the elder surviving son of Mr. Gordon Will, Bank House, Alford, and graduated in Medicine at Aberdeen University in 1937. He was in practice in England until April 1940, and is survived by his wife and baby daughter.

John Paterson Smith Worling* (1926-35), Sergeant Observer, R.A.F.V.R., only son of Mr. John Worling, 34 Fountainhall Road, Aberdeen, was reported missing in April 1942 and in November was officially presumed to have been killed as a result of air operations, aged 21 years. On leaving the School he started in the hotel business and held posts at the Caledonian Hotel, Aberdeen, in London, and in Switzerland, before joining the R.A.F. early in 1940. He was attached to the Bomber Command.

Roll of F.P. War Service.

Seventh Instalment.

It should be noted that the Roll contains the names only of Former Pupils who are members of the F.P. Club. The Editor will welcome additional names for the Roll and particulars of commissions, promotions, decorations, " mentions," etc., etc.

ADAMS, William (1935-37), B.Sc.(Agr.), Nether Anguston, Peterculter. znd Lieut. in the London Scottish, The Gordon Highlanders.

ALLAN, Basil Sydney (1897-1902), Aberdeen. Captain, The Gordon Highlanders.

ANDERSON, Stanley (1927-38), Aberdeen. R.A.F.: selected for training as Pilot Observer.

ANGUS, Colin George Marr (1925-36). Lieut., The Gordon I I ighlanders.

BARRON, Charles Leith (1907-19), M.B., Ch.B., Birmingham.

Flying Officer, R.A.F.V.R. BARRON, George Hazelwood (192o-28), linotype operator, Johannesburg, South Africa. Lance-Corporal, Transvaal Scottish.

BOYD, Thomas Stewart (193o-38), temporary clerk, Civil Service, Edinburgh. Leading Radio Mechanic (Aug. 1942), Royal Navy.

CAMERON, Scott (1921-34), M.B., Ch.B., Aberdeen. Lieut., R.A.M.C.

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 48 CASSIE, Ian Harvey (1925-35), L.D.S., R.C.S.(Edin.). Flight Lieutenant, R. A.F. : serving as dental surgeon in the Middle East.

CAY, Edward (1918-25), M.B., Ch.B., Edinburgh. Lieut., R.A.M.C. CLARK, Charles Alexander (1932-37), Aberdeen. Serving with R.A.F., N.W.F.P., India.

COOPER, Andrew James (1924-30), banker, Aberdeen. Ferry Pilot, R.A.F. DONALD, David Mitchell Cook (1926-32), B.L., Aberdeen.

Captain and Adjutant (Nov. 1942), Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, R.A. DRENNAN, Robert Norman (1926-39), Aberdeen. Naval Airman : training as an Observer, Fleet Air Arm. DRON, William Kennaway (1921-34), Aberdeen. Captain (Feb. 1942), R.A.S.C.: commanding a Mobile Field Bakery Unit.

FRASER, James Cobban (1911-2 3), M.B., Ch.B., Aberdeen. Lieut., R.A.M.C.: M.O., Divisional Supply Coy., R.A.S.C. GEDDES, Alexander McPherson (1926-39), Aberdeen. Training as Pilot, R.A.F.V.R. GORDON, Robert Anderson (1925-27), Aberdeen. Serving with Marine Craft Section, R.A.F. GRAHAM, Walter (x 913-I 9), M.D., London. Lieut., R.A.M.C. HALLIDAY, Alastair George Brand (1923-32), M.A., Aberdeen.

Lieut. at H.Q. of an Armoured Division.

HANNA, David (1916-22), Royal Insurance Company, Aberdeen.

Aircraftman (znd Class), R.A.F. HUTCHESON, John Peter (1934-40), Aberdeen. Training with R.A.F. in Rhodesia.

JENKINS, Alexander James (1934-40), Dyce. Sergeant Pilot, R.A.F. JONES, Anthony Wallis Aubrey- (19z 5-26 and 1932-36), Slough, Bucks. znd Lieut., R.A. JORDAN, Leslie Robert Dixon (1924-33), mechanical engineer, Aberdeen. Joined A.A.F., May 1939 ; Corporal (Aug. 1939), R.A.F. KNOWLES, Douglas Murray (1926-38), Aberdeen. Leading Aircraftman, R.A.F. LAIRD, Bowman Stiven (1928-40), Aberdeen. Leading Aircraftman, R.A.F.: training as a Navigator.

LOBBAN, Douglas Y. (1922-34), Aberdeen. znd Lieut., Baluch Regiment, India.

McDOUGALL, Duncan Herdman (1921-34), chartered accountant, Aberdeen. znd Lieut., R.A.S.C. MacPHAIL, Ian Angus Shaw (1933-4o), Aberdeen. R.A.F. MAITLAND, Douglas William (1918-23), solicitor, Edinburgh.

Captain and Adjutant, Searchlight Regiment, R.A. MAITLAND, Robert James (1912-18), builders' merchant, Glasgow.

Major in command of company, Royal Engineers (51st Highland Division).

49 Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine MARSHALL, Ian Chalmers (1917-29), Aberdeen. znd Lieut., R.A. MIDDLETON, Douglas Falconer (1920-25), bank teller, Aberdeen.

Lance-Corporal (Sept. 1941), in Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. MITCHELL, Alexander Lessel Stephen (1911-19), B.L., theatre manager, London. Major, Anti-Tank Regiment, R.A. (The Gordon Highlanders).

MORRISON, Stephen Duncan ( x 9 3 3 -39), Aberdeen. Signalman, Royal Corps of Signals.

MURRAY, Robert Garden (1933-36), M.B., Ch.B. Lieut., R.A.M.C. : M.O. attached infantry battalion.

NICOL, Norman Thomas (1925-39), Aberdeen. In the Merchant Navy.

PATERSON, Fordyce Ross (1927-40), Aberdeen. Training as Pilot, Fleet Air Arm. REITH, John (1913-35), Aberdeen. Lieut., R.A. ROBERTSON, George Alexander (1922-34), Aberdeen. Acting Captain, Mountain Battery, Indian Army.

SEMPLE, Roderick Ferguson (1927-38), B.Sc.(Eng.). and Lieutenant, R.E. SHEPHERD, James Gordon (1920-29), Aberdeen. Lieut., R.N.R. SIM, William John (1933-37), Aberdeen. and Lieut., R.I.A.S.C. SMITH, Sydney Robertson (19z8-37), Sheffield. 2 nd Lieut.

(March 1942), R.A. TAYLOR, Ian Bryson (1933-40), Aberdeen. In R.A.F.: training for air-crew duties.

WATT, Ian Stuart (1928-40), Aberdeen. Leading Aircraftman, R.A.F. WILSON, Alexander Milne (1919-31), Aberdeen. 2 nd Lieut., R.E. WYNESS, James (1933-39), Aberdeen. Lieut. (May 1942), R.A.: in Persia and Iraq Force.

Missing.

Since the last Magazine was published in June 1942, the following have been reported as missing :— Alastair Mackenzie Cockie (1923-36), Sergeant Navigator, R.A.F. Douglas Alexander Watt Innes (1927-39), Sergeant Observer, R.A.F. John Manwaring Steward Moir (1937-40), Rear Gunner in a Bomber, R.A.F. Hugh Haldane Thomson (i928-3o and 1933-37), Lieut., R.A. (in June 194z).

William Harkins Wyness (1938-39), Merchant Navy.

[The Editor will be grateful if omissions from " Missing" and from " Pro Patria Mortui" are pointed out to him.]

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Aberdeen Grammar School %lagazine

An Honour for the School.

A notable honour came to the School in November with the appointment of the Rector, Mr. James J. Robertson, M.A., B.D., as a member of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland. The Council, under the chairmanship of Principal Sir William Fyfe, LL.D., of the University of Aberdeen, has been reconstituted with an extended membership of 15, and will serve for a period of three years, advising on the shaping of educational policy in Scotland. There are only four head masters on the Council, and Mr. Robertson is the only one from the North-East.

At the first meeting of the Advisory Council at the end of November Mr. Thomas Johnston, M.P., Secretary of State for Scotland, said that the members had been selected as the most capable advisers that could be found to assist in preserving and improving the vital educational services in Scotland. " You have a great task in front of you," he declared. " Your field is the child from the nursery school to adult education, the field of the future generation of our race." He hoped that the members would regard themselves as a parliament on education, that they would select their own subjects for inquiry, and that they would discuss among themselves priority questions in education.

A Former Rector Charged.

EDWIN WILLIAM CONNON (1916-2 5), B.Sc.(Eng.), who is engaged in electrical engineering in Newcastle-under-Lyme, has recently presented the Secretary of the F.P. Club with a copy of " Enquiry anent Aberdeen Grammar School, August i 8 5 9," which was printed privately for the Aberdeen Town Council. This is a most interesting document, being a verbatim report made by Mr. Connon's grandfather, the late Mr. William Carnie, shorthand writer, of the proceedings in the Town Hall, Aberdeen, when the then Rector of the School, Mr. T. W. Eyre Evans, was charged " with being defective in his duty in so far as (I) he is in the practice of inflicting on his pupils undeserved, capricious, and improper punishments ; (2) he does not take the due means to ensure the regular attendance of his scholars and to enforce their obedience ; (3) he does not maintain proper order and discipline in his classes, and conducts himself in such a manner, and with such a want of discretion and temper, as to forfeit the respect of his pupils ; (4) he has, on various occasions, intimated to the scholars that their attendance and proficiency are, to him, matters of indifference, and that he would prefer his office to be a sinecure ; (5) his mode of teaching is unsatisfactory, and not calculated to advance his pupils in acquiring those branches of learning which it is his business to teach."

The Enquiry lasted for three days, during which a large number of the Rector's recent pupils and their parents were examined as witnesses. Not a few of the boys came to distinction in later life, and their evidence makes most interesting reading. Perhaps, when times become normal, it will be possible to give a fuller account in the Magaine of this unique document.

DONALD NOEL BOYD ORR

THOMAS CAMPBELL REID

Sergeant, R.A.F.

Lance-Corporal, The Gordon Highlanders

siapuemilm uopioo a91. 'aveARd NOSIZIHROU HION N.Hof

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

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Glimpses of an Army Officer's Life in India.

[We are grateful for permission to print the following extracts from a series of recent letters from ayoung F.P. who is serving in the Indian Army.

—Ed. A.G.S. Mag.] To-morrow I assume the post of Company Commander—which may or may not mean much to you, but it means a mighty lot to me.

My Company doesn't yet exist, and it's my job to form it, to build up organization, and to train an office staff. At present I have a spacious office, which hasn't an article of furniture in it, and I can't even get a table. I've a staff of about nine, all of them new to their job, and they likewise have no accommodation. Also I have zoo men under me to start with. It will increase a lot before long. It's a Herculean task, but I shall not pretend I don't like it, because I do, and I've got a proper job at last. For days I've been wallowing in a flood of Army forms and books—hundreds of them—and trying to see the light of day. For the present I'm rooted to an office desk for hours and hours, signing chits, interviewing people, and generally getting the hang of things. Next time I write, I'll be better able to give you an idea of my work.

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I'm getting my Company slowly into something like shape, but there's a long way to go yet. A Company Commander depends almost entirely on his clerk, and mine has just been posted elsewhere.

So now I've to instruct the clerk instead of his advising me. However, I've got a table and chair and three correspondence trays in my office, so that's a big step forward. I must sign my name at least a hundred times per morning on the average, so the advantage of brevity is considerable.

The Indian officers are most excellent fellows, most of them with zo years' service at least. The Subahdar Major (i.e. senior Indian officer) has z8 years' and served in France in the last war. . .

My Company is still pegging along, always getting bigger, and slowly becoming organized. This week I got another znd Lieutenant as my second-in-command, so that's definitely a help. Still the amount of office work is terrific, though I find it interesting for the most part.

I'm gradually getting up to all the tricks of the trade and getting to know the correct action for the hundreds of little problems that arise.

We're entitled to two afternoons off per week, so I usually play tennis on these days. For the present I generally content myself with playing against the marker—i.e. the wallah who looks after the courts and teaches beginners. He is about 70, I should think, but very good nevertheless. I've improved quite a bit under his tuition.

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My Company is now up to 340 strong. About a third of these are Madrassis (most of them Christians and Catholics) and the rest are made up of Punjabis, Mussulmans, Sikhs, and various sects of Hindus.

How exactly the Indian Army manages to function is a question I often wonder about when I stop to think. You have all these castes

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 52 intermingled, yet living in different ways, eating different food, and observing different customs. Then they talk diverse languages and have to learn often Urdu and English. The instructors often can't speak the language of the squad, and all administration is carried out in English—which is " Greek " to the majority of the recruits. It's really an amazingly complex business, but there is no doubt about it— it works, and works on the whole very efficiently.

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My days are extremely full at present and I'm always very satisfactorily tired by the end. From 7.30 to 9 I'm on the Square watching drill, weapon training, etc. At 9.45 I'm back after breakfast for office work. I've usually three or four " cases " to deal with before ii, when I take up the more serious ones to the C.O. Then there are countless applications for everything under the sun. Every Indian soldier is as much an adept at inventing excuses for leave as is his British vil-4-vis, and a great deal of sifting has to be done. Of course, seven days' leave is never heard of here—most of them need almost that time to reach home. The minimum is fifteen days, and the usual is thirty days. I'm slowly becoming able to differentiate between the real case and the man whose mother has periodical deaths.

Besides leave, there are countless other subjects of application.

Someone's father is attacked by a neighbour in some Madrassi village —what can I do about it ? Another fellow came to an agreement with a husband that for Soo rupees he would divorce his wife and hand her over to my chap. Now, alas, he has the R5oo—and the wifestill in his possession. Such a tangle is, of course, speedily set aright - on application to the Company Commander! What I usually do is to write to the appropriate civil authorities and let them hold the baby.

And so it goes on and on, with no lack of variety. Some of the letters I get are perfect screams as far as expression goes. I'm usually addressed at the very least as "Your Honour"! One applicant confided in me that he placed his unworthy life in my indulgent hands!

Then there are innumerable letters to have typed, forms to fill in, inspections to make, programmes to plan, orders to frame, and so on.

I've now got four clerks and I'm slowly getting them trained—with unwonted patience on my part. I've three Indian officers, one Havildar-Major, one Q.M. Havildar, a Pay Havildar, and various other functionaries, all with their special jobs and all to he supervised, goaded, and lauded as occasion demands. The Company is now 360 strong and always growing.

Office work lasts till about 3, then I have a speedy lunch and am back to the Square by 3.45. In the evenings I sometimes go back to the office. _I enjoy the work immensely, despite the frequent " snarls," and now I definitely feel on top of the work.

As I've said before, the background of life is also very agreeable.

Last Friday we. had our Mess Dance, which was decidedly good, though very strenuous. Doing my duty nobly, I danced every dance I think, and many were very hectic.

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

53 into some first-hand insight past week I've been getting This Indian labour methods, as my office has been divided by a large brick wall into two divisions. Three coolies have done the mason work, and a gang of about eight women have carried in the bricks and baskets of lime. They never say a word all day, just glide in and out, with no expression on their faces, and dressed in tawdry saris of a reddish hue.

The brick-carriers carry twelve full-sized bricks on their heads, come in, stretch up their hands to remove the two uppermost, bend to place these on the floor with the remaining ten still on their head, and so on until all twelve bricks are safely on the ground. As a feat of balance it's quite remarkable.

One day last week we were asked when we'd like our 31 days' leave, as a roster for the year was in course of preparation. I hopefully said May, with June as second choice, these being the worst two months here by all accounts. Of course, the chances of getting what you ask for are quite as thin in the Indian Army as in the British. If I am granted 31 days, it will be no easy task to decide where to go.

Kashmir is my main idea, but it's such a distance from here that I'm a bit doubtful.

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My Company continues to grow in size—well over 400 now.

Actually things are running quite smoothly—I've got my clerks more or less trained and each man is now well up in his own job. I'm never happy until I, too, understand exactly what every man should be doing, otherwise they'll take advantage and become slack. I think I've now mastered the tricky business of finance, kept a la militaire, and therefore highly complicated! So far I've received no raspberries from the C.O., and he's not slow to send them along when his wrath is provoked—so that's all to the good. . . .

• • • Last night at the Club there was a Charity Ball in aid of the Red Cross, and it " sure• was a swell show." I was asked to join my C.O.'s party for dinner at his house and thereafter go on to the dance.

The C.O. isn't much of a dancer and he first suggested to his wife that they should go home about 11.3o. However, she was having none of this- she had successfully dragged him out to the dance and she was going to stick it out to the end. All the rest of the party dwindled away except the Colonel and his wife and me, but the lady's determination remained firm. At 2.45 a.m. the band agreed to stop, and when I said " Good night " to the C.O., he said he wasn't going home for a long time yet. They'd kept him out all this time, so he'd just keep them a bit longer and make a night of itl . . . . .

• There has been a spot of excitement in military circles here over the proposal that girls take over the clerical duties in offices, to relieve male personnel—kind of A.T.S., I believe. Personally I think it's a most excellent scheme—I could do nicely with a couple myself, provided always that I'm allowed to hand-pick them! Probably nothing will come of the scheme, but I'm still hoping;

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

One day lately we had a big parade and march-past the Brigadier on the occasion of his presenting the Order of British India to three Subahdar Majors and the I.D.S.M. to a man who had distinguished himself near Damascus. There were fifteen companies on parade, and afterwards the Brigadier—a charming fellow—gave it as his opinion that my company was the best! Another one was quite good, and in fact almost as good, but not quite. I had very nearly to send my bearer for a new topee—one size larger!

The personal touch is a great thing with these Indian fellows— a sentence of encouragement from a British officer is worth a speech from any Indian officer. We had a rehearsal the night before for this big parade, and afterwards I spoke to my chaps in my fluent (?) Urdu, to the general effect that they must be the best company on the big parade—they were usually quite good: to-morrow they must be exceptionally good. Afterwards they were dismissed, and all began clapping and cheering—much to my astonishment. Next morning— well, I've told you that part of the story. . . . . .

• • The chief event of the week has been the long-postponed arrival in our Battalion of two W.A.C.s—Women's Auxiliary Corps (India).

There had been snag after snag and change after change before they finally got to us, and now they've gone again owing to some technical hitch, but I expect they'll be back ere long. Of course, they know nothing of their work, so the C.O. told them that he was putting them entirely in the hands of Captain —, a job which, needless to say, the hands of the aforesaid Captain were indeed glad to get down to, so I composed a three-page typewritten pricis on their duties, which fairly took the C.O.s fancy—in fact he said it was " excellent "—such praise never before having been heard from him. Then I lectured to them for two hours one morning, and got them started on their clerical work. It's pleasant working in their office, for every known cooling device has been introduced to reduce the agony of heat. One of my two W.A.C.s is a sergeant's wife, the other is the daughter of a Signals colonel.

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As to my job, I'm a Company Commander all right but my charges are ever on the move. The recruits come for anything from eight to fourteen weeks and then they say good-bye to me and pass on to the next stage of training. I have a permanent staff of about 6o and a floating number of recruits—usually around 400. In this position one hasn't the personal contact of the field, where all the men are definitely yours and all work together at their various jobs.

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Never having been to Paradise, I am in no position to make comparisons, but I fancy it can't be much finer than this. I've been in Murree for a day and a half and the more I see of it, the more I'm impressed. However, I'll start at the beginning, gradually working up the ladder towards the Golden Gate.

My diary tells me that I left a week ago to-day, but it seems much

Aberdeen Grammar School Magaz,ine

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more like a month. I made full use of my ticket and halted to see Agra and to look up some friends in New Delhi. For the first time I travelled with a bearer, and a -mighty useful person he is. He attends to all one's luggage, brings cups of tea when he thinks one should be thirsty, makes one's bed, and generally runs around making himself useful. First-class carriages have a servants' compartment at the end, and all the bearers attached to the passengers in that carriage hang out therein.

Last Sunday in Bina I had a pretty dreadful six hours to fill in, owing to a bad connection, and believe me, there are better places to while away six hours in than Bina. Think of Kintore Junction and you won't be far off the mark. However, once the train did come, I got on not so dustily—it was the Punjab Mail from Bombay to Delhi.

Agra is quite a presentable spot. I lost no time in getting to my first " Wonder of the 'World," the Taj Mahal. I was slightly disappointed. I went to see it twice—evening and early morning—but I couldn't see it at its best, in the moonlight, for the very good reason that there was no moon. Another disappointment was that the entire central dome was covered with scaffolding. Of course, the place is magnificent by ordinary standards. Everything is perfectly arranged, and the reflections of the Taj in the water of its gardens are in themselves worth coming miles to see. I was impressed most when right up at the base of the building : from there its massiveness—all of it white marble—completely took the breath away. Inside, the beauty of everything is the kind you can't describe—there's really too much of it, carved marble of all colours, transparent white marble stone, priceless glass, and so on. A guide took me round—I loathe guides, but they arc useful if you can keep them in check. This one was quite good—he told me what I wanted to know and cut out the frills. He said he had been there 33 years and was an exceptionally good guide (note his native Indian modesty l)—in fact he'd be delighted to show my wife and children round if I brought them along. On my suggesting that this might be a bit difficult, he queried, " You married, Sahib ?"

I admitted my celibacy and he rejoined with a glance Heavenwards, " Ah, God give you marriage, Sahib! " Also in Agra I went round the Fort and looked at Emperor Akbar's Mausoleum. The afternoon I spent in the open-air pool at the hotel where I stayed. The place was thick with Generals, Brigadiers, and Colonels. With a paltry three pips on my shoulders I felt positively naked.

New Delhi is a magnificent place—not Indian at all, but beautiful and exceeding pleasant to look upon—everything is so perfectly planned and so spaciously laid out. The streets are broad and the houses hidden in trees. I saw a bit of Old Delhi as well, and again bathed in an open-air pool. The heat was pretty bad—io7° or so. . . . . my destination on Pindi, me to took Delhi Eighteen hours from the railway. It's a grand place, I believe, but so far I've scarcely seen it—I was too intent on fixing up car transport for the last lap to Murree.

A more marvellous road than the Pindi—Murree one is hard to imagine.

56 Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine It reminded me of many in Scotland, only this was more impressive, I think, than any I'd seen before. In twenty miles or so the road rises from 1,600 ft. to 7,000 ft., so you'll have some idea of what it is like— Devil's Elbows by the score and sheer precipices all along the line.

As it gets higher, the country becomes greener and there are trees and shrubs in abundance. Away down below is the river, and mountains tower above you. Chalets appear to be stuck on to the steep hillsides.

Darkness falls much later here—about 8 p.m.—and the setting sun was glorious, only it seemed to be stationary, as we were rising so fast.

The milestones also give the height and the last one, just before Murree, is 6,984 ft.

It's hard to know just where to start describing the place. Everything is on slopes of the hill—or rather on a series of large wooded knolls. There are neither cars nor lorries, just rickshaws and ponies.

The streets and tracks are all steep, and the buildings are cut out of the hillside. In many ways it reminds me of Braemar—not the same kind of place at all, of course, but the strong smell of pines and firs, the exhilarating air, and the sight of mountains on all sides have frequently sent my mind to the Viewpoint or the Queen's Drive.

Funnily enough, the bungalow I lived in is called " Braemar Cottage "!

The first thing that struck me—and that forcibly—was the cold.

For months shirt and shorts had been a burden, and in Pindi they were still uncomfortably hot. As we got higher, the air changed and at 7,000 ft. my legs were practically numbed and my ears were humming as never before. I'd thought it would be cool, but I never dreamt it could be actually cold. I sent an urgent message back for my winter uniform.

By day the climate is perfectly marvellous. The exhilaration is extraordinary. The only trouble is that I feel exactly as if I'd been running up and down Cairn Toul every day for the last week—with all this climbing steep paths and checking myself when going down the backs of my legs are decidedly painful.

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The Murree—Srinagar journey took ten hours, and it's the greatest strain I've ever had imposed on my patience. The road drops from 7,00o ft. to 5,900 ft., and then rises again to 5,zoo ft. On the ascent the bus boiled regularly every ten minutes, so we halted for ten minutes each time for water to be thrown over the engine and into the radiator.

If the driver saw an old friend, he'd think nothing of jumping out for a chat.

Srinagar (when I eventually got there) took me wholly by surprise.

It's the capital of Kashmir and as such I'd thought of it as a glorified hill station. However, it's on a large fertile plain, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, but in itself completely flat. Everything is beautifully green—grass, trees, hedges, and so on, greener than I've ever seen. Also there is no lack of flowers and fruit growing on the trees (cherries, apples, peaches, and so on). The town itself is quaint above all else. Called the Venice of Asia, it has waterways as streets and shikaras for taxis. There arc streets, but you can get practically everywhere by water. There's only one large hotel. I stayed there

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 57 —the majority of people stay in house-boats, anchored at the edge of the waterways. Near the city are the Dal Lakes, and here you can sail about by shikara to your heart's content.

A shikara is, I suppose, just like a gondola. At the rear sit three or four boatmen, and in the for'ard portion is a kind of couch covered by a canopy and draped by curtains. One reclines here, views the scenery, listens to the murmur of the oars, and contemplates the goodness of life. Every few minutes one passes another shikara and it's always a source of great interest to see just who the other reclining figure is. As I glided along, I frequently felt like rubbing my eyes to convince myself everything was real, for I'd never seen anything like it. On either side were rickety houses, shops, and other buildings, slap-bang on the water and accessible only from it. The shopkeepers squatted in their shops, awaiting a visiting shikara. Children jumped off the front steps and bathed in the dirty water. Other folk leant on the precarious balconies and passed the time of day. All the buildings seemed old, and apparently they had been damaged by periodical floods when the Jhelum River was in spate. Traffic consisted of every type of sailing craft-from huge, lumbering houseboats, with shoals of Indians aboard, to the nimble shikaras that darted here, there, and everywhere. In such crowded areas the air was not, as you might say, perfumed with a lovely fragrance, but once you are out of the bazaar area, you reach lanes bordered on both sides by trees, and you can lie back again in peace, perfect peace. . . . . . .

• Kashmir is not in the British Empire, being the possession of a Maharajah, and on the way there visitors have to go through the Customs, just as for other foreign countries. This, I think, is unique among the Indian States. I went to the " flicks " one night and stood up loyally at the end for the National Anthem—I'd have stood long enough, for it wasn't played—the first time it has been omitted in any ' flick " house I've been in since leaving home. In Murree, being in British India and alive to Fifth Columnists, you can't get a map for love or money : cross to Kashmir and there's no difficulty. Until recently British uniforms were taboo in Kashmir, but since the mass of officers and men has come from Burma, most of them with uniform and nothing else, the rule has been waived. I always wore blazer and flannel shorts during the day and uniform at night. Srinagar was pretty hot, but there are so many trees that you can practically always find shade.

Snow-covered hills have always a fascination for me, so I was in my element with the scenery up there. In every direction you could see towering peaks, often reflected in the water of the lakes or the river.

The River Jhelum is large by home comparisons, and on the way to Kashmir it is a great comfort. For about i 20 miles the road follows it, winding all over the hillsides and turning scores of elbows. The Jhelum's chief charm I thought was its swiftness—the first fast-flowing river I've seen in India.

• • • • • • Grand though Srinagar was, Gulmarg is the place. It is z8 miles

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from Srinagar and 9,000 ft. high. I went up for one day and I've seldom, if ever, seen so fine a spot. The bus goes to within 4 miles of the place and then you do the last 1,ooo ft. on a pony—up and up a very steep track that winds among towering and beautifully fragrant pines. The snows get nearer and nearer. Gulmarg itself is in a kind of cup in the hills—and a gloriously green cup it is. Most of the buildings are just huts among the trees, and the main hotel is a collection of huts and some tents, with a large central wooden hut as dining-room.

The view from it is magnificent—everything marvellously green, especially the two golf courses round which the place is built—I doubt if there are many courses in India with such fine turf—and then beyond are the hills, some near at hand and others across the valley, but all covered with snow. The air is perfect. One walks along and feels that it is mighty good to be alive, as indeed it is, in Gulmarg.

Apart from the atmosphere, of course, you would scarcely think the place was 9,000 ft. up, for the surrounding hills are correspondingly higher—up to zo,ooo ft. in some cases. Gulmarg must be a marvellous place for a holiday. I was sorry mine was only a flying visit. The place was packed with people.

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The journey back to Murree was even more exasperating than the others. The heat, smell, and dirt of everything was intense, especially when we were down at 1,900 ft. I've seldom, even in Indian trains, felt so utterly filthy. . . . Now I'm back at the old address, and suffering very much from anti-climax.

Journeying to Southern Rhodesia.

It was a beautiful day, such a day as comes to England in early spring, with the sun slowly rising on the little hill in the distance, through the slight misty haze which seems to be a perpetual part of the Thames valley. I shall never forget that day, for it was the happiest I spent in old England before I left for a distant land.

I am just one of many young men who are training to be pilots in the finest Air Force in the world. On this particular day I awoke to find the sun streaming through my window from a bright blue sky.

I thought " what a wonderful day for flying," but then remembered that it was Sunday and my day off! However, I decided to try and procure a 'plane for an hour, so I went over to the " school " and ultimately the chief flying instructor took me up for a quick flip round and then sent me off solo. Although I had flown my first solo before Christmas, I had not flown in such wonderful weather as it was that day. As I " clambered " up to seven or eight thousand feet, I got that feeling of serene detachment which only the true pilot knows, and which gives one an immense feeling of contentment swith the world in general. Perhaps it is because one is so high above the seething strife of a world at war. Anyway, I found it hard to imagine there was a war on, even though I was in an Air Force 'plane, and practising aerobatics, which I hoped would be useful to me some day, as I wished to be a fighter pilot. That day I managed to do over three hours'

1- \ YNN

JAIME SCOTT

Lieutenant, The Border Regiment (From a pen-and-ink drawing by himself)

JOHN 1 ALA., B.L.

I)AVIDSON SHARP

Captain, The Gordon Highlanders

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flying, which was pretty good going. I landed that evening as the sun was sinking over the hangars, and came back to earth in more senses than one, for 1 had hardly taxied the old bus to a standstill and switched off when Mac (Sgt. to you l) came rushing across the tarmac and I could see that he carried momentous news. Before I could speak, he was pouring his news into my ear. All I could make out of his incoherent ramble was that we were posted East! Just East, no more, except that we had three days' leave, and the quicker we got our kit ready, the sooner we should be on our way home! It was too late for us to leave that night, but nevertheless it was a hectic rush, what with kit inspections, seeing the M.O., getting an advance of pay, and above all trying to get our log books up to date, and of course the old Flight Sgt. bawling to us to do this, go there, come here, and so on.

Our departure the next morning was rather dreary. The rain was coming down hard and the perpetual mist was clinging to everything.

The few lucky (or unlucky) chaps who had not been posted were there to help us with our kit and wave farewell to the seven of us, who had no inkling of what was before us. The Transport took us to the station in time to catch the express to London. We reached London about midday, and after having lunch with the rest of the gang I went off to King's Cross to book a sleeper on the express to Scotland.

I awoke next morning to see snow on the embankments as we rushed by, and the carriage was cold, with the clear, dry cold of the Scottish winter. The express stopped at Edinburgh for a short space and then sped onwards to Aberdeen, the wheels singing, " you're home again," " you're home again!" My sister rushed across the platform to greet me, and soon I found myself in the car racing out of the city and up Deeside towards home.

All too soon my short leave came to an end, but I madc the most of it, because I did not know whether or not I should get more leave from the Drafting Centre at which I had to report. As it happened, we were rushed through the Drafting Camp so quickly that we had no time to think of leave at all. These days recall a ceaseless tramping about all over the place, collecting more kit (mostly tropical), until we were so tired when the end of the day came that we immediately flopped into bed with a sigh of relief. The night before we left, however, we all went out to celebrate!

The next night, after hanging about with full kit on for over three hours, we boarded a troop train and duly arrived next morning at the docks. The river was shrouded in mist, and we embarked on board the troopship in the drizzling rain, only to find the most uncomfortable quarters imaginable. We were shoved in the for'ard hold and, of course, we just had to make the best of it. There were rows of mess tables, built out from the ship's sides towards the centre of the hold. Each mess table had to accommodate sixteen men for meals, and each mess had to elect two men to act as mess orderlies for the duration of the voyage. These orderlies had to keep the mess tidy and dish out the rations at meal times. The food was not too bad while we were still in dock, but after we had been at sea for a week, it was not fit to give

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to cattle. We were cattle, actually, when you come to think of the way we were crowded together in our hammocks, at night, in that stuffy hold. It was with extreme difficulty that I managed to breathe at all, during the night. I held out, however, for four days, after which I took my hammock on deck and slept there, even though it was bitterly cold for the first week at sea.

The ship sailed out to sea with the rest of the convoy one night, and it was with mixed emotions that I watched the coast-line fading away behind us, in the silvery moonlight of a perfect spring evening.

Abruptly I turned away to watch the convoy forming up in lines.

The destroyers fussed around, shepherding the larger ships into position, while the cruisers kept a good look out in the distance. By about midnight we were well out, and I could see from the stars that we were steering on a westerly course. The destroyers were now on the horizon all about us, while the cruisers were in the centre of the convoy. No one felt like sleeping that night, but when we did turn in, it was with a feeling of apprehension as to what was before us. I can truly say, however, that this feeling passed after the first day at sea..

The next day I awoke at six and arose immediately, as the atmosphere below decks was abominable. I indulged in a salt-water shower, and walked the decks until breakfast time, which was half-past seven.

After breakfast I went on deck again to have a good look round. I noticed that the convoy had grown in numbers and that we now had an aircraft carrier in the escort. This carrier has a great reputation, and it was very comforting to know that the planes which continually took off and landed were there for our protection. I may add now that the convoy consisted solely of troopships, and taken all in all the troops would have made a very formidable army, considering the numbers of Air Force, Army, and Navy personnel. Indeed it was a magnificent sight to see the carrier steering full speed ahead to enable the aircraft to take off and land. I must say, though, that we were rather envious of these Fleet Air Arm pilots. All day long they kept up a regular fighter patrol, and reconnaissance machines were also sent out. When I was sleeping on deck, I used to wake to the roar of the dawn patrol as it circled the convoy before disappearing over the distant horizon, and as it grew dark in the evenings I used to make a habit of watching the returning planes and seeing them land safely for the night. And I thought, of course, of that plane which was waiting for me to fly when I got aboard her. Happy thoughts indeed, even though we were out in the grey Atlantic under leaden skies.

And so the days slipped by, and then the weeks, and with them came recollections of a heaving sea on which a convoy plodded ; of cold days turning warmer as we steamed steadily southwards ; of putting our watches back innumerable times (or so it seemed) ; of sighting a Sunderland one day ; of changing into tropical kit as it became unbearably hot during the day ; of lovely nights with the starry sky and the moon-washed sea lapping past into the darkness behind ; of the first experience of sleeping on deck in a hammock ; and of countless other happenings which at the time seemed so un-

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interesting, until one early dawn brought land to our gaze, on the port beam. It was just an indefinable smudge on the misty horizon, but as we drew nearer, we were able to distinguish a hill, many hills, behind the smudge, until all of a sudden the haze vanished and we found ourselves lying off the point which marks the entrance to the " harbour" of Freetown in Sierra Leone. We were apparently waiting for a pilot to come out to guide the ship to her anchorage.

When he did come, he overlooked the ship in front of us, with the result that the captain of that ship had some unmentionable words to say to the unfortunate pilot as we slid silently past. It was very amusing and caused a great deal of laughter from the troops aboard both the ships. As we passed the point and entered the long narrow bay, we gazed around eagerly with undisguised interest, for we had not seen land for a considerable time. All around us were ships, more ships, and still more ships. They were of all shapes and sizes, and looked rather dull and uninteresting in their battle grey, apparently streaked with rust near the Plimsoll line until you got near them, and then there was lots to see! We passed tankers, grain vessels, a hospital ship, an aircraft carrier, a destroyer or two, and some more warships of greater tonnage. There were ships of all nations (except German and Italian), and there was one of Joe's ships flying the red flag of the Soviet Union, with its national emblem emblazoned. It was all very interesting, our passage through that mass of allied shipping to the upper reaches of the bay.

We came to a stop near the mouth of the river which flows into the sea at the west of the town. No sooner had we dropped anchor than swarms of picturesque natives came alongside, willing to dive overboard for " Glasgow and Liverpool tanners " as they called our sixpences, and trying vainly to sell us fruit. We were not permitted to buy their fruit because it might have been contaminated by malarial water. The majority of the troops obeyed this order, but there are always a few foolish ones. They soon learned their lesson, however, because they were put under close arrest and had to spend seven days in the guard-room.

As the day wore on and we grew tired of the view, which was remarkably like the view from the Clyde of the hills at home, we started a game of hockey on the boat deck, but we were forced below decks as a rainstorm burst upon us with that sudden ferocity which is common in the tropics. The air became heavy with all sorts of queer smells, and the rain beat incessantly down upon the decks, while the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, until all of a sudden the air was pure again, the rain had stopped, and the sun shone from a cloudless sky upon the sodden earth. Soon the decks were dry again and shining white in the sunshine. Many of the chaps had taken advantage of the rain and, using it as a shower, had become quite clean again with the aid of fresh-water soap. I may add now that we had only salt-water showers aboard, and by this time everyone had run out of their ration of salt-water soap.

Just before dusk we watched a Sunderland take off. It was a grand sight. After dusk the town was lit up, and so were all the ships.

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The big liners, in particular, looked magnificent, and, above all, there was a full moon shining across the bay from the opposite sandy shore.

Jimmy and I went on our special bit of deck and sat there just yarning away about flying in England. It was very peaceful and we both felt contented for the first time since we left home. Our peace was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the boys, including an Aussie, who had his mandolin with him. We had a grand sing-song, but it was hard work owing to the terrific heat. In the pale moonlight I could see the sweat glistening on my companions' sunburnt faces.

Nevertheless we enjoyed it, and it was nearly midnight when we turned in. The same performance was repeated the next night, only by this time we were alongside a massive tanker, in order to take on fuel. The wide open deck of the tanker was about level with us on the boat deck, and it was bathed in light from two big lamps, one at each end. Scattered about the deck lay the recumbent forms of West African natives, but when Ben started strumming on the strings of his mandolin and we started to hum and sing, they sprang to life with surprising agility. They crowded to the rail of their own ship and began to hum in a weird sort of way, but at the same time they gave enchantment to the songs, as strange as it was beautiful. Many of them spoke good English and cried out for all sorts of English and Scotch songs which they wished to sing. I must say, though, that the demand for English lilts was very small I And so the night wore on.

We could hear other fellows singing in different parts of the ships, and a burst of laughter now and then showed that the troops were far from being unhappy. But as the lights on shore and on the ships about us slowly went out, one by one, we still remained on our little piece of deck, talking. We talked of, oh, lots of things, as we sat there under the starry, moonlit sky.

I shall remember those days at Freetown as a welcome break during a monotonous voyage. There was such a lot happened. I remember vividly the two thunderstorms which occurred while we were there, and the colourful sunsets in the evenings will always remain with me as one of my most beautiful memories. After five days, which seemed to pass in no time at all, we sailed from Freetown, bound for South Africa. On our last day and night at Freetown I had to act as a guard, but it was a bit of a farce. We left on a Saturday, and on the Sunday we had a service in the officers' lounge. It was so peaceful and quiet, but very few of us could disregard and forget the fact that submarines were dogging our tails. It turned out all right, however, for no undue excitement occurred.

A few days out of port we sighted a strange vessel on the horizon.

It had obviously seen us, for it was making off with the utmost speed, but it had not a chance—the Navy was on the job! A short space of time elapsed and then gunfire was heard. Thirty minutes later the Navy returned looking very proud of itself as it took up its usual place amongst us. The victim turned out to be an armed merchant raider.

Oh yes, being able to read morse was a great asset, and we used to pick up all sorts of " gen " from the Navy ships, when they flashed out messages on the Aldis lamp.

63 Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine A week later we awoke one morning on deck to find that the majority of the ships in the convoy had disappeared during the night.

As the sun rose and the haze lifted, we saw away in the distance the line of Table Mountain silhouetted against the dark sky. There was much controversy as to the distance between the three remaining troopships and the land. Opinions varied from thirty to eighty miles.

We found out later from one of the officers that the actual distance had been ninety-seven and a quarter miles. He had measured the distance -on the range-finder. It was a pleasant two days' voyage up the coast to Durban. We went full speed ahead, the weather was beautifully hot, and the sight of Durban's semi-skyscrapers shining in the sun as we sailed majestically into the harbour was like a shining star in complete blackness. To see the bustling activity on the quayside, the beautiful cars rolling past, the pretty girls, oh! it certainly made us want to jump off that ship, right there and then, but of course we had to wait until we got the order to disembark. We waited all morning, and it was not until the late afternoon that we started to file off the ship. A special train was on the quayside waiting for us, and, when we got aboard it, we realized the worst. The train carriages were sleepers, and there was also a dining-car, so, of course, we knew that we were in for a longish journey. I cannot adequately describe my own feelings, but it was the most disappointing incident which had occurred in the last six weeks. To think that after all these tedious weeks at sea we were not even to have a few hours' leave! It was most exasperating, but the food on the train was first class, so that mollified us a little. I could not, however, curb a feeling of resentment toward the R.A.F. authorities as we passed through Durban after dusk. The city looked so enticing, with luxurious automobiles gliding along its brilliant boulevards, pretty girls walking along arm in arm with their boy friends, the shops displaying all sorts of merchandise—it nearly broke our hearts as we thundered out of that fairy city of colourful lights. it The two days' journey through the Union was interesting but the on stations little innumerable passed We quickly. very went by track but I remember only a few of them. There was Lyttelton and Zeeruste—both these places gave us a wonderful welcome ; there was was Mafeking, Plumtree, and other curious place-names. There alas, but, minutes, ninety for there remained train The also Jo'burg. we had to remain on board.

The next night, after a day's travelling through uninteresting bush-veldt in Southern Rhodesia, we arrived in Bulawayo. Our long journey was at an end, and we felt quite cheerful as we marched through the city's floodlit streets. I like this country and its warm climate, and am looking forward to finishing my training in it.

KENNETH HOOD ROBERTSON (193 5 -41).

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Do More Work in Less Time.

Very few are endowed with the memory of a Macaulay ; nevertheless consolation may be found in the fact that " moderate ability methodically employed is more productive than greater ability employed in an unmethodical way," and that there are factors which, properly utilized, will definitely improve memory capacity. Accordingly I present some of these factors for the benefit of those who would like to taste the improvement in their work that a psychological approach to their studies will bring.

To commence right at the beginning, therefore, let it be understood you must 'get properly " set " before you even start with your books, and in this connection you will find that it is remarkable how little things will make or break an evening's work or ruin an attempt at study—for example, a weak light may strain your eyes so that you will get tired more quickly than would otherwise be the case, or a wireless blaring in the next room render futile any serious endeavour to concentrate.

You may not realize it, but the place in which you work is very important—vitally important, so that it is wrong to work just wherever you happen to be, with new distractions continually popping up ; undoubtedly there are some who work better along with others than alone, but this is not to be encouraged, for the maintenance of indifference to noises and interruptions does need an effort, although unconscious, which effort will itself use up energy. Generally speaking, therefore, the best plan is to have one place where you work (as quiet as possible) and work there and nowhere else, so that when you come to your table in your room, you are in an atmosphere in which you are accustomed to work and, therefore, the impulse comes more readily and spontaneously, just like your automatically doing the movements of swimming when you find yourself in the pond : try to " make automatic the attitude of concentration when seated at your books." Further, don't lounge with your feet on the mantelpiece (or in some similar posture) : the proper " psychological" position is seated on a hard-backed but comfortable chair at a table (preferably green-topped), with a table lamp, shaded from your eyes, throwing the light down on to the books at which you are working and with the rest of the room unlighted to minimise distractions—general overhead lighting is not advisable, since it lights up the whole room, thus providing infinitely more distractions. Then you are " physically " ready to work, provided that the atmosphere is not too warm (when it will induce drowsiness), or too cold, and that you have those books you know you will need near at hand, to save you any needless interruptions.

Now to get down to work itself. This demands Interest, for if no interest, no real work will be done ; but normally the initial effort to get yourself to work will have its own reward,

• 63 Aberdeen Grammar School Magaine for once you have got " down to it," then you can proceed almost effortlessly, or to put it as Pryns Hopkins does in his breezy little book, " Aids to Study," " There is always a warmingup period when the work is done grudgingly and from a sense of duty. Afterwards comes a growing interest in the topic we are studying and we make rapid progress." Yet if the subject under study is difficult, do not be downhearted if much conscious effort is needed : it too will bring its own reward, for the more concentrated the attention devoted to a thing when being learned, the longer and the more easily will it be retained in your memory ; but when you are working, don't forget that the mind needs a rest just as does the body when you are doing some hard physical work, therefore in mental work introduce a brief break of about five minutes every hour or so, but do not have that break at the very end of a chapter, or some such place, for you will likely find it difficult to regenerate interest when you return to your task ; much rather take your rest at " the crest of interest in some topic," so that you will be keen to get back to it to find out what is coming next, after the idea of the old serial cowboy films which used to run for five or six weeks, each week's serial ending on some highly exciting or dramatic note, so that people were stimulated to return the following week to see what was going to happen.

Now we are getting somewhere—we are settled down and have generated the necessary interest to concentrate our attention, but no I not sufficient yet, for even if the interest is there and the " atmosphere " is correct, yet a proper method is essential to get the best from our efforts. It is no use plodding on haphazardly and indefinitely till you get " fed-up " or think you have done quite enough for an evening's work. You must bear in mind the very important fact that " Organization is to a great extent the secret of all large-scale achievement," and realizing this, plan your work period ; make up your mind what you are going to do and when it is going to be done, and like the hiker who gives himself objectives and times to get there—for example, Banchory first day, Ballater second day, Braemar third day— so you should decide on your programme—for example, French, 6 to 7 ; History, 7.3 to 8 ; Maths., 8.13 to 9.3o—and keep to it as much as possible. The usually accepted principle is to " put the hardest tasks first," but you may find it easier to start off with something involving writing, as this, I think, creates interest more quickly. Further, it has been found, as C. A. Mace puts it, that " disproportionate attention to the receptive as opposed to the expressive functions is probably the commonest fault in students' method of private study," which will sound very technical but really isn't, saying just this—don't try to learn something merely by reading it and being content ; when once you think you have mastered some topic or subject, then shut your book and prove it to yourself by setting yourself a question on it and answering it aloud or by writing it out. Thus if I have

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to learn the course of the American War of Independence, then I won't just read about it over and over again till I think I know it, I'll read about it several times, then close my book, ask myself, " What do I know about the American War of Independence," and either write out what I now know of that War or else say it aloud to the picture of Aunt Fanny on the wall or to the cat sleeping on the floor. This is a vitally important fact which cannot afford to be overlooked in serious study, for "It has been found that when acts of reading and acts of recall alternate, the efficiency of learning and retention is enormously enhanced."

Here let me interpolate a word or two on interruptions.

No matter how quiet your surroundings may be, you are bound to be interrupted some time or other—perhaps by Johnny wanting to speak to you on the 'phone, or just the sound of the door-bell, and whatever the cause, there will likely be a momentary (at least) lapse in your interest or concentration, which, however, can be overcome by determinedly getting down to it again after the interruption and refusing to let it befuddle your line of thought ; it may be difficult to carry out at first, but it will develop with practice and determination. As for mental interruptions, these, too, must be determinedly suppressed. If, when you are doing your French, you find your mind tending to stray to the novel you have yet to finish, do not give in but concentrate on your French and dispel the worry from your memory with the consolation that it will be dealt with later on.

Actually it is bad when you are studying to have " loose ends " hanging in your mind in the form of unfinished letters or stories, indecisions, etc., for they will keep on demanding your attention until they have been completed or finally dealt with.

Now one or two remarks on other factors which will materially aid your ability not only to learn a thing more quickly but to remember it longer, factors which, if applied whenever and wherever possible, will definitely improve the mind, for the good memory is distinguished from the mediocre by its quick assimilation (speedy absorption of facts), long retention (remembering), and accurate recall of relevant facts. For one thing, we find memory is improved by the use of reciting where possible. Thus if I had to learn five verses of Gray's " Elegy " for to-morrow, I should read it out aloud quite a few times, attempting not to learn one verse at a time but the whole five as a unit, which may sound wrong—would you do it that way?

—but is actually the correct psychological approach, since by reciting " you arc performing as far as is possible the very act you are trying to learn," and you can see just where you arc making the mistakes. Furthermore, if you do learn by the one-verse-at-a-time method, you will find at the end of each verse your mind will tend to return to the beginning of that verse again (for did you not learn it by repeating the verse over and over again, i.e., by returning from the end of the verse to the beginning many times ?), whereas if you master the five verses

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by repeating the whole five as a unit until you can recite them without the use of the book, then your achievement will largely be due to the fact that, while learning the poem, you proceeded from each verse straight to the next, so that the connecting links were set up in the proper direction and you were not thrown from the end of each verse back to its beginning ; therefore always remember that " whole learning " (five verses at once) is generally better than " part learning " (one verse at a time till you have learned the five) ; also, forgetting is slower if some relationship has been found in the material, as opposed to mere mechanical, parrot-like repetition without much thought to what you are saying. So whatever you are reading or learning, try to discern the thread running through it and to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, for knowing the intrinsic meaning of a thing is itself an aid to remembering it.

Lastly I come to the every-bit-as-important matter of what is called " spaced learning," which is very neatly explained by Woodworth when he says, " If you hive to memorize a long poem or speech, you will get better value for time spent if you give it one or two readings a day than if you attempt to finish the job at one sitting." Accordingly, if you get fifteen lines of " Twelfth Night " to learn, for example, and one week to do it in, do not wait until the evening previous to that day on which you must know it ; instead, try going over it once or twice each evening of the week (it will only take you about ten minutes) and you will find that by the end of the week you will have learned it more easily and much more lastingly than you would have done by one evening's cramming of it.

In this article I have endeavoured to interpret the psychological approach to study in a manner understandable to a normally intelligent school chap. I apologize if the reading has been dry and hope that those who have got thus far may be compensated by the assurance that the above " hints " put into practice really ought to help them. There are other aids on which I have not touched, viz., the great help of discussion (for which school routine provides regrettably little opportunity) in giving one a hold on a topic, the limited but undeniable usefulness of mnemonics, etc. ; but for those who wish to go more deeply into the subject I would recommend C. A. Mace's " Psychology of Study " as a comprehensive though somewhat technical book, or that already-mentioned breezy and very readable work by Pryns Hopkins, " Aids to Study," both of which present an authority's view on the various factors, large and small, which will tend to facilitate the ascending of the " craggy paths of study."

CAMPBELL CONNON

(1926-38).

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SCHOOL SECTION. School and Random Notes.

Since the immemorial custom has been to start these notes with an apt quotation, and since the only Latin one we know is " vice versa," the only Greek " (Irs Tcfx‘crra," the only French " ne me fait rien," and the only English " To be, or not to be," none of which seems particularly appropriate, we are reluctantly forced to depart from tradition (thank goodness that's over!).

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In Hall the teaching staff have now been elevated to the dignified position of the stage. It is amply embarrassing for us minors down below forgetfully to have omitted to bring our hymn-books, and we accordingly feel understanding sympathy for those whose omissions are more prominent because of their exalted position. The seating in Hall has been somewhat re-arranged in an attempt to eliminate the troublesome bottle-neck at *e upper exit. However, some congestion still exists owing to the eager rush for the classrooms, and it is still not advisable to attend Hall with eggs in one's pockets.

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The appearance of the Masters on the stage is at first unseen except by the Prefects in the front row, and unless one keeps one's eye on them, the Hall is apt to present a strange contrast : in the forward seats, everyone is standing to attention, but farther back there rages a battle royal, and the resounding impact of hymn-books on scholarly craniums rises to the rafters. But this is a small point—the restoration of Morning Prayers is welcomed by all. * * * We have had two special services this term. On the National Day of Prayer, 3rd September, we assembled at eleven o'clock in Hall.

The Rector and Mr. Paterson read passages from the New and Old Testaments, and the Rev. P. D. Lawrence led us in prayer. The proceedings ended with the National Anthem. On i ith November Morning Prayers were prolonged by the reading of a message from Sir Stafford Cripps, and the Rector said a few fitting words. The National Anthem was again sung. The Two Minutes' Silence was observed in the classrooms at eleven o'clock.

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We have pleasure in welcoming three more ladies to the staff.

Miss Elizabeth Horne is carrying on Mr. Hemingway's work, Miss Mabel C. Taylor has joined the Mathematics and Science Department, and Miss Madge Smith has filled the vacancy caused in the Kindergarten by Mrs. Thomson's taking the Nursery School. We trust their period of work here may be a happy one. * * * Our gallant fire-watching fraternity continue to brave the terrors of the night so that the School may receive no injury. In recognition of their outstanding services, we propose that each be presented with

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a badge, bearing an incendiary bomb couchant and a stirrup-pump rampant. We think no pay can be too large for anyone who is prepared to endure the standard bed, liable to collapse at any moment without warning ; for this mishap, we believe, has befallen one of the Masters, who shall be unnamed. Also, one or two of the mattresses, it appears, are rapidly disintegrating. But undaunted by such little incidents, the valiant fire-watchers carry on, despite the fact that the making of a cup of tea entails the unravelling of the marvellous knots and contortions of the flex around the electric kettle. * * * In November a copy of the School Rules was presented to every boy in School. They consist mainly of rules which, though their existence was known, have previously not been accorded any noticeable measure of recognition. The prohibition of cycling in the precincts of the School has now been made watertight by the inclusion of a supplementary parenthesis, whose cunning is reminiscent of the highest literary precision of H.M. Department of Inland Revenue, viz.: " N.B.--` Cycling' includes standing on one pedal." It is reported that on the day of distribution of the Rules, tears were seen in the eyes of many manly seniors, stricken by the pangs of conscience ; and some are believed now to carry the Rules next to their hearts. * * * The Prefects this year are William C. M. Lawrence (Senior), Gordon S. Elmslie, D. Ronald Griffiths, Ronald W. Hepburn, Hugh M. Knight, Lawrence W. Milne, Eric Rogers, James W. Rogers, Ranald F. F. Steven, Alistair H. Tawse, and Donald E. R. Watt. * * * The powers that be deserve a hand for their timely provision of a Doughnut Dispatch and Sales Service between the retailer and the consumers in the School. Thus at last the I.D.B. war seems to have been knocked on the head in a manner satisfactory to both contestants, and the battle-cries of " Perish Extra-Mural Peregrination! " on the one side, and " We Will Have Our Doughnuts! " on the other, will be heard no more. * * * Alas! gone is the daily sprint down the corridor! Gone is the long anxious queue! Chocolate is rationed! What a doleful cry!

The Janny has been registered as a retailer and does obtain supplies, but the coupons . . . 1 It is now a rare occasion if six people are brave enough to expend their coupons on chocolate in the course of the interval. The Janny is very disappointed at the response to his labours, we believe, and will have to shut shop if he is not patronized by some more people. After all, it is a School shop, for the School. * * * On Saturday, i4th November, we were fortunate in having Mrs. Charlotte Riley to speak to us on the subject of " France." She had left that country only four months previously and had many interesting things to tell us about conditions in France, especially Unoccupied France, immediately after the armistice of 1940, and when she left.

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine 7o Her information was very encouraging from the Allies' point of view.

We were free to ask questions afterwards, and Mrs. Riley had so caught the interest of her listeners that boys were continually asking questions for over half an hour. She answered them all in a lively manner with amusing illustrations. Mrs. Riley left with us, we think, quite a different outlook on France at the present time. * * * We hereby formally deny the rumour that the authorities have received an offer of L5 ,ooo from an American film company for the beautifully picturesque erection around the water tank on the front (Rab's late) lawn, which they proposed to use as a Red Indian stockade.

The authorities would never consider selling it for less than £io,ooo. * * * For those who frequent the Library—and they are many—the banishment of the old benches with pseudo-soft seats (i.e. ruts down the centre) and the marble-topped tables is much appreciated. New oak tables and single chairs, which are almost comfortable, take their place. A new system of lighting, too, has been installed, so that it is now possible to see any book without the aid of a flash-lamp. Our only regret is that it is not now possible to do our geometric problems on the marble surface, whence they could be erased, deleted, obliterated or rubbed out without difficulty. The following lines also might be considered appropriate to the Library :— " Miss Henderson deserves some praise for splendid self-control, The like of which we've never seen in any living soul ; Day after day the same 'phone call, it hardly can entrance her, Yet every time she perseveres, and gives the same old answer, Delivered in a tone so bright, so kind, so very pleasant : ' Who is that calling ? Oh, you see, the GRAMMAR'S here at present.'

•

At one end of the Library, Time works his onward will, But, strange to say, at t'other end, he stands steadfastly still." * * * An air-raid practice was recently held in School. As the day was not more damp than is usual in these parts, it is impossible to say whether the shelter walls are now completely free from the former drops of moisture, which were a cause of such widespread complaint owing to their rendering indecipherable most of the witty chalk inscriptions. * * * regular army sergeants who have been We doff our hats to those drilling the members of the Army Cadet Force. Their restraint of language has been truly admirable. In the same connection we would record the great test of endurance which was undergone by some members of that gallant Force. We refer, of course, to that solemn event when they marched up the whole of Union Street from Bon-Accord Terrace to Rose Street bearing wooden rifles and some dilapidated models of (we feel sure) pre-Boer War pattern. (In all fairness to the A.C.F. we would state that these rifles are used only for

Aberdeen Grammar School Magaine training purposes, and that the cadets are at the same time being instructed in the real rifle.) * * * We are most happy to report once again the successful season of the 1st XV and especially the conclusion of the match with a certain seminary which is housed not far from where an incomparably better and finer seminary used to stand, the score being 13-9. The match, which was an exciting one, was well supported by both Schools and spirits ran high. Our heartiest congratulations are due to the 1st XV for their well-earned win. * * * At the beginning of October when the cold, cold days were coming upon us and the pen could scarcely be held in the numb fist (would that it were!), we were surprised to enter the School one fine day to be met with a gust of warm wind. Having been warned that we should have to sit shivering until November, we were not a little thankful.

On inquiring the reason for this blessed heat, we discovered that, as the building housed a Nursery School (we hope that this refers to one part of the building only), it was permitted that the heating might be put on a month earlier, so that the wee boys might not catch cold. * * * to School in the form been introduced feature has An interesting of weekly talks given to the Upper School by the Rector. They deal with the moral issues of the present war, with the great problems of the bounds of individual freedom, and the materialistic view of humanity adopted by the dictators as opposed to the idealistic and philosophical view adopted by democracy. The potential value of the talks is doubled by the opportunity afforded to boys of asking questions and suggesting other view-points, which could well develop into a full discussion between Rector and boys, although so far the boys have been almost tongue-tied. At first these meetings were somewhat irreverently described as " pep-talks," but they are now coming to be regarded with more serious interest, which we trust will increase as time goes on. It is to be regretted that, though we have described them as weekly, the talks are only so as far as the Rector's time permits. * * * The elections of House Captains were carried out on a new principle this year. Instead of proposing and electing on the spur of the moment, it was suggested—and carried—that nominations be lodged on the day before the elections, and those nominations made known so that we might weigh up the qualities of one with another and decide who were fitted for the posts. We were reminded that at the same time we were electing four of our Prefects, a fact which had not occurred at least to our editorial mind before. This system proved satisfactory in practice, but we are inclined to think that the same people would have been elected under the old system as were under the new. * * * On approaching one day the place where our book in the Library,

72

Aberdeen Grammar School Magaine

so well thumbed and dearly beloved, was wont to rest, what was our surprise to find it missing, and the shelves in that part in apparent confusion. After fruitless reconnaissance of the region, we bore down upon the Librarian, from whom was forthcoming the placid response that the books were now being re-catalogued on the Dewey System. If Mr. Dewey has been as successful in library technique as his namesake at catching gangsters, there should be a most welcome improvement in the arrangement of the books. * * * Once again the scrape of ladders is heard against classroom walls ; windows, doors, etc., are now (November) in process of being repainted ; the new colour is light green. It was owing to the flames of the blowlamp of one of the painters penetrating into a classroom through an open window that the following alarming incident occurred : FIRE! A Dramatic Episode.

(All Rights Reserved.)

Scene I.-School main corridor, near Janny's box.

Date.—ixth November. Noise effects from classrooms.

Enter by door from playground One FLURRIED PAINTER. FLURRIED PAINTER (breathlessly) : " Fire! Fire! " (Repeated at very brief intervals in a loud voice.)

(Door of a Classroom opens. A MASTER appears.)

MASTER: What, etc. ? (Questions painter ; goes out hurriedly in direction of Miss Brown's room.)

Scene II.—Westfield Buildings. A curtain on a classroom window on fire, fiercely attacked by another painter.

FIRE : " Crackle, crackle " (also goes out hurriedly).

Enter two (yes, two) fire-engines, with FIREMEN. FIREMEN (on seeing that blaze has been extinguished) : [This we leave to the reader's imagination.]

The above episode is, as far as we have been able to ascertain, true to life. Another feature of the incident was, we believe, a search conducted in Westfield to discover the whereabouts of a stirrup-pump ; the search was still going on after the fire was extinguished. * * * .

The vexed question of week-end homework has now been set at rest by an official pronouncement that no work must be done for Mondays at all, no matter when it is given out. Thus in one Montgomerylike swoop the pro-Monday homework forces have been routed, and their armour, which was the contention that such work was permissible if given out a few days before, has been completely destroyed. Not only are the boys grateful for this clarification of the situation ; before, each master seemed to have a different opinion about the question. * * * On the last day of October we were mystified to learn that the

Aberdeen Grammar School Magaine

73 Senior Masters were to be absent from School for part of the morning.

Our intelligence service once set in motion, we were surprised to learn that they were attending meetings of the 1943 Leaving Certificate Panels, where they " In close recess and secret conclave sat A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, Frequent and full. After short silence then, And summons read, the great consult began," and may they never again set luckless youths papers like the ones we sat I * * * The influence of the cinema guides even the pen of the history scholar, whose thoughts, as he writes of the dim and distant past, evidently stray to the wild and woolly West, as presented by Hollywood. Witness the action of one bright youth, who, being examined on the Tudor period, described that unfortunate lady whose reign in England was of such insignificant duration, as Lady Zane Grey.

(N.B.—Readers must make the most of this howler ; it is, we regret to say, the solitary example of such unconscious humour we have found worthy to go down in print.) * * * In perusing a list of past editors of these notes, we were humbled to find among their number Mr. Eric Linklater, Mr. Walker—the English Master, Mr. Hyslop—the Music Inspector, a Professor, several Lecturers, many Schoolmasters and Doctors and some in the Civil Service at home and abroad. It is with breathless awe that we tread in the footsteps of such illustrious predecessors ; but we can only hope that we have acquitted ourselves honourably of our principal task, which has been to chronicle the events of the past term in School in a manner acceptable to our readers. So look not scornfully upon our labours ; and should they have seemed somewhat tedious, then we can only reply, in the words of the immortal Byron (F.P.) :— " My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which being finish'd, here the story ends ; 'Tis to be wish'd it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun."

A Visit to Haworth.

In war-time, when one conforms to the restrictions necessary for energetic war effort, it is refreshing to the mind to look back at the piping days of peace. I myself like to remember the days when I went with my parents and brother on motor tours through England.

They seem such a long time ago now. Having recently read some of the books by the Brontë family, I recalled that Haworth in Yorkshire was one of the many places that we had visited on these trips.

On that occasion we were motoring from Keswick, in the Lake District, to Leeds, meaning to stop at Haworth en route. The district approaching Keighley is so densely populated and so full of industrial

Aberdeen Grammar School Maga.#ne 74 plants that it is almost impossible to be out of sight of a chimney stack or workmen's houses. There is little scenery until within a few miles of Haworth, where the factories disappear and the country becomes more rural. I laworth, itself, is situated on a hill surrounded by moors. The main street is very steep and cobbled. As we ascended, I could see the famous Black Bull Tavern, where Bramwell Brontë was wont to repair. At the top was Haworth Church, of which the Reverend Patrick Brontë was clergyman. Next to it was the Parsonage, where we stopped and got out.

The whole atmosphere, the scenery, the drab houses, the dull architecture had a depressing effect on me ; and yet whatever can make an effect, good or bad, must have something about it which is worth noticing. As it was late in the afternoon, we found we had the place to ourselves. Walking up the short garden path, I reflected that, a century before, the Brontes had also walked that very ground.

It certainly gave me a strange sensation. We entered through the front door and found the interior of the house had been made into a museum, but not to the extent of spoiling the original appearance, as often happens to places of historical or literary interest. Exhibited in glass cases are such things as tea-cups used by the Brontes, original manuscripts, slippers worn by Emily Brontë, and many other things.

In the dining-room we saw the fireplace where the Reverend Bronte was in the habit of burning carpets (at least so says Mrs. Gaskell).

At the top of the curved stone staircase was a most diminutive narrow room with a small window overlooking the sombre churchyard with its tombstones—the children's study. Drawings scrawled on the walls during the childhood of the Brontës are now carefully protected with plate glass. Such is fame! All the bedrooms held something of interest—Emily's charred comb, which on the day of her death had fallen into the fireplace and which she was too weak to pick up again ; the back bedroom occupied by the Reverend Bronte, from the window of which he fired a pistol daily into the moors beyond ; and, above all, the room where all the manuscripts and drawings were laid out. Charlotte's sketches are obviously superior to those of Bramwell, who was supposed to be the artist of the family.

Outside on the landing stood the trunk the sisters had taken with them to Brussels.

At last, down the stone staircase to the hallway once more, and out into the mellow sunshine of a late July afternoon. How I would have liked to wander over the moors at the back of the house, beloved of Emily—the inspiration of her wonderful poems and the setting of " Wuthering Heights." But time was short and after a look round in the Church we jolted down the steep, cobbled street once more, and on to Leeds.

I hope, when the war is over, to visit Haworth Parsonage again ; although they say that first impressions are the most important, I know that I would enjoy a second visit, and perhaps notice something which I had missed before.

ALASTAIR BROWN

(Middle IIIA).

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

75

School Sport—A Résumé of the Term's Activities.

As was the case at this time last year, the feature of the term to date has been the excellent form shown by the xst XV in their various inter-school and other matches. Details of the side's performances are given on other pages, from which it will be gathered that the successive victories over Glasgow High School, Trinity College (Glenalmond), Gordon's College, and Arbroath High School were well merited.

The successes gained by this season's clever School team arc largely the outcome of enthusiasm shown in training and in practice games, and in this respect much credit is due to Mr. W. P. Stewart, the ist XV Coach, who continues to devote himself wholeheartedly to drilling the side and refereeing, in spite of other calls upon his time. Opportunities for seniors to practise together arc few these days, but players certainly " go hard " when they are at Rubislaw.

School's other sides' records to date do not compare too favourably with that of the 1st XV, but this is in great measure due to the infrequency of their fixtures, the result of war-time conditions. The and XV, under the captaincy of Gordon S. Elmslie, appears to be improving, for recently they atoned for a at-nil defeat by a Naval XV by beating them a fortnight later, x 5-z t. Their opening match with and Gordon's College at Seaficld was lost. School's 3rd XV has so far played only two games, losing to Gordon's 3rds at Seaficld, but winning the return match at Rubislaw. School Colts, Juniors, and Minors are still in search of their first wins over the corresponding Seafield teams, whose superior physique has been apparent in every game so far played.

Hockey has been introduced as an alternative game for non-rugby-playing seniors and tremendous enthusiasm is already being shown for it. Two practice games have been taking place each Wednesday afternoon, supervised by Messrs. C. Forbes and I. M. Park, and Saturday morning is also being utilized for practice.

Under such expert tuition it should not be long before 4th, 5th, and 6th-year boys become proficient players.

Swimming prospects are now brighter than they have been for some time.

Mr. R. Wilson, who joined the School Staff just over a year ago, has imbued many Middle and Upper School boys with his own enthusiasm for the sport, and interHouse competitions take place each fortnight at the Municipal Pond, usually on Fridays. The intervening Fridays are devoted to instruction in both swimming and life-saving. Byron House arc at present undisputed champions, but if Melvin could but turn out their full strength in one of the fortnightly tournaments, they might quite conceivably pull their rivals from their pedestal. In the Lower School also things are looking up as far as swimming goes. Thanks to the Rector's efforts we have secured the use of a Clubroom once a week at the Municipal Baths, and some forty members of the Lower School Section of A.G.S.S.C. arc at present training for proficiency certificates to be granted only to those able to swim fifteen yards.

That few of these certificates have so far been gained is, perhaps, partly due to the close proximity of the hot sprays to the less hot pond. We arc, of course, still far from being able to hold our own with Gordon's College swimmers, who have made remarkable progress since they acquired their own Pond, but on zoth November School swimmers put up quite a creditable show in relays, diving, and water-polo at the College Pond.

In Athletics the recently-formed "Athletic Group " continues its " all the year round " activities under B. M. Cockic's captaincy.

A résumé of School Sport would be incomplete without tribute to Dr. H. Stewart Mackintosh, Director of Education, and to those members of the Staff and the F.P.s who are trying to maintain it at its pre-war standard. Mr. W. P. Stewart, Mr. P. Murray Stewart, Mr. Christie, Mr. C. Forbes, and Mr. Park have all given ungrudgingly of their spare time, and such F.P.s as T. F. Robson and K. G. Buthlay have also done much to keep things going at Rubislaw in these abnormal days, both by coaching and refereeing.

A. J. M. E.

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

School Rugby Notes.

At the time of writing, just as was the case a year ago, the School 1st XV has played four games with other Schools, all of which have been won. So far this is an excellent record, and it is one worthy of the best team that has represented the School for many years. Other successes of the side include wins over znd University, an R.A.F. team, and an F.P. " A " XV. A feature of the season to date has been the splendid team spirit prevailing in both tat and and XVs, and this augurs well for the remainder of the rugger season. W. C. M. Lawrence, scrum-half, is the School Captain for 1942-43, and has proved himself an ideal leader. He has as his Vice-Captain A. H. Tawse, a wing forward of exceptional promise.

xst XV School Matches.

Toth October 1942.—v. Glasgow High School, at Rubislaw. Team :—J. A. C. Marr ; J. A. Grant Elmslie, R. F. F. Steven, A. D. R. Fiddes, I. M. Duguid ; I. McLean and W. C. M. Lawrence ; F. W. Alexander, I. G. K. Phillips, J. F. Cowie, L. W. Milne, H. M. Knight, A. H. Tawse, J. W. Rogers, E. Rogers.

School had the better of the opening exchanges and their forwards were much more aggressive than the visiting pack. The few concerted movements by the threequarters were in the direction of Glasgow's goal line, and after ten minutes School deservedly took the lead through R. F. F. Steven, who scored a well-taken try after running with great determination. McLean converted from a very difficult angle not far from the right touch line. In set scrums and loose, particularly the latter, School showed a decided superiority, and the forwards' passing movements appeared to upset the Glasgow side. It was not at all surprising that School's lead was increased as a result of a quick inter-passing movement between Fiddes, Tawse, and Duguid, which ended in Duguid scoring a try. It was not converted and there was no further scoring this half. Half-time score—School, 8 points ; Glasgow High School, nil.

In the second period Glasgow's inferiority to School in most departments was even more apparent. The High School's tackling and marking were for the most part ineffectual, and on the few occasions their forwards did get the ball in the set scrums, the result was seldom a combined move by the backs. R. F. F. Steven at right centre for School was invariably a source of danger to the visitors, and he scored three tries in this half, two of which I. McLean converted. McLean himself added another try and converted it. He was deputizing for D. Stuart at outside half and combined well throughout with his Captain and scrum-half, Lawrence.

High School latterly were outplayed. Final Score—School, 26 points (4 placed goals, a tries) ; Glasgow High School, nil.

17th October.—v. Trinity College, Glenalmond, at Rubislaw. In the School team three changes were made from the side which had played against Glasgow High School. L. W. Milne, who was not available owing to injury, dropped out of the pack, as also did J. F. Cowie, Eric Alexander and D. Cowie taking their places.

R. L. McKinnon was introduced at right wing threequarter instead of J. A. Grant Elmslie. D. Stuart, outside half, was again not available owing to knee injury.

Team :—J. A. C. Marr ; R. L. McKinnon, R. F. F. Steven, A. D. R. Fiddes, I. M. Duguid ; I. McLean and W. C. M. Lawrence ; E. Alexander, I. G. K. Phillips, D. Cowie, F. W. Alexander, H. M. Knight, A. H. Tawsc, J. W. Rogers, E. Rogers.

In set scrums and line-outs at the outset Glenalmond got more of the ball than School, and only determined and tenacious tackling prevented a score by the visitors on at least one occasion. Soon, however, a change came over the game, and School assumed the upper hand from the moment that W. C. M. Lawrence, scrum-half, obtained possession from a set scrum in his own half and made a marificent break through to carry play towards the Glenalmond twenty-five yards line.

School thereafter pressed the visitors hard and remained aggressive until half-time.

Their only scores in this period, however, were unconverted tries by J. A. C. Niarr and I. M. Duguid. Mares try was the outcome of a fine threequarter movement in which he, as full back, joined to make an extra man. Half-time score— School, 6 points (2 tries) ; Glenalmond, nil.

St. Margaret's School for Otrts (Incorporated)

ALBYN PLACE, ABERDEEN. Head Mistress: Miss M. E. HOLLAND, M.A.Cantab. (Classical Tripos).

Chairman ofthe SeboolConnell: Dr. E.W. Warr, Ex-Lord Provost of Aberdeen.

T. MARGARET'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS is an IncorS porated School, registered according to the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 5908. It is administered under the management of an eleftive Council of prominent citizens, on lines similar to those of well-known Girls' Schools in other parts of Scotland.

The School stands in its own grounds in the best part of the City of Aberdeen, and in all respeas is well equipped to secure the comfort of pupils and the efficiency of the education imparted.

The aim of the School is to provide a first-class education on modern lines, to care specially for the development of charaEter in the pupils, to prepare them for the interests and responsibilities of social life, and to enable those who desire it to proceed to the higher education of the Universities or to train for a career.

BOARDING SCHOOL. As a special war-time arrangement, a country branch of the School has been established at Blackhall Castle, Banchory.

This is organized as a Boarding School, with all the advantages of residence. In this healthy atmosphere, in conditions of complete tranquillity, girls are able to follow the normal School routine and at the same time enjoy the pleasures of an unrestricted country life. Full responsibility is taken by the School if the parents wish, and holidays are arranged for.

Information as to Fees, Entrance Scholarships, Courses of Study, etc., is given in the Prospeftus. which may be had on application to the HEAD MISTRESS, 7 QUEEN'S GARDENS, ABERDEEN.

Aberdeen Grammar School F.P. Club Boarding House Co. Ltd. GRAMMAR SCHOOL HOUSE: 8 QUEEN'S ROAD, ABERDEEN.

The House is conveniently situated in the west end of the town, and is equidistant from the School and the Playing Fields.

The House, which can accommodate 45 Boarders, is specially designed and fitted for the purpose, having large Common Rooms, modern Dormitories, Bathrooms, Changing Rooms, etc.

The Company have their own Hard Tennis Courts (3) and large Playground adjacent to the House.

There are vacancies for both Seniors and Juniors.

Juniors (boys up to 9 years of age) have their separate dormitories and as much separate Common Room accommodation as possible.

A.R.P. shelter accommodation has been provided in the basement in accordance with M.H.S. standards.

Fees, £99 per annum exclusive of School Fees.

House Master Matron - -

-

- Mr. J. S. M. EDDISON, M.A. - Miss C. M. R. MAYOR.

For Application Forms and further particulars apply to the Secretary of the Company, Mr. JAMES C. DUFFUS, Advocate, 7 Golden Square, Aberdeen

Aberdeen Grammar School illagazine

77

In the second half School's forwards gave. a very good display, especially in the loose. Glenalmond fought hard but seldom looked like scoring. Early in this period R. F. -F. Steven increased School's lead by scoring a well-taken try near the posts. McLean experienced no difficulty in converting. Latterly play was contested almost entirely by the forwards. Glenalmond's plucky display was much admired. Final score—School, 1 I points (I placed goal, z tries) ; Glenalmond, nil.

24th October.—v. Gordon's College, at Rubislaw. The School side showed two changes from that of the previous Saturday. D. Stuart, recovered from injury, resumed at outside half, as did L. W. Milne, the second row forward. McLean moved to his usual position at right wing threcquarter, R. L. McKinnon and D. Cowie dropping out. Team :—J. A. C. Marr ; I. McLean, R. F. F. Steven, A. D. R. Fiddes, I. M. Duguid ; D. Stuart and W. C. M. Lawrence ; E. Alexander, I. G. K. Phillips, L. W. Milne, H. M. Knight, A. H. Tawse, J. W. Rogers, E. Rogers.

The game had a sensational start. School's line had not been crossed in either of their two previous inter-school matches, but after a few minutes' play K. G. Taylor, the Gordon's College left wing threequarter, finished off a good right to left movement by scoring a try at the corner. It was not converted. School were by no means adversely affected by this early reverse and played with confidence and determination. The forwards more than held their own against a speedy and clever College pack, and both halves and threequarters passed and ran well. Superiority behind the scrum had its reward when I. M. Duguid was able to finish off a movement by scoring a try on the left. McLean converted to give School a two points' lead.

The score occurred shortly before the interval. Half-time score—School, 5 points (x placed goal) ; Gordon's College 3 points (I try).

The second half was full of incident, and Gordon's College recovered the lead in dramatic fashion. A penalty kick for an offside infringement by a School player was taken in the first instance by the College outside half, who failed to score. Another infringement had occurred during the taking of the kick. It was retaken by the College full back, who converted, the referee not realizing that a different player had essayed the retaken kick. The score was allowed to stand, but School again rallied and regained the lead through tries by A. D. R. Fiddes and I. McLean.

McLean converted Fiddcs's try but not his own. Before the end K. G. Taylor scored his own and the College's second try, but School ran jut worthy winners of a good game. Final score—School, 13 points (z placed goals, x try) ; Gordon's College, 9 points (2 tries, 1 penalty goal).

21st November.—v. Arbroath High School, at Rubislaw. School's team showed no change from the side which beat Gordon's College and proved far too strong for Arbroath. The visiting side came North with only two years experience of rugby, and although they played pluckily, were outclassed. In the first half School scored nine tries through Lawrence (2), Fiddes, Steven (z), Tawse, McLean, Duguid and Stuart. Four of these were converted, three by Fiddes and one by McLean.

Half-time score—School, 35 points ; Arbroath High School, nil.

The second half was a repetition of the first. Further tries for School were scored by Steven (3), Duguid, Stuart, Barr, Milne and McLean. Of these tries Duguid converted two, and H. M. Knight and W. C. M. Lawrence one each.

Final score—School, 67 points (8 placed goals, 9 tries) ; Arbroath High School, nil.

Apart from school games the xst XV have put up several fine performances, perhaps the best of which was their well-deserved if narrow " away " win over an R.A.F. side by 13 points to 12 on Wednesday, 18th November. The Air Force team outweighed but could not outplay School's clever forwards. Included in their pack was E. Fallowfield, who turned out later in the week for the R.A.F. against the Army at the Athletic Ground, Richmond. Describing the latter representative game D. R. Gent wrote in the Sunday Times," the best part of the Air Force side was the pack, with J. Mycock and E. Fallowficld as good as any."

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

The Air Training Corps.

The School Squadron of the A.T.C., formed in March 1941, has made excellent progress in its training during the past year. Twenty-three out of the twenty-six candidates who were presented for Part I of the Proficiency Certificate passed the examination. The successful Cadets received certificates from Wing Commander Spence at a presentation ceremony held in the School Hall. In the course of his remarks he congratulated the Squadron on having gained a higher percentage of passes than any other squadron in this area.

Soon after Mr. Robertson took up duty as Rector, he arranged for parades to be held during the day. This change, which has been welcomed by Officers and Cadets, has made possible the continuance of outdoor activities which had to be curtailed last winter. One of the Officers, Pilot Officer J. D. Stewart, and a number of Former Pupils who were unable to parade with the Squadron during the day, were transferred to another Squadron. The vacancy caused by Mr. Stewart's transfer was filled by Pilot Officer P. Murray Stewart, who had given much valuable assistance as a " Civilian Instructor." Unfortunately, he was obliged to resign his commission on account of ill-health. He has been succeeded by Pilot Officer Charles A. Forbes, the Principal Teacher of English in the School.

Over four hundred Officers and Cadets attended the first R.A.F. camp organized by the Aberdeen Wing of the A.T.C. The Grammar School contingent, numbering twenty-seven, was under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Lynch, with Flying Officer W. Christie as Adjutant. The programme, which was both interesting and varied, consisted of lectures by R.A.F. personnel and visits to hangars and workshops. Cadets were privileged to enter and inspect the aircraft, some of which were of the most modern type.

One feature of the training has been the lectures given by serving officers.

The subjects have included " Security" and the work of Coastal Command and Bomber Command. In one of these, Squadron Leader Leslie Mayor, a distinguished F.P. of the School, recounted a number of amusing experiences on active service in the Eastern theatre of war.

Four Church Parades held during the past year have been well attended by Cadets.

The squadron is grateful to the Honorary Chaplain, the Rev. P. D. Lawrence, M.A., and the congregation for the opportunity of worshipping in Rubislaw Church.

The Squadron is also indebted to the Honorary Medical Officer, Dr. Maxwell G. Gibb, M.B., Ch.B., and the Honorary Dental Officer, Mr. Edmond Lightfoot, L.D.S., who have examined all new recruits.

The high light of the year was the visit of Mr. W. W. Wakefield, Director of the A.T.C. The Director, accompanied by Group Captain the Duke of Hamilton, A.T.C. Commandant for Scotland, inspected the Squadron. In a short address after the inspection, he stressed the need for highly trained air-crews and, by reference to personal experiences, he emphasized the importance of navigation.

The School Army Cadets.

The School Cadet Company continues to grow. We have now passed our original allocated strength of too, and have been granted authority to enrol up to 120 Cadets. The Company has been re-organized on a House basis, each House mustering a platoon. Weekly parades show an average attendance of 97 per cent., reflecting the popularity of the Cadet Force and the appeal of the instruction which is being given. We hope that soon a number of the senior Cadets will go forward for the first part of the Certificate " A " examination.

The most exciting event of the term was the arrival and distribution of the first uniforms. Since then most of the Company has been fitted out, and already many of us are wearing the battle-dress like veterans.

During the course of the term we have had many interesting addresses and talks. Colonel Worsley, accompanied by Colonel Strathdee, gave us an encouraging address, on the aims of the Cadet Force, in Hall on 9th October. On 13th November Colonel C. M. Usher, after inspecting us at work, gave a short, inspiring address.

Two former pupils, Major G. A. Rowton, The Gordon Highlanders, and Lieut.

Ronald G. C. Smith, R.A., while on leave, came and talked to us on military topics, emphasizing the importance of our basic training. Lieut. Alan H. Cruickshank,

7,7

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magarcine

79

who has agreed to act as our Honorary M.O., gave us a preliminary talk on the importance of keeping fit and healthy. Rev. P. D. Lawrence, who takes a keen interest in all School activities, has been appointed Honorary Chaplain to the Company, and we hope to hold our first Church Parade soon, when he has kindly agreed to address us.

We have been fortunate in the help which has been given in training by Lieut.

Hunter and C.Q.M.S. Crighton of the Home Guard, and Sergt. H. Duncan of the University S.T.C. ; I. M. Cochran, R. M. Grant, and H. M. Knight of the Sixth have given much appreciated service in the handling of platoons and administrative work generally. The Company will miss Robert and Hugh when they leave for service in the Forces in the course of this term. We wish them both a happy, successful career, and a safe return when the job is done. Messrs. J. M. Eddison and J. S. Henderson of the School Staff have been commissioned into the Company and undertake the training in weapon-training and aircraft-recognition. Messrs.

I. M. Park, R. Wilson, and W. P. Stewart continue to give their services in training and administration.

W. P. S.

The Literary and Debating Society.

Since the outbreak of war this Society has suffered two heavy blows. The first was the year of complete inactivity in 1939-4o, and the second was the change from evening to afternoon meetings. It recovered from the first only at the loss of half its former membership. Nevertheless it did recover, and would in all likelihood have returned to normal, had it not been for such inconveniences as black-out and fuel restrictions, which forced the Society to hold its meetings in the afternoon or even in the morning. Despite everything, however, the Society has plenty to show in its favour.

Instead of the usual Masters' Debate, the Rector opened the session with a few words about the Society in general, and its activities received his blessing. The members of Staff who represented the School's Brains Trust excelled themselves in answering questions, such as " What are the two most read books in the English language ? " and " What does the Brains Trust think of the National Anthem ? " —when there was a lively discussion. The following week the Music Room resounded to the melodious efforts of Jelly-Roll Morton and company. This programme of jazz records was presented by Mr. Dickson and Mr. R. Milne. A Balloon " Debate was tried out for the first time in the Society, and, though the attendance was poor, it was a notable success. A doctor, an artist, a clergyman, a politician and a lawyer took the stage and each stated his case. After keen heckling the doctor was victorious. The other outstanding meeting was an extremely interesting and entertaining recital of songs by Mr. Forbes, accompanied ably by Mr. Falconer. The programme was very varied, and the Society enjoyed it heartily.

The last two events were a debate between the barbarian and the civilized man, when the latter was found to be the happier ; and the Boys' Brains Trust, a successful meeting, with questions ranging from the Trust's choice of the six greatest men to-day to the question of organized religion. The meeting ended on a most facetious note, as to whether it was better to be married or single.

P. C. M.

The Dramatic Society.

The general meeting to appoint officials was held on 1 zth September, when the following were elected : Honorary President—the Rector ; President—John Marr ; Vice-President—Ian Watt ; Secretary—Ronald ICirton ; and Committee— Ernest McConnach, Maxwell Innes, and Dudley Fiddes (representing the Upper School), and Bernard Anton, John Baird, and Bryce McLeod (representing the Middle School). The Society meets regularly on Mondays and Thursdays. The membership is quite large and members are very enthusiastic. Three plays are being produced and are to be given in public on 17th and 18th December in aid of the Y.M.C.A. The casts have been selected, rehearsals arc well advanced, and the plays arc taking shape quickly. This is due to the producing of Mr. Forbes, our new head English Master, who has proved his worth in the Society and who is always willing to give up his precious time to attend our rehearsals, and to Mr. Eddison, who is producing the Middle School play. The plays to be done are Galsworthy's " The Little Man" ; Maurice Baring's " Catherine Parr" ; and Lord Dunsany's " Bureau de Change."

8o

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

Scout Notes. xst Troop.

Since the session began in September, the membership of the Troop has risen to 38, all of whom seem keen to become First Class Scouts. Only two boys, however, have so far achieved this distinction, namely, Patrol Leaders James McGregor and George C. Davidson, who later gained their King's Scout Badges.

During September we lost one of our ablest and most popular Scoutmasters, Bill Davidson, who had been in charge of a most successful summer camp at Braemar for over a fortnight. Twenty-eight Scouts attended this camp, and the Troop was extremely fortunate in having the opportunity to entertain a Troop of Belgian Scouts.

Promotions to date arc as follow :—Second Eric Craig to be Patrol Leader ; Patrol Leader Roy Wcir to be Troop Leader ; Scouts Scott and Lyall to be Seconds.

S./M. DEAN Mau r9th Troop.

The summer camp was held this year at Dess, near Aboyne. It was a new venture, for this camp was to be a Scout Forestry Camp. When the weather was warm we found forestry rather a thirsty job, but on the cold, damp days it was most exhilarating to work round a cheery blaze. Each new head of brush thrown on the bonfire would raise a leaping tongue of red flame and cause a rending sound.

And at the end of a day's work what a thrill it gave to come back to the sight of tents and curling camp-fire smoke!

One glorious summer evening a party set off on a trek across country to a steading six miles distant. We made a bee-line for our objective, striking a trail through bracken and heather, trees and bushes. The explorers, however, were still faced with a formidable barrier, as the Dec had yet to be forded. The main party held on stout-heartedly, and found a spot whose the crossing was not too difficult. The advance party on the other hand—three of the stalwarts of the Troop —were almost baffled to find a crossing-place. In the end, with the help of big staves, they did struggle manfully across the stream. But when in the gathering dusk they reached the steading they found that it was their comrades who had got there first to make the supper.

Camp was pitched on the top of a wooded knoll, from which we could see eastward as far as the sea, and south and west up Deeside and to the hills beyond.

To the north-west, just below us, lay the Loch of Auchlossan. So near did it lie that we came to consider it as part of the camp itself. If you happened to pop your head under the awning in the morning, there was the Loch, the first thing you saw. And in his face we used to read the varying moods of the weather : at one time the rays of the sun dipping behind the western hills would glint golden from his face, and at another he would be frowning and dark as great clouds rolled over him.

Back in town again the Troop is well under way with winter activities. The meetings have been well attended, and if at times a visitor might say they were noisy, it is only because the boys are enjoying themselves.

S./M. DAVID MATHIESON. (7th Troop. held at Ballaterach, near Dinnet, in none too good was The summer camp weather. Several expeditions took place, including a visit to the Burn of Vat. The first part of the camp was remarkable for rain, but the weather improved towards the latter part of our stay. During the September week-end the senior members spent much time and labour in repairing and decorating headquarters. Since then the Troop has improved as regards membership, keenness being at a high pitch, with the result that steady progress has been made in all scouting activities.

S./M. IAN McLEAN.

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1

Aberdeen Grammar School Magaine

81

The Former Pupils' Club.

Founded 1893.

The F.P. Club Boarding House.

Boys who entered the House in Autumn 1942.

William Anderson, s. of Mrs. Anne D. Anderson, The Bungalow, Methlick.

W. Graeme H. Bell, s. of William S. Bell, 56 Bridge Street, Aberdeen.

Alexander Brown, s. of Alex. S. B. Brown, P.O. Box 2o4, Kampala, Uganda.

David L. Cowie, s. of Alex. Cowie, 3 Redfield Road, Montrose.

Ian M. Duguid, s. of John Duguid, Bumbank, Newburgh, Aberdeenshire.

Michael J. Fox and Peter J. Fox, ss. of Leslie H. Fox, Milton Lodge, Keith.

David A. Graham, B. of Charles Gordon Graham (1911-18), Potterton House, Balmedie.

William H. Proctor, s. of Donald F. Proctor (19o8-12), Wedderhill, Blairs, Aberdeenshire.

Allan A. D. Sutherland, s. of Mrs. Beatrice Sutherland, Dorset House, Dorset Street, London, N.W. 1.

Robert L. Watson, s. of Mrs. A. M. Watson, Holly House, Montrose.

John Williamson, s. of William B. Williamson (19oo-o2), Seafield Cottage, Viewfield Road, Aberdeen.

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BOARDING HOUSE COMPANY. The Fourteenth Annual General Meeting of the Aberdeen Grammar School F.P. Club Boarding House Co., Ltd., was held in the Registered Office of the Company, 7 Golden Square, Aberdeen, on 14th October 1942, Dr. Edward W. Watt, the Chairman of the Company, presiding.

The report of the Directors to the meeting stated that during the year the Junior House had been let and a proportion' of a year's rent was included in the accounts. The Company had also thereby been relieved of certain occupiers' outgoings.

The average number of boys in the Senior House during the year had again been 33. A slight increase in the fees was made at the end of the previous financial year.

These two additional sources of income, combined with savings in certain directions, had permitted a small profit to be earned on the year's working. In arriving at that profit the Directors had not been able to provide any special depreciation, but they had provided for the bulk of the Income Tax payable on the results for the year. In the past the Tax on the current year's profits had been met out of the income of succeeding years. The Directors hoped that it would be possible in the current financial year to bring the Income Tax position right up to date.

The position of the Company's Profit and Loss Account was as follows :— Amount at debit as per Accounts for 1940-41 . . . £318 13 . . .

Deeket profit on working in 1941-42 .

17 16 4 . . .

Leaving at debit .

•

•

•

. £Soo 17 7

The Directors were glad to report that the current year had opened with a substantial increase in the number of boys in the House.

During the year Mr. D. M. Andrew who, as Rector of the School, had been a Director of the Company since its inception, retired from the Rectorship, and in accordance with the Articles of Association the new Rector, Mr. James J. Robertson, took his place on the Board of Directors.

On the motion of the Chairman, the report was unanimously adopted. Mr. A. McK. Johnston, the retiring Director, was re-elected, and Mr. Alan McBain, C.A., was re-appointed Auditor.

Aberdeen Grammar Selma Magazine

Bz

The Cricket Section.

The F.P. Cricket Section had a very successful and enjoyable season, winning the Aberdeenshire League Championship by means of eleven victories out of twelve matches played. The only defeat—a heavy one—was inflicted by Mannofield XI, who had also (a week earlier) removed F.P.s from the " Cup " Competition.

H. S. Cardno, until he left to join the R.A.F., was once more the leading batsman, and again and again delighted with stylish and freely-hit displays. The war has borne heavily on Cardno as a sportsman : he should have been shining in rugby " Trials" and in Aberdeenshire's cricket XI. L. E. Tyson, now Groundsman at Rubislaw Field, strained his shoulder badly during last winter and could do very little bowling for F.P.s, but made up by highly consistent batting. A. J. M. Edwards was an invaluable opening batsman, and Neil Macdonald and J. A. Innes did some effective " smiting " at times.

The bowling was well managed by lnnes, who proved himself a capital skipper (incidentally, the two defeats inflicted by Mannofield came while lnnes was away on his honeymoon). G. M. G. Robbie, School Captain in 5941, was a much improved bowler in 1942, thanks partly to the sage counsel of Tyson. Robbie should have a bright cricketing future. Innes, though none too fit, always bowled steadily and well, and Cardno kept a much better length than in 5941. G. P. Marr, so long F.P.s mainstay in bowling, could play only once or twice and suffered by lack of practice. C. S. Forbes and Dudley Fiddes of the School XI showed themselves bowlers of excellent promise.

The fielding of the side was good, and Dr. T. M. Allan an excellent wicketkeeper, stumping many unwary batsmen off Robbie's curly slows. Great satisfaction was felt at F.P.s' two victories over Gordonians. The ancient rivals were defeated by one wicket at Scofield, when L. E. Tyson and Robert Steven's courageous final stand secured a sensational victory. As Gordonians afterwards won the Aberdeenshire Cup and were also runners-up to F.P.s in the League, with 21 points to F.P.s 22, a challenge was issued to them, and a return game played at Rubislaw in September. Another exciting struggle was expected, but Gordonians collapsed before Robbie's clever left-hand " slows " and F.P.s won by nine wickets.

RESULTS FOR SEASON 5942.

Cup-Ties-1 won, t lost. League Matches-1t won, i lost. Friendlies2 won, I lost.

Batting.

•

1

106

4 4 2 I I 1 -

47 70 71 39 31 33

Total Runs.

377 z64 213 94 161 tot 50

1

30

105

No. of Times Highest Innings. Not out. Score.

H. S. Cardno. . .

L. E. Tyson .

A. J. M. Edwards . . .

I. Craig Neil Macdonald J. A. Innes .

Dr. T. M. Allan • G. M. G. Robbie

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Bowling.

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II II

. . 13 • 6 • 9 .

8 • 5 . II

Average 37'7 37'7 24.2 23.5 zo• x 14'5 12.5 10'5

Ovcrs. Maidens. Runs. Wkts. Average.

8 163 44 • 78 5 5'9 z6 30 16o 6. i 5 • 85.4 26 6.5 171 • 50.1 9 . 12 10'25 41 4 3 267 25 10. 7 3 • 59.7 7 134 19. 5 • 41 3 Macdonald, and C. H. Webster each caught 5; Fielding.—J. A. Innes, Neil A. J. M. Edwards, Douglas Stuart and L. Soutar each 4 ; II. A. Cardno and G. MacPherson each 3 ; I. Craig, a ; G. M. G. Robbie, C. S. Forbes and A. Lawrence, each 1.

G. M. G. Robbie J. A. Innes .

L. E. Tyson .

C. S. Forbes .

H. S. Cardno G. D. Marr .

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Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

83

Wicket-keeping.—Dr. T. M. Allan stumped xi and caught 4. Neil Macdonald stumped 3, his catches referred to above being other than at the wicket, and W. Lawrence caught r.

The Aberdeenshire League Cup was presented to J. A. Innes, Captain of F.P.s, during the friendly game between F.P.s and Gordonians at Rubislaw on 5th September.

Most of the victories were of such a nature that only three or four F.P. players batted. In spite of this, the younger members of the side fielded with the utmost keenness, and brilliant work was done by D. Stuart, L. Soutar, C. Forbes, G. McPherson, and others.

C. H. Waasma, Acting Hon. Seerstary.

The Rugby Section.

This season the Rugby Section is fielding only one XV on Saturday afternoons, but occasionally an " A" XV will turn out on Saturday forenoons to provide opposition for one or other of the School sides.

The 1st F.P. team's record to date is highly satisfactory in view of departures to the Services and frequent changes in personnel for other reasons. Eleven matches have been played, seven of which have been won, three lost, and one drawn. Our old rivals Gordonians, having ceased to play regularly, most satisfaction has been derived from the F.P. team's fine showing in three of the four games played with the now very formidable Wanderers. Two wins and a draw against the latter more than offset the heavy defeat they inflicted upon F.P.s on the last Saturday of September. Wanderers nowadaysfield fie an almost " all Services " side.

The Annual General Meeting of the Section was held in the Pavilion at Rubislaw on Saturday, 31st October. Mr. D. P. Cochran, who was in the chair, was reelected Hon. President, and several additions were made to the list of Vice-Presidents.

Dr. J. C. Lightbody was re-appointed Captain, with J. A. Innes as Vice-Captain.

The Secretary and Treasurer, A. J. M. Edwards, was also re-appointed, with H. McPherson as Assistant Secretary.

The Section provided five members of the successful Aberdeen XV to oppose a Services Select at King's College Grounds on Saturday, t4th November, these being J. A. Innes, D. W. C. Smith, Dr. J. C. Lightbody, K. W. Hunter, and H. McPherson. Another F.P. in the Aberdeen team was J. D. Chalmers, the present University Captain. Since the start of the season, the following F.P.s when home on leave have turned out for the Section :—A.C. z A. Paul, Pte. G. A. Paterson, Aircraftman Cameron R. Innes, Captain J. R. S. Innes, Captain J. Scott Maclachlan, L.A.C. W. L. Connon, Major G. A. Rowton, and Flight Sergeant C. R. Cruickshank.

The sincere thanks of the Rugby Section are accorded to former players and others who have frequently refereed games this season. The help given in this respect by Messrs. Hamish B. Grant, David Smith, Page Gentles (Moray R.F.C.), Major Gunn (Heriot's F.P.), and Lieutenant Shipley (Dublin) has been greatly appreciated. Our thanks also go out to the personnel of the Civil Defence Depot for help willingly given in catering for visiting Services teams.

Results.

Sept. 12. ,, 19.

26.

3. ,,

10.

ft

1 7.

,,

24.

31.

Nov. 7. ,, 14. „

21.

,,

28 .

v. R.A.F. XV, at Rubislaw . v. School 1st XV, at Rubislaw . v. Wanderers, at Rubislaw . . v. Royal Navy XV, at Rubislaw . v. Wanderers, at Rubislaw . . v. R.A.F. XV, at Rubislaw v. R.N. Air Station XV, at Rubislaw v. Wanderers, at Rubislaw . . v. R.A.F. XV, at Rubislaw .

(Representative Match.) v. Wanderers, at Rubislaw . . v. University, at King's College .

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Won 6o-o Won 23-11 Lost 3-42 Won 42-o Won 19-11 Lost 5-16 Won r5-I3 Won 15-8 Won x2-5

. Draw 1o-10 Lost o- x 5 A. J. M. E.

84

Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine

List of New Members of the Club.

LIFE MEMBERS. Black, James Anderson (1936-39), 68 Forest Road, Aberdeen.

Borthwick, Edward Kerr (1933-42), Glenae, Milltimber.

Brown, Andrew Galloway (1915-21), C.A., 58 St. Swithin Street, Aberdeen.

Brown, John Garrick Craig (1930-42), 681 King Street, Aberdeen.

Dean, Vaughan Nicol (1913-zo), C.A., 4 Handel Close, Canons Park, Edgware.

Dron, William Kennaway (1921-34), 1 to Queen's Road, Aberdeen.

Duff, Stewart (1923-34), M.B., Ch.B., 99 Whitehall Place, Aberdeen.

Duncan, Thomas (1924-31), M.B., Ch.B., 16 Calsayscat Road, Aberdeen.

England, Denys William (1927-35), B.Sc.(Eng.), Mayficrd, Osbert Road, Blundell Sands, Liverpool.

Forbes, William Lumsdcn (192 4-28), 434 King Street, Aberdeen.

Ch.B., Eastry, Kent.

Fraser, Douglas Morrison Milne (1898-1910), M.A., Grant, James Hewet (1914-16), 27 Gladstone Place, Aberdeen.

Grant, John Peter (1935-42), Glenfarclas, Blacksboat, Grantown-on-Spcy.

Hastic, Robert, Jun. (19z5-35), Heatherlea, Milltimber.

Johnstone, John William (1914-22), 13 Rubislaw Terrace, Aberdeen.

Maclver, William (1923-26), 12 Northburn Avenue, Aberdeen.

MacKay, John Robert (1926-37), M.A., 14 Rubislaw Den North, Aberdeen.

Mackie, Maitland, Jun. (1926-28), Wcstertown, Rothicnorman.

McNicol, John Anderson (1935-41), Knock, by Huntly.

Menzies, William (5922-25), C.A., Farragon, West Cults.

Murray, Robert Garden (1933-36), M.B. Ch.B., 95 Forest Avenue, Aberdeen.

Shepherd, James Gordon (5920-29), 89 Ilammerfield Avenue, Aberdeen.

Smith, James Lamond Douglass (1885-90), Old Harbour House, East Parade, Goole, Yorks.

Taylor, Ian Bryson (1933-40), 45 Argyll Place, Aberdeen.

Walker, Arthur William (1928-35), Tillygreig, Udny Station, Aberdeenshire.

Walker, Douglas Stewart (1903-16), M.A., LL.B., W.S., 25 Rutland Street, Edinburgh, t.

Walker, Norman A. (1930-41), 79 Fountainhall Road, Aberdeen.

Williamson, Archibald Moir Macrae (1906-16), M.A., LL.B., advocate, 62 Northumberland Street, Edinburgh.

ORDINARY MEMBERS. Henderson, Hamish McNaughton (193240), 45 Angusficld Avenue, Aberdeen.

Leslie, Douglas Macbeth (1937-4z), Roselyn, 3 Caroline Place, Aberdeen.

Mackenzie, Roy Alexander (1939-41), Mill House, Murtle.

Melvin, John Middleton (1935-42), 1 Abergeldie Road, Aberdeen.

Robertson, William Alexander Clifford (1936-42), 493 Great Western Road, Aberdeen.

Sandison, Hamish Ian (1933-40), The Swallowgate, The Scores, St. Andrews.

Soutar, Charles Lewis Colby (1933-41), tot Forest Avenue, Aberdeen.

Stephen, Ernest John (1935-40), 37 Albert Street, Aberdeen.

Thomson, Ronald Cooper (1931-42), Hazledene Ilouse, Hazledene Road, Aberdeen.

Turnbull, Alexander Cuthbert (1939-42), 16 Whinhill Road, Aberdeen.

Aggett, Michael Alexander (1930-42), 5 Louisville Avenue, Aberdeen.

Anderson, Alexander George (1933-42), 87 Braemar Place, Aberdeen.

Anderson, David (1935-42), 33 Richmondhill Road, Aberdeen.

Anderson, George MacDonald (193042), 51 Abergeldie Road, Aberdeen.

Chalmers, Derek (1930-42), 217 Holburn Street, Aberdeen.

Davidson, Norman James Hunter (1925;3), M.B., Ch.B., S7 Queen's Road, Aberdeen.

Durward, Alexander Miller (1930-42), 40 King's Road, Richmond, Surrey.

Gill, Alfred James (1928-42), Millo, Pitfodels.

Gray, Alistair (x929-41), 72 Louisville Avenue, Aberdeen.

Hall, Hamish Thomas Burns (1927-32), South Dalziel Manse, Motherwell.

Hall, Lawrence Graham Murray (192732), South Dalziel Manse, Motherwell.

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His MAJESTY THE KING. DATED I ST JULY 194o

..‘

J. WILLIAMSON & SON 1N/V, R. W.LLIAPSION, PROPRIETOR)

Meat Purveyors and Poulterers 1, 2, do 3 MARKET BUILDINGS, ABERDEEN 'PHONE 452 BRANCHES I

IS

THE SQUARE, CULTS 'PHONE. CULTS 2

FOUNTAINHALL ROAD 'PHONE 1724

'PHONE 311

ALSO AT CHURCH SQUARE, BALIATER.

BY

TO THE LATE

A

APPOINTMENT

KING

GEORGE

V

GRANITE MONUMENTS Designs and Prices on Application Monuments carefully packed and forwarded to all parts of the world Letter-Cutting done in Town and Country at Moderate Rates

JAMES TAGGART & SON Granite

Works

92 GREAT WESTERN ROAD, ABERDEEN Telephone—I658

Established over 50 years

IRONMONGERY A LARGE AND VARIED STOCK ALWAYS ON HAND SHEETMETAL

WORK

A

SPECIALITY

H. LEITH & SON 26 and 28 NETHERKIRKGATE Phone 259

ABERDEEN

There is none better than the " BEST" but Davidson's Coals are better than the " REST "

J. & A. DAVIDSON, LTD. 2 BLAIKIE'S QUAY, ABERDEEN Branch Otfice:—MAJESTIC BUILDINGS, 238 UNION STREET Telegrams—" Davidson "

Phone 2873

Various kinds of ENGLISH, SCOTCH HOUSE, STEAM COAL, ANTHRACITE, and "Ideal" Triplex Fuel at keenest prices WE SOLICIT

A

TRIAL

ORDER

Agents for Ordnance Survey Maps

Wyllies Circulating Library

WYLLIES Booksellers, Stationers

247 UNION STREET, ABERDEEN Established 1814 Books for Young Men Books for Boys

Telephone 402 Books for Lower School age Books for the Young

THE

FAMILY COFFEE Cures Colice is the lavourite drink with everyIt is most one especially delicious, Your in cold weather. grocer can supply you.

COF CURIA e Thomas Curt 6 Co., ABERDEEN.

Anderson Ai Spence CIE11Sri PHOTOGRAPHIC DEALERS DISPENSING

31 FOUNTAINHALL ROAD, ABERDEEN Telephone No. 1711

Jackson's Bindery 18 Back Wynd Aberdeen ESTABLISHED 1856

BOOKBINDING -

BIND FI ND FAST FAST `U' T

OF EVERY DESCRIPTION Leather Goods Lettered with Initials or Inscription Maps or Plans Mounted Loose Leaf Specialists

STAY AT2 THE

Caledonian Hotel ABERDEEN R.S A C.

A.A.**** Telephone 29 I f (3 lines)

Telegrams " Repose, Aberdeen"

•

Overlooking Union Terrace Gardens.

Three minutes from Station.

Quiet.

80 Bedrooms, all with H. and C. Running Water.

PRIVATE SUITES.

ELECTRIC LIGHT.

CENTRAL HEATING. LIFT.

LOUNGES. AMERICAN BAR.

WRITING ROOM.

40

GARAGE

CARS.

Dining Room and Restaurant a la carte.

Grill Room open until 11.45 p.m.

•

En Pension Weekly from Five Guineas.

• Manager, JAMES MERCER.

R.A.C.

ABERDEEN

TOWN

COUNCIL -

ABERDEEN

EDUCATION COMMITTEE.

GRAMMAR

SCHOOL

(FOUNDED PREVIOUS TO I2f6.)

Rector

-

JAMES J. ROBERTSON, M.A., B.D.

HE GRAMMAR SCHOOL provides for Boys a complete course of TStudy, both Elementary and Secondary, Classical and Modem.

The School, which is organized in three Departments—Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools—contains, in addition to the usual classrooms, a Chemical Laboratory, Science Theatre with Physical Laboratory attached, Natural Science Laboratory, Art Room, Gymnasium, Workshop, Botanical Garden, Library, Reading Room, and Museum.

Pupils in the Middle School arc prepared for the Leaving Certificate of the Scottish Education Department, passes in the latter examination being recognized as exempting from further examination in the correspondihg subjects of the Preliminary Examination for graduation in Arts, Science, Law, and Medicine at the Scottish Universities.

The situation of the School in the West end of the City is open and healthy. The Class-roorns are large, and the Grounds for Recreation include separate Playgrounds for Juniors and Seniors, Tennis Courts, and a field for Cricket and Football. There is also a Boarding House run in conjunction with the School.

ABERDEEN HIGH SCHOOL

FOR GIRLS.

(ALEYN PLACE.) Head Mistress

-

Miss BEATRICE M. ROSE, M.A. (Aberd., Oxon.)

HIGH SCHOOL provides a liberal education for Girls from THE 5 to la years of age, and aims at fitting them for borne life and for

professions open to women.

The School buildings occupy an excellent and spacious site in the West end of the City. A Playing Field of it acres, situared at 1-lazlehead and provided with a suitable pavilion, is used for organized games.

The School is organized in three Departments—Infants, Primary, and Secondary. The Classes in the Infants and Primary divisions are graded in accordance with the requirements of the Scottish Code. Pupils in the Secondary Department are prepared for the Leaving Certificate of the Scottish Education Department.

Pupils whose parents desire it are taught Theory and Practice of Music (Pianoforte, Violin, and Organ) in preparation for the Examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music.

Advanced pupils are prepared for the Licentiate of the Royal Academy.

Information as to Fees, Scholarships, Courses of Study, etc., at the Grammar School and High School for Girls is given in the School Prospectus, wh ch may be had free on application to the Director of Education, Education Offices, or to the Rector or Head Mistress respectively.

•

SOME PEOPLE SAY we must make our plans now for post-war reconstruction.

OTHERS MAINTAIN that we must get on with the job of winning the war before thinking of anything else.

You can satisfy both by putting your money in the

ABERDEEN

SAVINGS

BANK,

because it is lent to the Government and at the same time is a reserve which will be of great use to you when the war is over.

•

•••

SHOE FITTING BY X--RAY

/

-

JOHN A. DUNN Family Boot and Shoe Maker

46 UNION STREET ABERDEEN Phone 158

Repairs Executed

SPECIALISTS IN YOUNG-PEOPLES FOOTWEAR PRINTED A

THY. ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PERU.