The Headmaster's Address
Observers have told us that the world's great wars have been fought chiefly by boys. Apart from physical fitness, one explanation is that impulsive youth is readier than cautious age to espouse a cause that appeals to the heart, and more willing to make sacrifices, even the supreme sacrifice, in behalf of the cause espoused. This war, it is said, was a great crusade and boys are the typical crusaders. Be that as it may, certain it is that the recent appeal to arms against injustice, arrogance and tyranny met nowhere with a fuller or more spontaneous response than from the young manhood gathered in the schools and colleges of the Empire. The University of Toronto, with its enlistment of thousands, was a notable example. And true to its motto, "Velut arbor, ita ramus," that branch of the University known as The University Schools, bore its full share in the high emprise. The school had just completed its fourth year of existence when the war began. And before the close of the long struggle the number of the enlisted was far greater than the number of its graduates when the war broke. It is no exaggeration to say that, so far as age permitted, the successive classes matriculated at once into the University of Toronto and into the ranks of fighting men.
The bronze honour-roll about to be unveiled contains the names of just fewer than 400 boys. It is significant of the daring spirit of youth that the favourite services were the artillery and the air force. How strenuously these boys played their parts may be judged from the scores of decorations for valour and from the long roll of the fallen. The second bronze memorial to be unveiled contains the 63 names of those who have fought their last fight, who .have kept the faith and won their crowns of glory unfading.
The cost of these tablets was met by voluntary subscriptions from masters and pupils for the purchase of Victory Loan Bonds in anticipation of this need, and by funds appropriately set apart by the Hockey Club from its surplus for this special purpose. I say appropriately, for in this struggle, the school athlete was conspicuous for his manliness just as the school cadet for his prepared-ness. The temper of this school, like the temper of the country, has never been jingoistic. But on the other hand, we have never been convinced that preparedness in school or country should be confined to the aggressor or the bully. These tablets (and in particular the memorial tablet), are erected as a perpetual recognition of the spirit of patriotism, self-sacrifice and devotion to a high ideal of duty.
These young men, as Rudyard Kipling recently said of others "willingly left the unachieved purpose of their lives, in order that all life should not be wrenched from its purpose, and without fear they turned from these gates of learning to those of the grave." In the unforgettable words of Rupert Brooke, himself one of their like:
“These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be,
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age: and those who would have been
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.”
It is for such giving that we erect memorials.
President Wilson has put the case in the form of a homely comparison. “It is a very interesting circumstance that we never hang a lad's yardstick up over the mantelpiece, but that we do hang his musket up when he is gone. Not because the musket stands for a finer thing than the yardstick in itself, but that the musket stood for the risk of life, for something greater than the lad's own self. It stood for infinite sacrifice to the point of death; and it is for that sentiment of willingness to die for something greater than ourselves, that we hang the musket up over the mantelpiece, and in doing so make a sacred record of the high service of the family from which it sprang.”
We masters of the school recognize fully that the lofty ideals of these volunteers were derived chiefly from the influences of home. But we like to think that their spirit was also, in some degree, a reflection of the spirit of their school; that coming from a school which decries bullying they were keen to pull down the greatest bully of history; that coming from a school which teaches consideration of others they considered not themselves; that coming from a school which inculcates manliness, they verily proved themselves men.
As I go down the list of the heroic dead, reminiscences crowd upon me. Here was a lad with whom it was a religion that the tone of the school should not suffer; who when ill-treated by an opponent on a football field remarked that it had taught him to see to it that his own behaviour should be always that of a gentleman. A truly noble spirit, one of the first to fall. Here I see the name of one, who, on his furlough home, came to us to say that the memory of the school was never far from his mind, and that he constantly felt as though it was for the school he was engaged. He continued to fight for his country and his school until almost the final battle. And so, one might go through the record. The memory of these lads will continue to be our most precious, because our most inspiring possession. And however dark the world outlook, do not believe these died in vain. Apart from the unspeakable calamity from which they delivered us, I believe it is not within the scheme of Providence that these lives should go for naught in the world redemption. I believe that -the spirit of unselfishness they exemplified will never vanish from the earth, but will continue to leaven humanity till the passing of earth's greatest evils, war and poverty, shall have been achieved. To aid in this consummation is the supreme duty of the hour for us, to whom these young heroes falling flung the torch.
At the base of the bronze honour-roll you will observe a line which reads. "Because the heart of youth was true." The source of this is a little poem by Mildred Huxley, and because the tone of the poem is in accord with the tone of, this service, that of sorrow passing in to triumph, it seems an appropriate closing to this statement.
They need no dirge, for Springtime fills
All things with tribute unto them;
The music of the daffodils
Shall be a soldier's requiem
Among a thousand hills.
Blow, golden trumpets, mournfully,
For all the golden youth that's fled,
For all the shattered dreams that lie
Where God has laid the quiet dead,
Under an alien sky.
But blow triumphant music too,
Across the world from sea to sea.
Because the heart of youth was true,
Because our country proved to be
Even greater than we knew.
Dr. T. M. Porter,
UTS Headmaster
22 October 1920
Back to Top
