ABSTRACT
The story about the British offi cer who threw the rugby or soccer ball into noman’s-land, exhorting his men to chase it, is frequently told to demonstrate the kinds of public school absurdity that could not survive the carnage of such battles as the Somme. However as Jeffrey Richards points out,
The conventional wisdom . . . that the public school spirit, chivalry and empire all reached their peak in WWI and thereafter, with the bitter words of the war poets, and the disillusionment of the post-war generation with everything their fathers stood for, the ideals went into eclipse. . . . is a view based almost entirely on the evidence of the high culture (1988: 216).
