THE EAGLE d eMagazine SUPPORTED BY MEMBERS OF Sf 7ohn's College v 0 L UM E LII, Nos. 225 & 226 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY MCMXLI St. Joh. Coli. LU.l. Cf;.l"l_. CONTENTS PAGE High Table Memories I War and Epidemics 10 The annual Subscription is 4S. Life Subscription £5. Five Johniana 14 years' Subscription £1. The present double number contains College Chronicle : matter accumulated during the two years' interval since the The Adams Society 15 publication of No. 224, and its price is fixed at 4s. The Musical Society 16 The Classical Society 19 Subscribers are requested to leave their addresses at the The Historical Society 21 College Office, and to give notice of any change. They are The Law Society 22 also requested to give notice if they do not wish to continue The Natural Science Club 22 to subscribe. The Theological Society 24 The Debating Society 25 Contributions for the next number should be sent at an Association Football 26 early date to one of the Editors of The Eagle (Dr Hollick, The Chess Club 29 Mr Newman, Dr Williams, M. Pybus, G. L. Wallach). The Hockey Club 29 L.M.B.C. 30 N . B.-Contributors of anonymous articles or letters will Rugby Football 33 please send their names to one of the Editors, who need not The Squash Club 35 communicate them further. The Lawn Tennis Club 36 College Notes 36 The Editors will welcome assistance in making the Chronicle Obituary : as complete a record as possible of the careers of members Edward Ernest Sikes 43 of the College. John Martin Creed . 51 Oliver Gatty 54 Patrick Playfair Laidlaw 55 Samuel Lees 57 Augustus Edward Hough Love 60 ROLL OF HONOUR AND WAR APPOINTMENTS Ernest William MacBride 64 George Charles Moore Smith 69 The assistance of readers is requested in the compilation of Sir Albert Charles Seward 73 the Roll of Honour. Sir Pendrill Varrier-Jones 74 The Editors would also be glad to receive notice of any Roll of Honour 92 military or technical war appointments held by past or present The Library 94 members of the College,· with the date of the appointment, 104 College Awards in order that a complete record may be made. Illustrations : Notices should be sent to Mr W. Rawlinson at the College Swan Marquetry in the Combination Room facing p. 14 G. " 15 Office. " A peach of a target, Sir " Edward Ernest Sikes " 43 51 John Martin Creed " 55 Patrick Playfair Laidlaw " NTENTS THE EAGLE lV CO 272 � ��������������������������� Obituary ������ 285 � Roll of Honour December I941 Nos. 225 & 226 287 VOL. LII Pri�oners of War ���������� ������������������� 287 ������ Decorations 288 The Library . 301 College Awards 305 A Song of the Divine Names 306 The College During the War 309 To the College (after six war-years in Egypt) 310 The Commemoration Sermon, 1946 On the Possible Biblical Origin of a Well-Known Line in The HIGH TABLE MEMORIES 313 Hunting of the Snarl� T. R. GLOVER 3 By The Paling Fence IS 315 The Sigh I 316 J ohniana 319 T was a quip of my father's that the authentic words spoken by Book Review 321 Adam to Eve as they left Paradise were: "My dear, we live in College Chronicle I believe, attributes this 358 I times of transition." A later generation, College Notes Dean Inge, as perhaps by now he does himself-pereant qui ante 380 to Obituary nos nostra dixerunt. Whatever may have been the reflections of Adam, 402 Roll of Honour the half century during which I have known Cambridge has been 405 The Library . a time of transition. 449 82 came into force, which permitted Fellows of College Awards In 18 new statutes colleges to marry if they could find women willing to risk it with Illustrations: middle-aged or elderly men ; and there was, as J. R. Tanner (not Room facing p. 14 Swan Marquetry in the Combination yet middle-aged) put it, "a rush to the altar ". It used to be said , p. A peach of a target, Sir' IS that a Senior Fellow of some college was asked what he thought of p. 43 Edward Ernest Sikes marriage, and, after some slight reflection, he said: "The breakfasts p. are John Martin Creed SI better, but the dinners are not nearly so good." But the changes p. involved in college life were much greater than his simple reply Patrick Play fair Laidlaw SS p. 186 rev aled-subtler and more penetrating. Sir Joseph Larrnor � " SIde by side with this abolition of compulsory celibacy came a Glover " p. 191 Terrot Reaveley r�laxation of the requirement that Fellows permanently on the founda­ " P· 272 Henry Fraser Howard tion �ust be in clerical orders. Tl;te effect of this was not immediately " 275 Harold Hulrne Brindley P· felt ; �t took time for the senior men to die off, but thirty years saw " 305 t e Yale, by Alfred F. Hardiman P· � h1gh tables of Cambridge predominantly lay; a few clergy sur­ 383 v1ved, a Lewis Erle Shore P· few were added as deans and chaplains. Lastly, Craik p. 388 after the first German war, a new Universities Commission Kenneth James William m de p. 390 � drastic endeavours to remodel Cambridge, top, bottom and Thomas Wilson James m dle. For centuries the centre of academic life had been the co� ege, now it was to be the faculty. We owed this to the scientific ELl! 2 THE EAGLE HIGH TABLE MEMORIES 3 departments ; they were each of them centred in huge buildings, sonality or, more simply, even a man, was of very little signifi­ more like government officesor factories than the old-time colleges; per ce. their staffswere from every college ; buildings were kept up and staffs can The fifty years have seen more changes than could have been paid largely by the taxation of college revenues which had been given xpected, and yet less change ; for undergraduates do not change for no such purposes; and the "lab" was really more to the new e much even if they prefer cars to tandems; and they humanize the type of man than the college, and very often he came from outside g s and sometimes actu lly reclaim the Ph.D.'s. The great and knew little of our traditions. The new statutes were inspired, colle � � ultiplication (so far) of ordmary students, lads from the public if not drafted, by men of this make. All Cambridge was to be re­ m ols, who row and read and make asses of themselves, lovable, organized into faculties, even where there was and could be no " lab", scho undeveloped creatures with their two hands in trouser pockets, who and where the essential teaching was man to man in college rooms. grow up into men, after all outweigh the "advanced» students, Theorists, reformers, and science men had their way ; and men admirable people, no doubt, but perhaps too like Touchstone's"iU­ whose business was with history, language and literature were drasti­ roasted egg» "all on one side", though I will not add the abrupt cally herded into their several faculties. Long ago A. E. H. Love, participle in which he dismisses these vulgar fractions of humanity. who left St John's to be professor at Oxford, had made the criticism man who has twice been proctor may be trusted, if he comes and that Cambridge after all was devoting herself chiefly to the produc­ A tells you what an admirable person the ordinary undergraduate is. tion of professors. The newer ideal for a professor was devotion to " research", which is very well in scientificstudies, but less obviously useful in literature. Broadly speaking, in literature the less a pro­ II fessor "researches" in the modern sense of the term the more likely Of the older generation who survived into our days, quite the he is to understand what he is doing; manuscripts and antecedents oddest was Peter Hamnett Mason, the President of the college and are of little help to the real understanding of literature, and the lecturer in Hebrew. He had written a Hebrew grammar in the form substitution of palaeography for philosophy among theologians simply of "Letters to a Duchess». Duchesses may now and then wish to ruins the subject. However, we were in for scientific ideals, and learn Hebrew, like the retired Scottish grocer who thought it might research prevailed; and to clinch things professors were to be elected be fittingfor him to learn to address the Creator in His own language. in a new way; eminent outsiders were to have a hand in the elections, Peter's duchess appears to have been imaginary, or at most (legend who could be counted on to take an abstract view of the subject, said) his cat. But there the book was, and he had enlisted the en­ uninformed and indifferent about our traditions, about the training thusiasm of his pupils. For when the Regius Professorshipof Hebrew of men, but ardent in the development of specialists. As a result we became vacant, and the electors, not quite unintelligibly, fought shy got a number of "heads of departments", some of them no doubt of the queer old man and elected a much less picturesque figure, specialists of high quality, some of them less eminent and more likely a Trinity man, who held this post and afterwards the deanery of Ely to stay in Cambridge for life. Meantime, tenure of Fellowships­ for many years without any great distinction, Peter's pupils rose in ignominiously called " prize Fellowships "-was shortened and made indign ation, levied contributions on one another and themselves, and dependent on the pursuit of " research" of some kind; and the col­ founded a University prize to perpetuate the old man's memory, the leges had larger numbers of short-term Fellows, sometimes married, Mason Prize for Biblical Hebrew.