Newbolt
PLAY UP, PLAY UP
& PLAY THE GAME
LIEUTENANT HERBERT HAWORTH
These words form the last line of each of the three verses of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem 'Vitai Lampada'. This is the torch of life, which each generation nurtures before passing it on to the next, its flame intact. The flame is nurtured by each person playing his part, playing the game, to the benefit the whole team, regiment or country.
Massively popular in its day, the poem has come in for much subsequent ridicule, particularly for its second verse:
The sand of the desert is sodden red, -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'
The words don't mean that war is a game, they were simply a colloquial way of saying, do what you know to be right for the greater good not for yourself. As an inscription the meaning is to those still living to take up the torch the dead have dropped and carry on playing the game. Haworth's father chose it.
Haworth, the son of a Blackpool saddler, served with the 8th Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. On 6 June 1917, the battalion took part in the attack on the Messines Ridge, which followed the explosion of several large mines.
HE PLAYED UP
AND PLAYED THE GAME
PRIVATE WILLIAM SPRINGFIELD PLAYLE
Private Playle's father, also William Springfield Playle, who chose this inscription, is referencing very directly Henry Newbolt's famous poem Vitae Lampada [1897] [The Torch of Life], which was based on a passage from De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things] by the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius:
"Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life"
Book II line 75
In Newbolt's poem, at a crucial point in a school cricket match - "ten to make and a match to win" - the last batsman is inspired not by the thought of the glory that could be his but by: "his captain's hand on his shoulder" and the words: "Play up! play up! and play the game": play for your team and not for yourself. To Newbolt, it's this same spirit of selflessness that can rally a group of soldiers who find themselves in a desperate situation:
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
It's a spirit of selflessness, of responsibility to others, transferred from the cricket pitch to the field of battle. And writ large - transferred from the cricket pitch to life:
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The poem is always thought to have epitomised the public school ideal of selfless service to the community. But Playle was not a public schoolboy. He was educated at Rotherham Grammar School, which shows that this ideal of 'playing' for others and not for yourself was not limited to the public schools
William Springfield Playle was the eldest son of William Springfield Playle Senior, a quantity surveyor from Eccleshall in Yorkshire, and his wife, Minnie Kate. He served with the 17th Battalion Royal Fusiliers. In March 1918 the battalion was involved in a fighting retreat in the face of the German offensive. Playle, who had been at the front since January 1918, was said to have been killed by a sniper whilst carrying a wounded comrade.
QUI ANTE DIEM PERIIT
SED MILES SED PRO PATRIA
LIEUTENANT GERALD GALT
There was no Christmas Truce in 1916, at least definitely not in the trenches near Ploegsteert Wood where Gerald Galt was killed by a shell on Christmas Day. The War Dairy gives a cursory narrative:
December 25: We bombarded enemy trenches at 8 pm no retaliation - Mr Galt was killed at about 9 pm just outside dugout 123 trench.
Galt, a mining engineer, had been working with the Braden Copper Company in Rancagua, Chile before returning to Canada to enlist. He joined the 3rd Tunnelling Company Canadian Engineers and arrived in France in September 1916, three months before he was killed.
Galt's Latin inscription was composed by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) for his poem Clifton Chapel, a rather alarmingly militaristic poem that was very popular in its day. A father introduces his son to his old school chapel and tells him that of all the glittering prizes the future might bring there is none more pure than the one represented by the words on one of the brass plaques:
'Qui procul hinc,' the legend's writ, -
The frontier-grave is far away -
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.'
Translated the words mean - who died in a far off land before his time but as a soldier and for his country. In other words, there is no nobler ambition for a young man than to be prepared to die for your country.
I always think it's interesting that Rudyard Kipling, whose own son John was killed in the war but had no grave, chose these same words for John's memorial in Burwash Church in Sussex. Kipling, who expressed so eloquently the pride and grief of a nation in the work he did for the War Graves Commission, used the words of another man for his son.
QUI ANTE DIEM PERIIT
SED MILES, SED PRO PATRIA
LIEUTENANT JOHN RIGGALL BLAIR
These are the last lines of Henry Newbolt's poem 'Clifton Chapel'. They are not quoted from an ancient Latin author, Newbolt wrote them himself. The words translate as, 'Who died before his time - but a soldier, but for his country.' In the poem, published in 1898, a new boy at his father's old school is shown, by his father, the school chapel and encouraged to embrace the Christian and chivalric codes that constitute the public school ethos. Pointing out a brass memorial plaque on the Chapel wall, the father implies that there can be no purer following in life than to be a soldier who is prepared to die for his country. The last verse reads:
God send you fortune: yet be sure,
Among the lights that gleam and pass,
You'll live to follow none more pure
Than that which glows on yonder brass.
'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ, -
The frontier grave is far away -
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.