Brutish indulgence

Tuesday, December 12th., Cadogan Square, London.

If a set of young men from the East End or from some provincial centre of Association football had gone in mass formation to Twickenham football ground last Monday, and by force and rowdyism rendered impossible the playing of the inter-Varsity match, there would have been a loud outcry in the papers, and in all polite circles, against their ill-mannered lawlessness. The police courts would have been densely populated next morning, and the non-payment of fines imposed would have ended in many doses of imprisonment.

Yet such conduct would have been no worse than the conduct, on that same day, of undergraduates from our ancient universities, which conduct began with processions on the tops of dining tables in fashionable restaurants and ended in the breaking up of a performance in at least one West End theatre. And which conduct occupied only a few inches of space in the papers and was forgotten by an enlightened public in less than twenty four hours. It was generally understood that university rowdyism in London had been finished for ever by certain outrageous destructive antics last year. Not so.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If years of education at public schools and universities result in exhibitions of loutish violence which have no equal in Great Britain, what are we to think of the real value of such education? Whatever young men (and increasingly young women) are taught at universities, they are not effectively taught either decency or good manners, or self-control, or respect for the elementary social rights of others. They apparently are taught to behave like savages, and to be proud of it. The immediate cause of these disgraces is of course simple drunkenness, senseless and brutish indulgence in alcohol. The excuse offered for the youths is that they are young. Which plainly implies a theory that we ought not to expect citizens to be decent, civilised and law-abiding until they have reached the age of at least twenty one. Is this a tenable theory?

It is the sheer hypocrisy which annoys me most. We live in a country which is deeply divided along class lines, and that division is maintained by the organs of government, religion and the press. The 'entitled' have the best of everything, and the rest do what they can with the crumbs. Surely it would not be unreasonable to expect the toffs to demonstrate their superiority by behaving decently? I don't advocate revolution but just occasionally I wish that something would upset the status quo.