A generation of idiots?
Sir: It is always diverting when the expert, venturing for once outside his field, stumbles abruptly into some unsuspected chasm of in- comprehension. Sir Denis Brogan is very good on French history. About rugby football, and those who play it, he clearly understands less than one could reasonably expect of Baroness Wootton.
And with what uncharacteristic solemnity he has chosen to display his ignorance. There was once a time, he tells us (14 February), when the St Mary's Hospital rugby team were, on occasion, pained to hear rough cries from the touchline exhorting the authorities to stop their 'grants.'
True enough. But when did it happen? And who were the authors of this crude advice? Were they, perhaps, resentful Tory councillors concerned about the rates? He doesn't tell us. Nor, apparently, was the 'brilliant female friend' Who let him in on the lamentable tale any better informed.
Well, rugby isn't a girl's game; and women tend to be literal creatures. Sir Denis should surely have been wary of such a source. With a little research he could have discovered that during the middle 'thirties all the other medical schools in London had become justifiably sus- picious of the new-found prowess of St Mary's rugby. They felt pretty strongly that it owed more than was fitting to scholarships awarded for athletic virtuosity rather than intellectual promise. Not surprisingly, the supporters from these rival camps were enraptured when one of the enlisted champions of St Mary's missed a kick or dropped a pass. It was a pleasing fancy to suggest that this must put his scholarship in jeopardy. But it was scarcely very sinister.
Still stricken by his recollections of the `rugger' men among his contemporaries (what can they have done to him one wonders), Sir Denis goes on to declare them the 'equivalent' of Hitler's thugs of 1932.
Well, now, who but an academic could have thought of that? Not that rugby men will be much upset. Incredulity rather than outrage is likely to be their reaction. After all, not many of them know much about French history.
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