Organisations > Hillhead High School war memorial volume

Extracts from School Magazine.
THE CALL TO SERVICE 1915.
This issue of the School Magazine is essentially a War Number. The great
world drama now being unfolded on so many widely separated stages rivets all our
attention, and absorbs all our thought. Nothing else matters. And so the Magazine
is shorn of many of its old features, and is largely devoted to our old pupils who
have responded so nobly to the call for service. Let it not be forgotten that the
homes from which our boys went forth to war were in no sense military or militant.
So far as I know, only one of our old boys was in the Regular Army when
war began. Their interests and their parents' interests, like those of the great
mass of the nation, were all along the lines of peaceful pursuits. Not one of them,
I am sure, ever looked for the daily routine of their lives to be broken by even
the distant singing of a bullet. Yet when the call of duty came, loud, clear,
insistent, our youth sprang to arms as if fighting had been their profession. This
spontaneous response of a free and peace-loving people (for our boys were but typical
of the great mass of the people) has never been equalled in the world's history, and
is proof that the great heart of the nation still beats true to the best and highest
traditions of the past.
The School may well be proud of the splendid lead given by its former pupils.
The Roll of Honour now contains the names of almost 600 pupils, of whom 200 hold
commissions. The number of the latter would have been much greater had the
response of our boys to the first call been less prompt and general. They did not
wait for commissions, but with a pure and unselfish patriotism joined the ranks at
once, qualified though they were by education, character, and training for commis-
sioned rank. As privates and non-commissioned officers they have made themselves
so invaluable that commanding officers can hardly be persuaded now to part with
them. These privates of the first hundred thousand hold a specially warm place in
the affection of the School.
A scrutiny of the Roll of Honour shows that it has been recruited from many
lands. The Homeland, of course, comes first, but Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, India, the States, South America have each sent a quota, proving
that the Motherland has still the gift of keeping alive, across estranging seas, round
half a world, the love and reverence of her sons. In addition to Artillery, Engineer,
Army Service Corps, and R.A.M.C. units, 62 different regiments, Scottish, English,
Irish, Colonial, are represented on the list, and our old boys will be found fighting
in every section of our " far-flung battle line." Ten members of the staff are
already on the Roll, and others are ready to go when the Education Department
grants them permission. This depletion of the staff places a severe strain on those
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