100 years ago

Spies had shown amazing audacity. A few days before, a magnificent grey automobile, flying two flags – one a Red Cross – had passed through a village near the Aisne, France. Two officers wearing regulation British uniforms were in the front seat.

Gendarmes stopped the car, and asked for their papers. The officers showed a white pass bearing the signature of the French War Minister. A gendarme objected that the pass ought to be red. The officers retorted: “But it is the signature of the Minister himself.” The gendarme, impressed, allowed the car to proceed.

Upon its arrival at another village further on the car was again stopped. The officers showed the pass, but the gendarme, more suspicious than his colleague, said the pass must be red, adding that the War Minister’s signature was no good to him. Then, pointing a revolver at the alleged British officers, he ordered them to alight and follow him.

The French officer satisfied himself that the officers were German lieutenants who were calmly inspecting the Allies’ lines, and they were arrested.

 

50 years ago

It was in the children’s interest to uphold a teacher’s power to use the cane in maintaining discipline, said a National Union of Teachers report just published. The report, on corporal punishment in primary schools, had been submitted to the Central Advisory Council for Education (the Plowden Committee).

The NUT found that social and school conditions necessitated, in the interests of the majority of children, the retention of the right of the teacher to decide on the use of corporal punishment. But since a great deal was known about the emotional and psychological causes of delinquency, and since there was ground for questioning the psychological effects of corporal punishment, the teacher should use corporal punishment with circumspection when dealing with the behaviour problems of the individual child.

In most cases, the knowledge of the possibility of corporal punishment was a sufficient deterrent of antisocial behaviour.

 

25 years ago

Excrement was not a dirty word for the University of York’s expert in fossilised food remains, Mr Andrew Jones, formerly of the British Museum.

After years of painstaking, and at times painful, research he and the country’s leading authority on fish identification, Mr Alwyne Wheeler, had written a book for archaeologists on fish bones. Fishbones were a rich source of information about the lifestyles of ancient communities, said Mr Jones, and were both eaten on and excreted on a massive scale.

A lot of the smaller bones found excreted, particularly from herring and eel, were damaged, crushed and broken, which was a result of the fish being eaten whole.