The idea was to give an entertainment for the funds of the Red Cross, and Blades believed it would be a better and finer entertainment if we did it absolutely on our own, without any help from the masters whatever. A few faint-hearted chaps thought not; but they were overruled, for, as Briggs pointed out, there was no entertaining power whatever in the masters. The only one who would have been any good in that way was Hutchings, who sang remarkably well in a bass voice of great depth; but he was at the War, and none of the others had any gift that could lure a paying audience. No doubt they might have tried, but, as Tracey said, you couldn’t ask people to pay good money just for the doubtful pleasure of seeing them trying. So it was settled that as there was a great deal of mixed power of amusing an audience in the school, we could do it without any assistance; and Fortescue supported this, and advised the Doctor that we should be given a free hand; but Peacock, of all people, doubted, and Brown, who wanted to shine himself in some way, thought we ought to have him and Fortescue to give a backbone to the show. What he was prepared to do, by way of backbone, we didn’t ask; what he did do, when the time came, was to show the people to their seats, and his evening-dress, which we had not seen before, was worth all the money, if not more.
Anyway, Fortescue got the Doctor to let us do everything without help, and the end justified the means, as Saunders very truly said, though at one time it rather looked as if it might not.
It was announced in public that the scholars of Merivale were going to give an entertainment for the Red Cross before Christmas breaking up, and, when all was decided, we had two clear months for the preparations. Owing to the War and one thing and another, we didn’t have much football that term, and the show got to be the great idea in everybody’s mind--so much so, in fact, that owing to an utter breakdown in geography in the Lower Fourth, there was a threat from headquarters that the whole thing would be knocked on the head if the work was going to suffer.
So we gave the Lower Fourth some advice on the subject, and told them not one of them should do anything if they didn’t buck up.