I am not, I fear a very satisfactory witness, since I was at Aldenham (Mead’s House) for only two years from September 1934 to July 1936 and in those days one was strongly encouraged to be seen and not heard for one’s first two years, and to keep strictly to the society of boys of the same age and House as oneself. In fact I didn’t because (for reasons of illness) I entered the School a year late and found my contemporaries boring (with one striking exception – but he had his own friends and was seldom available for company) so I found my friends from other Houses and had to meet them in the fields. One of them was a Jewish boy who went home to his parents in Germany in the holidays. Talking to him made me more aware of the problems German Jews were having than I would have otherwise been. Another of my illicit friends (the brother of a young actress who was then just beginning a very distinguished career on stage) was about to be sent by his father to Austria to study German with a view to a business career, and wrote to me at school from there. But being uninterested in politics (or business, for that matter) he wrote mostly about the cultural side of Vienna.
I think it would be true to say that as a School Aldenham then was somewhat inward looking and took little interest in the affairs of the world at large. Current Affairs were not taught, as far as I know.
Outside events were not, however, wholly ignored. From time to time we had visiting lecturers come to talk to the School. One of these was an admirer of Mussolini. However, Mussolini had just (October 1935) invaded Abyssinia in defiance of The League of Nations and the lecturer, who had spoken in praise of Mussolini’s achievements in putting down communism, making the railways run on time etc. ended his lecture by damming the invasion with the words quem deus vult perdere prius dementat (which we were all supposed to understand, though I doubt if all of us did despite Aldenham's reputation for Classical scholarship). After that our (the juniors of Mead’s) interest in the Abyssinian war was purely frivolous. Our House tutor’s inability to pronounce his R’s made him a target for supposedly interested questions cunningly – or not so cunningly - framed to oblige him to use words such as ‘rally’, ‘ally’, ‘Italian’ or ‘battalion’.
It should be remembered that in the thirties Britain was a country deeply divided in many ways: I) economically – the working classes suffered much from poverty and unemployment (my friend’s sister was making her name in a controversial play named “Love on the Dole”) the lower middle classes lived very restricted lives, the middle middle classes were comfortable (no inflation) but not prosperous: ii) educationally – working class boys went to elementary schools and left school at 14 or 15, lower middle class boys went to grammar schools, middle middle class boys went to minor public schools such as Aldenham (only converted from a Grammar School in 1877) the upper classes went to Eton, Harrow etc. The different classes seldom met one another otherwise than formally and almost never mixed in later life. iii) There was a strong anti war movement. Thousands signed a pledge never to fight in a war (The Peace Pledge Movement). Iv) There was a small but noisy and violent Fascist movement.
Aldenham boys were not much aware of these divisions since their backgrounds were very homogeneous (middle middle class and very conventional and conformist). Nevertheless, there were, when I was there, small cracks of non-conformity. One senior boy was reputed to be a communist and more of less ostracised (or so it seemed to us juniors). He brought down the wrath of exaggeratedly loyal Aldenham Governors who took offence at the description of Aldenham in a letter to the New Statesman as an ‘average’ Public School. A near contemporary of mine discreetly showed round anti- war literature (mostly photographic evidence of the horrors of WW1). When the war came he volunteered to serve on a minesweeper and no doubt suffered worse hardships and dangers than most combatants.
Most of all it should be remembered that this writer is an octogenarian grown too lazy to check all his statements against the best available sources (something I am confident you would never do).