LIEUT. REGINALD JOHN ELLIOTT TIDDY, 4TH BATTN. OXFORD, AND BUCKS. LIGHT INFANTRY (T.F.). KILLED IN ACTION NEAR LAVENTIE, AUGUST 10TH, 1916. AGED 36. At the School 1893—98 (Park House). CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL 1897—98. Lieut. R. J. E. Tiddy was the elder son of Mr. William Elliott Tiddy, of Priory Cottage, Ascotte-under-Wychwood, Oxon. From Albion House School, Margate, in which his father was then a Partner, he was elected in l893 to a House Scholarship in Park House. In the Summer of 1896 he was 2nd in the Upper Vlth, and won the Greek Prose and Latin Verse. In the following Term he became a School Praepostor and Head of the Upper Sixth, and was elected to an Open Classical Scholarship at University College, Oxford, but did not go up to Oxford till October, 1898. The Head Boy, as the Captain of the School was then called, for 1896—97 was M. LI. Taylor, who after a brilliant career at Cambridge entered the Civil Service, and who, having been at last released from the Admiralty in February, 1916, and taken a commission in the Rifle Brigade, was, like Tiddy, killed in action in August, 1916. In the Summer of 1897 Tiddy won the Sixth Form Prize and the Gold Pen for Classics, and in the following Term became Head Boy. In the Summer of 1898 he won the Greek Prose and Latin Prose, the Sixth Form Prize and Gold Pen for Classics, and was awarded the 1st Leaving Exhibition of £80. At Oxford he obtained a First Class in Classical Moderations in 1900, and also in the Final Classical School of Literee Humaniores in 1902. In 1903 he was awarded the Passmore Edwards University Scholarship for Literature. Having been elected to a Prize Fellowship at his own College in 1902 he began to take Classical work at Trinity in 1903, and, there being no vacancy on the teaching staff of University College, he was transferred to Trinity as an Official Fellow in 1905, and succeeded to the full charge of the Honour Moderations work in 1907. The following is an extract from the notice in "Trinity College, Oxford, 1915 —1916":— " On the establishment of the new School of English Literature, he qualified himself thoroughly to teach for it, adding to his wide acquaintance with English authors an adequate knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and Early English, without dropping his classical work. He was a very interesting lecturer and stimulating teacher; and his competence was soon recognized by his appointment as one of the University lecturers in English Literature. He had already examined for the Honours Schools in Classics and in English, was a master of the Schools in 1908, and a Pro-Proctor in 1910—11. Some years ago his knowledge of some villages in West Oxfordshire, combined with his devotion to music, interested him first in the revival of Morris-dancing and then in the literature of the Mummers' Play, with regard to which he was making extensive collections for an elaborate work. He was also keenly interested in social movements on the educational side, and had done much in this way for the village of Ascott-under-Wychwood, where he had recently made himself a home. It was therefore specially suitable that he should have obtained a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Territorials early in 1915. At first he was pronounced unfit for foreign service, and was offered an O.T.C. post here; but the training had certainly improved his physique, and he was able to go with the Oxford, and Bucks. Regiment in June, 1916, to France, where he was killed by a shell in the trenches on the night of August 10. He was a man of many enthusiasms, tempered by perfect taste and a keen sense of humour. Though not interested in some parts of University life, he exercised marked influence on the more literary among his pupils; and his common sense and good humour were always valuable in the government of the College." He was Chairman of the Oxford Folk Music Society, which under his guidance was amalgamated with the local branch of the English Folk Dance Society, and he had identified himself with the work and aims of the Workers' Educational Association, and its magazine, The Highway, contained an accoimt from which the following is taken:— "To him was largely due the success of the Ascott-under-Wychwood W.E.A. branch, and he held a passionate conviction that if the W.E.A. could get to work in the villages of Oxfordshire and the surrounding counties, it would find a people slow at self-expression, but as ready and eager for education as the more articulate population of the industrial towns of the north. "He brought back into the village life the custom of folk-dancing, devoting much of his time to the revival of the old Oxfordshire dances, till, as a visitor once remarked, 'it seemed that the whole village, young and old, danced and sang.' " He had that love of the land which, when it is joined to a highly intellectual and imaginative temperament, brings with it an intimate comprehension of things connected with the countryside, and to the country people he was as one of themselves—a part of their daily life. "An appreciation" by one who was well acquainted with his capacities," given in the Oxford Magazine, contained the following:— "No one in the long and splendid list of those who, in this War, have given their lives for England will be more habitually missed by his friends than E. J. E. Tiddy. Friendship was so great a part of his life, and he gave so much to it, that he made the ordinary friendships of circumstance or temperament seem almost amateurish. No one ever had more of the genius of sympathy. Whether by experience or instinct, he understood all the kinds of suffering that visit humanity, and responded to them instantaneously. He was never quite at home, I think, with the well-liking people who are at ease in the world, who win races, and gain prizes, and enjoy themselves. But with those who have suffered any sort of hurt or deprivation he had a magic intimacy. His own mind was so healthy and sane, and his own enjoyment of things so keen, that he was something of the physician in his friendships— wholly devoted, but a little aloof, clear in vision, strong and cheerful, like a good doctor. He knew his own powers, and he liked sick people better than sound, and ignorant people better than learned. He found immense enjoyment in that wide ironic view of things which is called humour ; there was no trace in him, that I can remember, of the machine-made substitute for humour which is called jocularity. " When the War broke out, he was shocked, and perhaps a little bewildered—he saw that human nature had in it possibilities that he had not reckoned with. He carried on for a time in his College, where he was more than ever needed; then he took a commission in the Army, and commanded a platoon of the boys of his own Oxfordshire village, whom he had befriended for years, and whom he called by their Christian names. Military discipline was something not quite relevant to this case; why should he give abrupt orders to a company of young men who, in the Army or out of it, would always do what he asked of them? " His eyesight was so defective that it was a question whether he could ever be passed for service at the Front. Like many good soldiers, he felt no keen desire to fight—felt indeed a certain abhorrence of it. When I asked him whether he would like to be sent to the Front, the said that he had no wish to go, but that he could not bear his platoon to go without him. So, with some difficulty, he was passed for active service, and was killed by a chance shell at night while he was going along the trench to see that his men were safely under cover. "What the loss of him means to the men he commanded it is not easy to guess. The loss to his friends in Oxford is heavy enough. Yet he (died well, and because he was not susceptible, to the lighter kinds of patriotic enthusiasm, his death is a testimony to the cause. In no other war of our time could he have fought and died, has he lived, with a good conscience, on behalf of all that he believed.  "If this war is being fought, as I think it is in the main being fought, for the things that he cared for, then it is the best of all our wars. Courtesy, chivalry, tenderness, care for the weak and the unfortunate, delight in the simple, unwillingness to impute ill motives to those who oppose us, willingness to see good in faulty natures, obedience to all humane impulses, distrust of all hard and cruel things that masquerade as principle, love of freedom for others as well as for ourselves—if these things continue, through a long and dark endurance, to inspire the War as they inspired his life and character, then it is not extravagant to hope that a better era will begin when the War is over; and if the most and the best of those who purchased it are not there to see it, that is because they made their choice and preferred to take their place among the givers." He was gazetted to a Territorial Battalion of the Oxford, and Bucks. Light Infantry, February 16th, 1915, and promoted to Temporary Lieutenant July 29th, 1915, and went to the Front with his Battalion in May, 1916. He was killed on the night of August 10th, 1916, whilst temporarily in command of a Company, in the trenches near Laventie, and was buried in the British Cemetery at Laventie some two and a half miles behind the line. An old schoolfellow, an officer in another Battalion in the same Brigade, great of his coolness under fire, and added: " I am told that he was remarkable for the quiet and methodical manner in which he looked after his men both in and out of the trenches." His Company Commander wrote as follows:— "He left my Company on Wednesday— the day we came into the trenches again— in order to take temporary charge of another Company. " He was, as usual, thinking of his men and not himself. There was some shelling going on, and he went along the trench by himself to get some men into a safer place when a shrapnel shell hit the parapet and killed him instantly. " There is no need for me to tell you what a splendid man he was; you know it, but it has been wonderful to me to see him facing and going through with wonderful self-denial the hardships, trials, and dangers of a soldier's life, when one knew how utterly opposed he was to fighting and all that it means. Since he came into my Company he has shown again and again what a mastery he had over his natural inclinations. "He has faced dangers, and what affected him much more, the horror of seeing his men wounded and shattered, with a calm courage, but I know too well what it meant to him and how much it has been telling on him. " He has done many acts of great courage, chiefly fetching in badly-wounded men from No Man's Land under fire at night, so that not only had my men got the greatest affection and admiration for him, but he was regarded in the same way by the whole Battalion." A letter from his former CO., who had recently given up the Command of the Battalion, contained the following :— " I have not yet had particulars, but I feel sure he must have met his fate doing his duty nobly. During the time that your son served under me I was always grateful to him for the admirable way in which he did his work, and for the kindly interest he took in the welfare of the men under him. I had hoped that it was the beginning of a long and pleasant friendship. While I was in France your son did many gallant acts, especially on more than one occasion in going out to fetch in wounded men. All the officers and men of the Battalion have lost a good friend. The army has lost a gallant soldier."