Question

The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. What does this mean?

Answer 1

This statement actually Implies that Britains military success was based on the values taught to schoolboys in Britains best public schools. Eton was the most famous of these schools The English boarding school was the institution that trained English boys for careers in the military, the civil service, and the church, the three great institutions at Imperial England. Men like Thomas Arnold, headmaster of the famous Rugby School and founder of the modern public school system in the 19th century, saw team spoils like cricket and Rugby as an organised way of teaching.
English boys learned discipline, the importance of hierarchy, the skills, the codes of honour and the leadership qualities that helped them build and run the British Empire. Victorian empire builders justified the conquest of other countries as an act of unselfish social service, by which backward people were introduced to the civilizing influence at British law and Western knowledge
Cricket helped to confirm this self-image of the English elite by glorifying the amateur ideal, where cricket was played not far victory or profit, but for Its own sake, in the spirit of fair play.