“The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eton.” Justify the statement with any five suitable examples.

The above statement is true as is justified by the following examples:
(i) Britain’s military success was based on the values taught to schoolboys in its public schools. Eton was the mo-ct famous of these schools. Team sport like cricket and rugby were seen as organised way of teaching English boys the discipline, the importance of hierarchy. the skills, the codes of honour and the leadership qualities that helped them build and run the British empire.
(ii) The English boarding school was the institution that trained English boys for careers in the military, the civil services and the church.
(iii) Victorian empire builders justified the conquest of other countries as an act of unselfish social service, by which backward people were introduced to the civilising influence of British law and Western knowledge. Cricket helped to confirm this self-image of the English elite by glorfying the amateur ideal, where cricket was played not for victory or profit, but for its own sake, in the spirit of fair play.
(iv) Men like Thomas Arnold, founder of the modern public school system, saw team
support like cricket as an organised way of teaching English boys the discipline and the skills.
(v) it taught the English boys, the importance of codes of honour and the leadership qualities that helped them build and run the British Empire.
Although the fact is that the Napoleonic wars won due to the British trade and
industry that made Britain the world’s greatest power; yet it was the superior character of its young men, built in boarding schools, playing gentlemanly games like cricket, that tipped the balance.