I always had trouble with this even in my first year at WHS once I found out what it meant ("Without the Lord All is in Vain."). My problem is:

1) It is rather exclusive; anyone who does not believe in "The Lord" is not involved in this motto. (SEE NOTE BELOW)
2) The motto is linguistic and logical nonsense. It means that nothing is worthwhile unless "The Lord" is involved, but many influential and often great benefactors of Humanity have been atheists - among so many were:

Richard Dawkins; James Chadwick; Stephen Hawking; Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin; Paul Dirac; J.B.S. Haldane; Edward Schroedinger; Pierre Curie; Irene Joliot-Curie; Tim Berners-Lee; Carl Sagan; Linus Pauling; Alan Turing; Sigmund Freud; Thomas Edison; Albert Einstein; Winston Churchill; Clement Attlee .....

But we were given no choice: one was supposed to believe in God. I do not remember in Religious Instruction any discussions about atheism. Some boys whose families were not happy about their sons' attendance at assemblies were allowed not to attend the religious bits. I was OK with it because the assemblies were not bible-thumping ceremonies but included readings and hymns that were full of beautiful sentiments - and because I do believe that Jesus existed and was a role-model for Humanity - just not that he was "The Son of God". Apart from the fact that there is no proof whatsoever of the existence of extraterrestrials what sort of father allows his son to be cruelly tortured to death in grotesque pain? What sort of all-powerful God allows a seven-year old girl in my class at school to be run over and killed on a pedestrian crossing near our house in Camberwell? Then there is the Holocaust, and the HUNDREDs of MILLIONS of innocents killed in the name of "religion".

Theocrats attempt to justify this by talking about Man's "free will" and that it is our fault for not following God's commandments (or even more ludicrously because Adam ate an apple! Seriously? APPLES ARE GOOD FOR YOU!), but trying to apply that to small children dying cruelly is ridiculous. There IS no way to rationalize the death of innocents. I am afraid that the billions of humans over millennia who have found a faith are simply avoiding the Truth: that death is the end of existence, that there is nothing after it for any individual, there IS no afterlife. ALL religions promise the latter as a painkiller to the admittedly-horrible thought of death as the end: it is as simple as that - a denial of reality.

So we were stuck with "Nisi Dominus Vanum". I do not know (Does anyone else?) WHO decided that would be the WHS motto, but John Smitherman may/must have had a hand in it, and he was clearly a very staunch defender of it. In a parallel universe we might have had a different motto, but WHAT? It is rather nice to have a LATIN motto given the huge part latin and the Antiquity of Greece and Rome have played in European civilisation - but an English one should not be excluded. The official motto of IHS is apparently: "Before honour comes humility". Their website also features prominently: "Foundations to Flourish" - which is a nice sentiment: school should indeed give children the foundations to flourish and thrive, to achieve the best that they are capable of: that is a noble aspiration.

Here are some latin mottoes. It is hard to better the beloved Robin Williams "Carpe Diem" for clarity and brevity. "Seize the day." of course, but it could also be loosely translated as "Don't waste (your) time." A longer one with the same sentiment is from the iconic Bruce Lee. "If you love Life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of." But that is indeed rather long to fit on a blazer!

INCLUSIVITY? I will never forget how one day while watching a match up on Church Field I got into conversation about religion with Jim Hyde. I can't remember how that happened, but it was certainly not I who brought the topic up, and I was mostly a listener in the exchange! Jim taught me geography for several years but I was not in Johnstons House, so I knew him fairly well but we had never had any similar conversations before. Anyway, he lamented to me that he could never be a Headmaster in England because he did not feel able to lead a CofE assembly - and yet he was absolutely qualified in other ways to be a Head. I always found that unfair - and told him so on the day! I wondered later if he opened up to me because he had just been turned down - or had felt unable to apply for - a Headship? But I did not venture to ask either then or later. As for Jim, I have always associated the word "colossus" with him. He was one of the staff whom I most admired - loved even. He is laid to rest along with his beloved Enid in the graveyard of St Michael's Church.