The Sutlers Supreme

What’s in a Motto - Servitor Servientium

NAAFI has a motto: the Latin phrase Servitor Servientium.

It’s variously translated as “Servant of Servants,” “Servant of those who serve,” “Servant of those serving,” “Service to the Services,” and “Service to those who serve.” Each version carries the same spirit—an enduring commitment to support those in uniform.

A motto is a brief phrase that expresses a guiding principle or belief. It simplifies complex ideas into something memorable and meaningful—often shaping the behaviour and identity of those who adopt it.

This clarity is especially important when the ideas behind a motto are layered or nuanced—as is the case with NAAFI’s own motto, which invites reflection but can take some concentration to unpack.

Before NAAFI: A Legacy of Distrust

In the many years before NAAFI was established, the provision of food, drink, and basic comforts for service personnel was handled by a patchwork of sutlers, private contractors, and regimental arrangements. Canteens, institutes, and messes varied widely in quality and integrity—and corruption was rife. Overcharging, poor supplies, and exploitative practices were not uncommon, leaving soldiers and sailors underserved and often resentful.

Following the Crimean War in 1854, efforts were made to reform canteen services. These changes brought some improvement, but it wasn’t until the founding of the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society in 1894 that a more structured and ethical approach began to take hold. Even so, the legacy of mistrust lingered. For many servicemen, the assumption remained: if it involved a canteen, it was probably corrupt.

This ingrained scepticism shaped attitudes for decades to come—and helps explain why NAAFI’s founding in 1921 was both necessary and ambitious. It wasn’t just about logistics; it was about rebuilding confidence in a system that had long failed those it was meant to serve.

In 1928, the same year that the inaugural issue of The Imperial Club Magazine was published during the Christmas period, NAAFI formally adopted its Latin motto: Servitor Servientium. The editorial team chose to mark the occasion with a dedicated section titled “The New Motto,” offering a detailed reflection on its meaning and relevance to the Corporation’s role in serving the Services.

Cover detail from “The New Motto” feature, introducing *Servitor Servientium* as NAAFI’s guiding phrase (Autumn 1928)

**Commentary on The New Motto (1928)**

What makes The New Motto article so fascinating is not just what it says, but how it says it. The language is formal, high-brow, even a little defensive — and that tells us a lot about its purpose and its audience.

From the very start, the editors admit there is a problem: “the problem of the Corporation’s publicity.” Even after six years of operation, NAAFI still suffered from the ingrained scepticism that servicemen had inherited from decades of corrupt sutlers and profiteering canteens. Winning trust was not automatic. A motto on its own could not solve that; it needed constant explanation and repetition.

That’s why the article reads almost like a campaign speech. Time and again it insists on boundaries: “We are servants, but not servile.” NAAFI made clear that its service was financial only — to safeguard “the pence and shillings of poor but very honourably occupied men.” This was respect without indulgence, dignity without dependency.

At the heart of the argument is a repeated distinction: NAAFI was “a disinterested, not a philanthropic body.” In other words, impartial and trustworthy, but not a charity. Its aim was to keep service units solvent so they could fund their own activities. The emphasis was always on enabling self-help, not providing handouts.

This insistence created a defensive tone. The article is filled with lists of what NAAFI is not: “not a circus, not a conjuror, not a tea-party…” The repetition borders on exasperation. You can almost hear the frustration of an organisation tired of grumbling complaints, pushing back against every misunderstanding it faced.

Yet behind the defensiveness is a clear principle: the co-operative idea. NAAFI promised the “jealous conservation of the Service Man’s small trouser-pocket moneys,” ensuring that every penny yielded not only fair value in the moment but also a surplus returned for the collective good. This was the co-operative principle in action: individual spendings transformed into corporate benefit.

The article also calls on its readers — mostly officers, administrators, and NAAFI staff — to become ambassadors: “Take every chance of explaining to people, no matter who they are, the exact sense in which the NAAFI serves the Services.” This was a collective effort, urging everyone in the organisation to correct scepticism and misunderstanding whenever they encountered it, whether in print or in person.

Finally, the article ends with a flourish: “That is the sort of Servitor Servientum the NAAFI is, was and must be.” It is a succinct, if over-elaborate, conclusion — a creed hammered into a formula to be remembered. After pages of defence and clarification, the reader is left with one unshakable message: NAAFI exists not to provide entertainment or charity, but to act as the strict financial conscience of the Services.

From Creed to Continuity

What’s most striking is how durable this message proved to be. The careful definitions, the defensive tone, the emphasis on self-help and financial guardianship — all of it echoes far beyond 1928. The call to “impress again and again” the true role of NAAFI was not just rhetoric; it became policy.

Over the following decades, pamphlets, posters, and staff briefings repeated the same refrain: NAAFI was not a charity, not a profiteer, but a steward of servicemen’s small spendings. Examples from the Sutlers Supreme ephemera collection from the late 1940s and 1950s show just how firmly this identity was drilled into NAAFI’s publicity. It survived the Second World War and continued to shape the organisation’s image in peacetime as much as in war.

Explaining Service All Over Again (1945)

Cover of “An Enquiring Rating Wants to Know” (NAAFI Information Booklet, Oct 1945)
Among collection is a small booklet published in October 1945, titled An Enquiring Rating Wants to Know. It was designed to answer the steady stream of questions sent to NAAFI headquarters by naval ratings, canteen committees, and officers — all variations on the same theme: Who are you really working for, and where does the money go?

The very format of the publication — a conversational Q&A between an “Enquiring Rating” and a “NAAFI Official” — speaks volumes. Even after six years of total war, the Corporation still felt the need to justify itself to the men it served. The tone is patient, slightly patronising, but deeply revealing of how fragile trust remained.

Early on, the booklet reiterates NAAFI’s defining creed:

“NAAFI is registered under the Companies Act as an association not for profit… it is conducted on the principles of a co-operative society operating exclusively for the members of the Navy, Army and Air Force.”

That sentence alone could have been lifted directly from the 1928 New Motto editorial. The defence is the same: no shareholders, no private capital, no bonuses or commissions. Every penny, the booklet insists, returns to “the personnel of the three Services, by means of cash rebate and discount, or amenities of various kinds.”

The persistence of this language — the careful emphasis on fairness, accountability, and the “pence and shillings of honourably occupied men” — shows how deeply the Servitor Servientium identity had been embedded in NAAFI’s self-presentation. Yet it also hints at continuing unease: the very fact that these assurances had to be reprinted again and again betrays a lingering scepticism among those in uniform.

The R.A.F. Raises the Question (1949)

Excerpt from “The RAF Raises the Question” (NAAFI Information Booklet, Jan 1949)

A 1949 booklet titled The R.A.F. Raises the Question was, in tone and purpose, a direct descendant of the 1945 publication. The layout is nearly identical: a dialogue between an “Enquiring Airman” and a “NAAFI Official,” written in the same mixture of reassurance and defensiveness. Four years after victory, NAAFI still felt the need to explain, line by line, what it was, how it worked, and why it existed.

The introduction sets the tone:

“Thousands of men and women now serving in the R.A.F. know little or nothing of the constitution and practice of NAAFI… It is natural that they should ask questions about an organisation run for their benefit and of which they are part-owners.”

Again, the same refrain: “an association not for profit,” “no private capital,” “no shareholders,” and “no bonuses.” Even the question headings are familiar: “Why all the mystery about NAAFI chiefs?” and “What happens to the profits?”

This repetition is telling. NAAFI was still performing the role of servant and defender, but the tone had softened from moral declaration to administrative reassurance. The servant was no longer proclaiming loyalty; it was explaining the accounts.

Talking It Over (1957)

Editorial page from NAAFI Review No. 17 (Autumn 1957)

By the late 1950s, NAAFI’s self-defence had mellowed into something more self-assured. In an editorial column titled “Let’s Talk It Over” from the Autumn 1957 issue of the NAAFI Review, the editor, Claude F. Luke, reflected on criticism — and even welcomed it.

“Publish and be damned is our motto,” Luke declared, responding to a friend who questioned why the magazine printed letters hostile to NAAFI.

Here, the tone is open and humorous rather than defensive. NAAFI had learned to see criticism as dialogue — even catharsis for “browned-off soldiery.” The editorial argued that printing such letters was not only fair but healthy, claiming that a “Fair Play for NAAFI” campaign had begun among readers who now defended the organisation.

In these pages, the Servitor Servientium ethos had become conversational. The servant was listening as much as serving.

The Modern Servant (1983)

Reprint of “About NAAFI” (Staff Training Guide, Aug 1983)

By the early 1980s, NAAFI had grown into a “complex multi-million-pound business,” yet its training materials still echoed the old creed. A 1983 staff booklet reminded employees that although the canteen barrels and mess huts were gone, “the guiding principles remain the same as when the business began operating on 1 January 1921.”

NAAFI was still “a co-operative, returning its profits to the customer,” still obliged to operate wherever welfare need existed “even if that means operating locally at a loss.” But now the tone was managerial, not moral. Service was explained in the language of balance sheets, logistics, and “operating costs.”

The servant’s humility had become institutional — service as structure, not sentiment — yet the principle remained unchanged: to serve those who serve.

Into the 21st Century: Servitor Servientium Reimagined

Even today, the spirit of Servitor Servientium quietly pulses through NAAFI’s modern branding and operations. As their website now puts it, “we go to extraordinary lengths to provide a taste of home for our UK Armed Forces, wherever they are based,” and — more pointedly — “all our surpluses go back into supporting Armed Forces wherever they need us.”

What makes this continuity remarkable is that NAAFI serves a very different world from the one it was created to support. The British Armed Forces are now a fraction of their twentieth-century size, with far fewer permanent overseas postings and a more dispersed global footprint. Yet the organisation continues to define itself by service rather than scale.

Through mechanisms like Welfare Returns, NAAFI affirms that “those that use our facilities … are directly supporting new initiatives which … support them in turn.” Their most recent figures show that over £549,000 was awarded in a single funding round, bringing the total since 2020 to over £4.8 million in returns to the defence community. Far from a relic, the ethos of service undergirds the modern NAAFI Fund, which has backed more than 350 welfare projects and pledged to return £10 million by 2030.

Even as its operations have evolved — from canteens and messes to cafés, retail stores, and an online platform — NAAFI still insists that “all surpluses from sales will go back into supporting UK Armed Forces communities … in line with our not-for-profit status.” The Latin motto may no longer appear on every sign, but its moral logic — that the institution serves by giving back — remains alive, even in an era when the community it serves is smaller, more mobile, and more complex than ever before.

Serving Those Who Serve: The Living Legacy of NAAFI’s Motto in a Changing World

From its first appearance in The Imperial Club Magazine in 1928, Servitor Servientium was more than a motto — it was a manifesto. Over the decades, its meaning has been tested, defended, explained, and quietly redefined. In the post-war booklets of the 1940s, NAAFI justified itself to the men and women it served; in the 1950s it learned to talk with them; and by the 1980s it spoke to its own staff, reminding them that service was both their purpose and their product.

Today, in an age when the Armed Forces are smaller and no longer scattered across an empire, that same ideal still shapes NAAFI’s identity. The language may have evolved — from the careful talk of rebates and fairness to the modern idiom of welfare, community, and reinvestment — but the principle endures: that to serve those who serve is both a duty and a privilege.

Almost a century since its adoption, Servitor Servientium continues to weave through NAAFI’s story — not as a motto to be recited, but as a principle quietly practised. It reminds us that behind the commerce and the canteen lies a moral idea that has never lost its truth: that service, when done well, carries its own reward.

Editors note:

You can explore full-text versions of the documents mentioned here — including the 1928 “New Motto” article and the 1945 Ratings booklet — on the page.

The Sutlers Supreme