ONE ARMY NOT TWO
The training provided in the scheme which I have outlined could be
facilitated at comparatively small cost by the adoption of certain
preparatory instruction to be given partly in the schools, and partly to
young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty.
It has never appeared to me desirable to add to the school curriculum
any military subjects whatever, and I am convinced that no greater
mistake could be made, seeing that schoolmasters are universally agreed
that the curriculum is already overloaded and requires to be lightened,
and that the best preparation that the school can give for making a boy
likely to be a good soldier when grown up, is to develop his
intelligence and physique as far as the conditions of school life admit.
But if all school children were drilled in the evolutions of infantry in
close order, the evolutions being always precisely the same as those
practised in the army, the army would receive its men already drilled,
and would not need to spend much time in recapitulating these
practices, which make no appreciable demand upon the time of school
children.
Again, there seems to be no doubt that boys between the ages of
seventeen and twenty can very well be taught to handle a rifle, and the
time required for such instruction and practice is so small that it
would in no way affect or interfere with the ordinary occupations of the
boys, whatever their class in life.
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