Every school of every grade ought, as a part of its ordinary geography
lessons, to teach the pupils to understand, to read, and to use the
ordnance maps of Great Britain, and that this should be the case has
already been recognised by the Board of Education. A soldier who can
read such a map has thereby acquired a knowledge and a habit which are
of the greatest value to him, both in manoeuvres and in the field.
The best physical preparation which the schools can give their pupils
for the military life, as well as for any other life, is a well-directed
course of gymnastics and the habits of activity, order, initiative, and
discipline derived from the practice of the national games.
A national army is a school in which the young men of a nation are
educated by a body of specially trained teachers, the officers. The
education given for war consists in a special training of the will and
of the intelligence. In order that it should be effective, the teachers
or trainers must not merely be masters of the theory and practice of war
and of its operations, but also proficient in the art of education. This
conception of the officers' function fixes their true place in the
State. Their duties require for their proper performance the best heads
as well as the best-schooled wills that can be found, and impose upon
them a laborious life.
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