SUGGESTED BRITISH RIFLE LEAGUE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In your last Saturday's " News of the Week " referring to Mr. W. A. Baillie Grohman's valuable letter suggesting the formation of a British Rifle League, you end up by say- ing "as a necessary preliminary we need to rid our great towns of the curse of professional athletics. So long as the working classes in their scores of thousands prefer to spend Saturday afternoons—and a good part of their wages—watching and betting on gladiatorial games played by hirelings, marksman- ship will remain at its present low ebb." I quite agree with the latter part of this sentence, but not with the former. The "necessary preliminary" is the institution of rifle ranges near large towns, where the working classes, and others aould practice shooting on Saturday afternoons and other days. Given these I think you will see the professional footballer, &o., would die out from want of support, because I believe the average Englishman would sooner do things himself than see others do them. There is a great deal of silly cant about the evils of so-called pot-bunting, but, in my opinion, a few prizes given for the best average shooting for, say, a given number of Saturdays would do a great deal to encourage rifle shooting. In this advertising age men like to see their names in the newspapers, and it would do no harm if the names of the Saturdays' competitors were in the Mondays' newspapers. The Press might help in this by devoting some parts of their columns to these rifle competitions instead of football matches and racing, and I think the papers themselves would in the long run find their circulation thereby increase. I am sure there are many gentlemen who are too old or otherwise incapable of joining a Volunteer regiment who would gladly give their help in money or work in forming rifle leagues in large towns, amongst whom—I am, Sir, &c., A WOITLD-BE HELPER.
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