19 APRIL 1913, Page 23

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as hare not teen reserved for review m other forms.] National Life and National Training. By General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B. (P. S. King and Son. ad. net.)—Though we are not always in agreement with Sir Ian Hamilton's views, we can heartily recommend our readers to obtain a copy of this breezily worded plea for the military training of boys—for "compulsory cadet training in all schools, public or private." It is especially upon the moral effects of this training that Sir Ian Hamilton lays stress, as may be gathered from the following quotation "Every single healthy boy in Great Britain must henceforth be trained in character and physique just as carefully and thoroughly as he is now trained to read and to write; and whereas the sauce with which education has hitherto been served is, be clever and you will become rich, be rich and you will beoome happy, the new cult will start from the axiom that it is only by the strength of a State that the well-being and happiness of its members can be secured. Strength, the new boys must be taught, depends less upon the cleverness or wealth of individuals than upon their spirit of cohesion ; their determination to stand by one another; their common desire to remain pioneers of the world's progress in the future, as they have been in the past, and upon their fixed, fervid resolve to die upon the field of battle rather than lot anyone rob them by force, or jockey them by foul play, out of the fulfilment of so legitimate and honourable an ambition."

That such a scheme is practicable Sir Ian Hamilton shows by pointing to the example of Natal, where a law enforcing military training for boys is already in operation. Basing himself upon the cost in Natal, he calculates that the 758,000 boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen in the United Kingdom could be equipped and given a two years' course of training at a cost of 4380,000 a year. To give them a ten days' camp as well would, he adds, bring the cost up to nearly a million—" just five per cent, in fact on the amount we already spend upon elementary education."