A most important document in the shape of the Report
of the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland was issued on Wednesday. The chief recommendations are — (1) That continuation schools should be popular- ised by the introduction of physical exercises, and " that if attendance at these classes be not made compulsory for lads between fourteen and eighteen, there should at least be [compulsory] power in the case of proved vagrants " ; (2) that a model course for physical training should be prepared for Scotland ; (3) that cadet corps and boys' brigades should be encouraged. On this the Commissioners say :—" We hold that as means of disciplining the disorderly elements in society, and also of strengthening the available resources of the country, the aims of both these organisations are of supreme importance. But we prefer to regard them chiefly as means of benefiting the individual pupil, and, as such, we think that they may best co-operate with the educational authorities, and receive any assistance granted by the State, not as military, but as educational agencies." We may, we think, fairly claim that in effect the Commission recommends that "compulsory physical education of a military character" which we have so persistently advocated in these columns as the necessary complement to our present compulsory literary education.
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