PUBLIC SCHOOL CADET CORPS.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Of the many suggestions that are abroad for increasing the defences of the Kingdom a large number are mutually exclusive, and all have some attendant difficulty or disad- vantage. The Government proposals are clearly a stopgap, and indeed we are none of us yet in a position to see what precise effect our present difficulties ought to have upon our general organisation. But whatever scheme be adopted in the end, the two elementary needs that will have to be met are the need of men who can drill and the men who can shoot, and my object in writing to you is to help to draw attention to one resource which can be made of considerable value without either difficulty or disadvantage, and the organisation of which can be taken in hand at once. Both drill and shooting may be learnt young, and when once learnt are not easily forgotten; the Public Schools Cadet Corps prove it. But the Cadet Corps is not, and never can be, the measure of what the public schools can do in this respect. A time of national danger stimulates a temporary enthusiasm for volunteering, but the Cadet Corps is not, and never will be, really popular with schoolboys, for it interferes with the worship of the popular idol,—athletics. What the public schools ought to do is to make it nearly impossible that any boy who stays at school till he is eighteen should not have learnt the elements of drill and familiarity with the use of the rifle; drill and shooting ought to be made part of the school curriculum. The popularity of the public schools is largely due to the fact that they claim not merely to make scholars but to train citizens, and it is for them at least to recognise the duty of the citizen to be able to defend his country. It is not voluntary effort that is wanted, but a definite rule. Sach a rule would not produce an army. but it would beget
[We entirely agree, and hope that the Head-Masters when next they meet will give this matter their most serious con- sideration.—En. Spectator.'
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