Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman, whose credentials are above
cavil, has sent a most valuable letter to the Press suggesting the formation of a British Rifle League controlled by a strong central committee. The guiding principle in laying out ranges should be handiness of approach, and where the population is densest there should be most rifle ranges. How this can be done without undue risk he shows by a practical scheme for laying out a single acre of ground so as to furnish 30 separate targets 100 yards off, and enabling 5,000 men to fire in the year four times the number of shots allowed to trained Volunteers under present regulations.—A few years ago Mr. Baillie-Grohman was present at a large rifle meeting at Munich attended by 4,000 marksmen, and held within a few minutes' walk of the central railway station, on a few acres of ground surrounded on three sides by high town houses the railway line being the fourth.—We are quite unable, within the limits of a short note, to render justice to Mr. Baillie-Grohman's scheme. Let it suffice if we quote his reminder that Switzerland, with 3,000,000 inhabitants, has over 3,300 rifle clubs, with 191,683 members, all civilians, and that bad we the same number in proportion to our population we should have 48.400 clubs, with over 2,500,000 members. He concludes by observing : "To-day, taken as a people, we are decidedly the worst shots ; five years hence we might be the beet rifle shots, and have ensured for Britain permanent safety from invasion." As a necessary preliminary, however, 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, marksmanship will remain at its present be ebb.
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