THE EFFECT OP MILITARY TRAINING ON BOYS. ITO sue EDITOR
OP THE " SPECTATOR:I Stn,—As a Volunteer officer I spent three months during last summer with a "Special Service Company " of Volunteers engaged on East Coast defence. My observation of the value of military training combined with a regular daily course of physical training may be of some interest to your readers.
I was attached to a company consisting largely of elderly men, well over the prime of life, ninny of whom hail allainml a portly girth. But of this company some twenty-five or thirty per cent., in round figures. were boys of under eighteen years old. The whole company was carefully weighed the slay slier arrival, and again at the expiration of two months, when about half the number left camp at the cad of the term of service for which they had volunteered. 'rho average increase in weight was seven pounds, taking the weight of every member of my company. Be it remembered that many members were elderly men who obviously lost a considerable quantity of super- fluous "adipose tissue," and were undoubtedly fitter and all the better for it. But the change in the boys was remarkable; many of them, to my knowledge, put on fourteen pounds and more during the two months. This was, without doubt, due to the systematic physical training, fresh open-air life (for ye were under canvas the whole time), and to the good, plentiful, and
plain food. The company next to mine consisted almost entirely of boys, mid the change which took place there Wes still more noticeable. These boys came front one of the poorer districts in London. We older officers and men were much struck with their pale, .annernic appearance when they arrived. The first day on parade many of them fell down, as they could not stand the strain, though there was nothim; strenuous iu what they had to do, and they had to be taken off the parade-ground. The same thing happened deity, wiGt gradually diminishing numbers, for the first ten dap. After that we never new such a thing occur again.
Organized games took place every week: football, cricket, running, boxing, tugs-of-war, and sports of all kinds, with practice in the evenings. At first many of these boys knew nothing whatever of how to play a game in n sportsmanlike way by submitting themselves to the authority of the captain Of a team. Football in the evening generally degenerated MO heated arguments and quarrelling, with very little football sad very little sportsmanship. But in a month's time the same boys had learnt to play really well, and it became a pleasure to witness games showing good combined team work, and no longer the interruptions caused by quarrels and offeri
to fight. The boys had been taken in hand by the admirable N.C.O.'s of the Regular battalion to which we were attached, and by the older sportsmen, many of them old schoolmaster., among the Volunteers; and truly marvelloes was the change. They Were coached in running. oral with some fine exponents of the art to copy, many of them turned out to be eseellcoc sprinters; and quite n number of plucky long-distance runners were developed. II was the systematic daily physical training for one and all that improved their carriage end develop,' their figures.
Touching the boy,' manners: at first it was most noticeaMa when as Orderly Officer sir Visiting Rounds at mealtime to see the contrast between the pandemoniutn prevailing in the marquees where the boys had their meals, and the order en i good conduct in the marquees allotted to the men. But thi'. too, changed and a gradual and wonderful improvement I.: behaviour look place when the boys hail learned "lo play the game," and discovered, moreover, that "it did not pny," we "not erieket" nor the right thing to grab all the vegetables or pudding served out to a particular "mess." At the en.I of their period of service, these boys left ramp looking fine. fresh, healthy young Englishmen, with the making of really good soldiers in them.
The Inns of Court Cadet Corps, anticipating the future requirements of the nation, has for a considerable time pa-t established a "School of Arms and Physienl Tea' g" in conjunction with ordinary military training for boys from sixteen to eighteen years Ohl. Already a number of the cutlet have passed direct from the Cadet Corps into the U.T.C. with which the corps is affiliated. The corps only wants more recruits from the ranks of begs she bare received a Public School education.-1 am, Sir, de..
hit Cadet Baths., Inns of Cu art.
7 Stone Ilaildiarr, Lincoln's Ian. TLC. I. • .
[Tho testimony of ell who have had stub an experience 01 that of our correspondent is invariably to the same effect. la at us have the inestimable advantage of short military training compulsorily conferred On the nation. This is the way of national health. It is also the way of good citizenship, for it lays an obligation MI all, not on the few, and kills the personal irresponsibility which is at the rout of militarism.— En. Spectator.]
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