UNIVERSAL TRAINING.
WBILE watching the development of the Spectator Experimental Company from week to week during the past six months we have, we are bound to confess, very considerably altered our views in regard to universal national training. We have always believed that such training, could it be brought about, would be a great benefit to our population ; but we now realise that the benefit is so enormous that every effort should be made to endow the whole of the youth of the nation with physical training of a kind similar to that undergone by the Spectator Company, and to make it as universal as the literary education imposed upon our children by the Act of 1870. Let it be clearly understood that our standpoint here is the moral and physical one, not the military. Owing to the fact that our Army, if it fights on a great scale, must fight oversea, and probably in tropical countries, universal military service is inapplicable to our Empire. You could not use a compulsory-service Army in India or China, South Africa or Egypt. We must rely upon an Army raised upon a purely voluntary basis for the defence of the Empire. A voluntary Regular Army, plus an adequate Navy and a large Militia and Volunteer Force, will, if properly organised, give us all the security we need, and in truth give it us quite as cheaply as the Continental system. The real cost to the nation does not rest in the men's pay, however large an item that may seem to be, but in the withdrawal of the soldier from civil employment.
We think, as we have always thought, that we do not need universal service from the military side, but we have also come to realise that universal military training is, on the moral and physical side, so beneficial that we do not think that it ought to be withheld from the young men of Britain. To give every young man in the country between the ages of seventeen and eighteen the kind of training which, owing to the generosity of our readers, we have been able to give to a hundred young Englishmen would, we believe, immensely improve the manhood of the nation. That such training would engender militarism—which we hate as much as any man—or would make the nation as a whole ready or anxious to plunge into dangerous adventures, we cannot concede for a moment. Again, we are certain that it would not lower, but raise, the moral tone of those receiving it. We are sure that the moral of the young men who did their training at Hounslow was better than it would have been had they remained in civil work. They were fully occupied in manly exercises, and in work which stimulated and maintained their self-respect. The Spectator certainly opened no school for idleness or intemperance at Hounslow, as may be illustrated by one fact. The wet canteen—that is, the canteen where the men could buy beer—closed at the end of the first fortnight for want of patronage ! We venture to say also that betting —the other chief besetting sin of the working class at the present day—found little or no encouragement at Hounslow.
But though we are convinced that it would be an immense benefit if all classes in the community were between the years of seventeen and eighteen to receive three months' training, we are fully aware that it is not practical politics to advocate this at the present moment. You cannot get the British people to take so big a step at once. They must go by degrees in this matter, as they did in the matter of literary education. We aro inclined to suggest, therefore, that we should follow the analogy of the latter. The education of the people was begun by voluntary societies, which established schools through- out the land. The next step was for Government to give grants to these schools, the grants being slowly increased till they covered nearly the whole cost. After that education gradually became a national undertaking, an finally compulsory and free. Would it not be possible, to begin with, to open in ,.various towns and counties of Britain training-places, supported by contrtutions from the richer classes in the community, where young men might voluntarily receive a three months' training, Government giving facilities for such training, and agreeing to pay a. capitation grant of, say, £10 for every lad who was certified to have reached a certain standard of efficiency and to have then entered either the Regular Army, the Imperial Militia, or the Imperial Yeomanry ? The general expenses of the training, and the expenses of those who did not join any of the national forces, would, of course, have to be borne by the subscribers, just as were the expenses of voluntary schools, or as are the expenses of hospitals and other such institutions. If such schools for military training were first established by private effort, and proved a success, we believe that there would be very little difficulty in gradually getting the nation to take them over and assume the obligation of giving a minimum training of three months to the whole population, and finally making such training obligatory. No doubt when the training became com- pulsory it would be necessary to make provision for those who conscientiously objected. to receiving any training of a military character. That, however, would be quite easy. If a boy, or his parents on his behalf, objected to learning the use of the rifle, he might be sent to a special training-place where nothing but gymnastics were taught, or where be would merely learn to keep his body in a hygienic condition. We do not imagine that any very large number of parents would forbid their boys receiving military training, for most people of common-sense would realise that there is all the difference in the world between training to do a thing and doing it. A man may • be trained to read and write, but if he has a conscientious objection to reading certain books, he has only got to • refrain from making use of his literary knowledge in that direction. Because a man has learned when young to shoot with a rifle or to "form fours," he is not thereby compelled in after life to shoot or march. He has it in his own power never to discharge a firearm and never to keep step with anybody else.
To sum up, our experience of the Spectator Company has made us desire the universal training of the youth of this country, not for military, but for moral and physical reasons, and we hold that every effort should be made to induce the voters to assent to such training. Let us begin by making it voluntary. Universality, if the country, as we believe it will, finds the results good, will soon follow.
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