We publish in another column an account of an experiment
in rifle club organisation made last Saturday on the Surrey Downs. The experiment, as will be seen by our corre- spondent's account, was on a very small scale, but it cer- tainly seems to have been successful as far as it went. We welcome all such attempts to give organisation and mobile qualities to rifle clubs, as they certainly greatly interest the members, and so support and encourage this useful move- ment. We do not, however, desire that the rifle clubs should claim any definite, responsible, and autonomous part in our scheme of national defence. Their main use and object is to act as schools of instruction in rifle-shooting,- schools in which men can learn the essential duty of the soldier before they pass into specific military organisations. If they can also become schools—as the Surrey experiment seems to suggest is possible—in the simpler kinds of field tactics, in scouting, in taking cover, and in other military movements, they will certainly add considerably to their utility. Men who had not only learnt to shoot in their local rifle club, but had also learnt there a few simple facts in con- nection with the soldier's work in the field, would surely be more valuable recruits for, say, the Imperial Yeomanry than men who had never fired off a rifle in their lives, as we are assured by a correspondence now proceeding in the Daily Mail was the condition of a good number of the hastily raised levies sent out to South Africa.
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