MILITARY TRAINING FOR GOLF CADDIES.
[To THE EDITOR OF ma "ernerkron."] SIR,—I am one of your constant seeders. As such I have greatly admired your persistence in advocating a military training for civilians and also your salutary comments on what you have aptly described as "the bad side of golf." The Connexion between these two subjeets may be remote, but it seems to me that they might be advantageously linked in the form of a proposal for the military training of the golf caddie. The bad side of golf" consists in the career of the golf caddie ending in a " blind alley." Why not then make it instead an easy and well-paved approach to a military career P The golf caddie is already assimilating some of the military virtues and qualifications. He must acquire patience and considerable powers of physical endurance. His eye for country and for distinguishi g distant objects is always being trained. He must subject himself to discipline, and it goes ill with him if he does not learn respect for his seniors. Moreover he has time at his disposal that might be more profitably filled up than at present. There are not many busy days in the week on, at any rate, those golf courses that are situated near London or other busy towns. Some sort of cadet training could easily be fitted into the "off-days," some twenty per cent. of the boys being retained each "off-day" for work as caddies, and the whole number placed at the disposal of golfers on the regular golf- ing days. The " caddie-master " would, of course, under this scheme be an old soldier (as he often is at present), and here again some advantage will be derived from utilizing indefi- nitely military work, the military qualifications of discharged soldiers. Four years spent on a links as a "caddie cadet" would give many boys a taste and aptitude for soldiering as a subsequent career, while, even in the case of those who did not enlist, the military training would not have been wasted; for the individual would have profited by the moral and physical effects of the training, and the ex-cadet would also have a potential value as one of the country's possible military reserves. The system might also help to swell enlistments in the Territorial Army.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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