OUR NEED FOR COMPULSION WHICH LI BERATES.
fro TUN E1I1F014 OW rim e SPNCTATOILl SIItr7Aa, we shall probably soon have to accept compulsory military training for all ablmbodied young men, if only for the purpose of freeing ourselves from the dangerous necessity of encouraging fathers of families, and skilled workers who are urgently needed at home, to enlist, it is to be hoped that, if we get compulsory training, we shall take care that it shall be accompanied by one other kind of beneficent compulsion which is needed to free large numbers of our people from other kinds of compulsion which are very injurious to the whole community. What these mischievous kinds of com- pulsion are can be shown by a few extracts from Sir Ian Hamilton's Comptdsory Service. That book tells us that in an average year the Army sucks, " say, sixty thousand first- line and Special Reserve recruits . from the unskilled labour market (to its huge relief)." "Nearly half the total of recruits raised every year are eighteen and under nineteen." "The majority of eighteen-to-nineteen-year-old regular recruits enlist because they have just ceased to be boys and are unable to had regular employment as men. About four- fifths of them," that is, nearly twenty-four thousand," come to us because they cannot get a job at fifteen shillings a week." The chief causes of the inability of these young men to get a job at fifteen shillings a week are that most of them have poor physique endure without training for " skilled" trades. They have poor physique because they did not receive enough good physical training before and while they went to the elementary school, and received none after they left the elementary school. And they lack training for skilled trades because they spent the years which followed their leaving school in " " occupations. The fact that some twenty-four thousand young men are thus compelled every year to enlist is an indication of evils which affect a far larger number of men. For the men taken by the Army are the pick of a very great number, the residue of whom have such very poor physique that they cannot be accepted by the Army. For example, in the year iff99, when recruits were urgently wanted for the coming South African War, of about eleven thousand men in Manchester who offered to enlist only about one thousand could be accepted for the • Army. About two thousand were taken for Militia regiments and about eight thousand were rejected. That the physique of the rejected must have been very bed is shown by the fact that that of the accepted few was poor. An officer who served in the Boer War with one of the regiments -which received recruits from Manchester wrote to me after the war : ' I never met men who showed more grit or resolution whenever they found themselves in a tight corner, but . . their physique was hardly equal to the fine atandard of their determination and courage. . . . I cannot but think that it is the fault of some one that these bravo and stubborn Me were not at least an inch or two taller and bigger round the ohest, and altogether of a more robust and powerful build."
A great wrong is done to the whole community by the maintenance of this system of obtaining recruits. The physical condition of the weedy youths who enlist is as much improved by life in the Army as that of youths who have reached the age of eighteen-nineteen with poor physique can be, but it is only by good physical training begun in childhood and continued till physical growth is nearly com- pleted that the best attainable physique can be ensured. A great wrong is done to men who at eighteen are still untrained for well-paid trades, by allowing them to enlist in that condition, as by so doing they lose their only remaining chance of getting training, and on leaving the Army will have to accept badly paid work for the rest of their lives. A great wrong is also done to the Empire by allowing so large a proportion of our people to have such poor physique. The bad physical condition of the poorer inhabitants of our large towns has done much to make Gerrmtns believe that we are a decadent nation. Further, a great wrong is done to the Empire by
sending out to India and our other dependencies any soldiers who have poor physique, who lack the civilization and thought- fulness given by good training continued till years of dis- cretion are reached, or who are demoralized by spending their youth in blind-alley occupations.
The maintenance of our existing system is the more inexcusable because the great evils which it causes could easily be removed, What we need is that more and better physical training shall be given to all children in the ele- mentary school, and, before school-age is reached, on well- managed playgrounds ; that all young people shall be compelled on leaving the elementary school to attend con- tinuation schools, of the curriculum of which physical training, and specialized training for the trade chosen by each child, shall form part, for eight or ten hours a week till the coin- pletion of their seventeenth year; that in his eighteenth year each youth shall receive military training in the Terri- torial Force for about six months ; and that no one shall be allowed to enlist in the Regular Army who has not passed through a continuation school and the Territorial training. By this system all would be brought into the best attainable physical condition, and as all would be kept under the influence of good instruction and training till they reached the age of eighteen, and few would be demoralized by blind-alloy occupa- tions, the whole community would be more civilized than it is at present. As under this system nearly all officers in the Regular Army could safely be promoted from the ranks, and all recruits would be better educated and more companionable than many are now, the Army, with its chances of service iii many of the mast interesting parts of the world, would be fur more attractive to intelligent and well-conducted youths than it has been in the past, and, even if the period of service were not shortened by a year or two, as it might safely be, as every youth would have gained skill in his 'workshop and continua- tion school for a well-paid trade, he would know that without injury to his future prospects, and with great gain to his health and knowledge of the world, he could safely enlist. And a large number of youths would enlist.
The introduction of National Service alone would doubtless improve the physique of the nation, as it would lead to the giving of more and better physical training to young children for a few years in the elementary school; but the giving to boys of from fourteen to eighteen years of age of good physical training, and of the " vocational " training needed to enable them to earn good wages, cannot be effected except by means of compulsory continuation schools. To liberate a large part of our people from bad physique and poverty, and the country from great danger, we need compulsory continua- tion schools and compulsory military training.—I am, Sir, &c.,
T. 0. Hoesamma.
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