RIFLE-SHOOTING AND PHYSICAL TRAINING.
" TO ask the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been called to the common nursery -practioe of training large bodies of tin or wooden troops in the art of war ; whether he considers the training of such troops necessiary foipurposes of national defense; and whether he proposes to take any steps in the matter." The question,
• roughly scribbled on a half-sheet of paper, is believed to have been picked up in the Lobby of the House of Commons
• on Monday night. Earlier in the day, Mr. Augustine Birrell had replied to some searching questions as to the conditions under which instruction in rifle-shooting had been given in certain public elementary schools. It seems that the "county authorities and local persons cognisant of the circum- stances" of a Provided school at Bushey, in Hertfordshire, applied in March for permission for instruction in rifle. shooting to be given to the pupils. Mr. Birrell did not directly prohibit the experiment, but decided that it must be very closely watched. As for allowing similar experiments to be made elsewhere, he had not the smallest intention of permitting anything of the -kind. However, unfortunately some of his colleagues in the Education Office misunderstood this, and when Mr. Birrell was not looking, *so to speak, gave permission for rifle practice to four other schools. Mr. Birrell has expressed his grief that this should have happened, and there, for the present, the matter rests. Order reigns at Bushey, and also, no doubt, among the more militant educational circles at Whitehall.
But in his reply to'his questioners 'Mr. Birrell added to his obiter dicta a remark which is perhaps worth challenging. He said that "rifle-shooting was unsuitable for children of the ages likely to be found in those schools.. It was not in itself a good means of physical exercise and development." It would be interesting to submit that opinion to a number of medical men and students of various forms of mental and physical training. Of course, if a school miniature rifle range were conducted on the lines of an ordinary shooting gallery, and if the ambitions of youthful riflemen were limited to smash- ing glass balls or bowling over perambulant iron rabbits, it might need an advocate of some ingenuity to argue that Miniature rifle-shooting could be a valuable means of educa- tion. Or if the only knowledge of rifle-shooting which it was open to a Minister of Education to acquire were derived from casual inspections of the kind of rifle range which is a con- comitant of cocoanut-shies and steam roundabouts, it would be easy to understand a certain hesitancy in granting similar privileges to elementary schools. Ten minutes' walk on Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday would convince any Minister that to provide a school with glass bottles for targets alone would be a proceeding which would have to be very closely watched. But would a maturer survey of what scientific rifle-shooting really entails convince any inquirer of its uselessness in training body and mind P Take, for instance, a class of boys being drilled in that particular exercise with the rifle which is designed to strengthen the muscles of the biceps and forearm,—that is, those muscles which chiefly come into play when the rifle is raised to the shoulder and aim is being taken. The body is poised in an easy, natural position, balanced firmly on both feet. The rifle is held at the "ready," thrown out to the front, on the level with the shoulder, to the full extent of both arms, brought home to the shoulder, and dropped again to the "ready." Repeated two or three dozen times with a rifle of any weight, from an air-gun to a Lee Enfield, it is a capital form of exercise, and quite capable even of tiring persons of moderate strength. Any one can test its value for himself with a walking sick or a poker; indeed, it might be tested by the officials of the Education Department armed with umbrellas. Orders being given that the exercise was to be repeated fifty times, the experiment would be one *which would need to be very closely watched. But it is not only the muscles of the arm which are tested by properly organised rifle-shooting. It supplies an excellent exercise for the chest and lunge. One of the first things the young rifle-shot has to learn is how to take a deep breath, to fill the lungs with air, and then to hold the breath while the rifle is kept absolutely steady and the finger is gradually tightening on the trigger. A glance at any successful rifle-shot will show you a man with a deep chest and full powers of . breathing. Any form of recreation which trains the muscles of the arm and exercises the chest and lungs would seem likely to be beneficial to health; but if that is not enough, there is the unequalled training which rifle- shooting gives to the eye and to the hand working with the eye. The writer remembers hearing a musketry instructor boast that he had lengthened not only his own sight, but the sight of scores of boys whom he had taught how to use their eyes in aiming at a target, by two or three hundred yards, simply by continued practice at long-distance shooting. It is astonishing what results can be obtained in this way by placing a rifle on a sandbag raised on a tripod, and making the pupil aim as accurately as he can at any distant object. The eye can be trained, of course, equally well, though the sight will not necessarily be lengthened, by aiming at objects close at hand. The bringing up of the rifle absolutely level, not tilted either to the left or right, and the perpetual process of exact measuring involved in balancing the foresight and backsight precisely in a given position, supply a form of training to the eye and hand which has hardly a parallel in any other form of exercise that it would be possible to provide for Schoolboys. In an article on rifle clubs which Mr. Kipling, contributed to the Spectator of June 22nd, 1901, he remarked that the village carpenter always made a good rifle-shot. He might equally truly have remarked that a good rifle-shot would. probably make a good carpenter. Rifle-shooting provides the same training for the eye as does the use of the plane, chisel, and T-square, and proficiency in the use of the one would be Certain to lead to proficieucy in the use of the other. But the good rifle-shot would not only be likely to become a good carpenter. Training of the eye would help the gardener or the builder to as great an extent as the ploughman or the plumber. The gardener has to thrust in his spade vertically, and square with the trench he is digging ; he has to measure distances and design garden beds ; the builder and the plumber are carpenters in brick and tiles and well-laid pipes and well. glazed windows; the ploughman must plough straight furrows, —indeed, What is the trade in which there is no need for an accurate eye and it hand trained to obey it ?
With the mental training provided by well-taught rifle- shooting Mr. Birrell did not deal; but would any school- master deny its value ? First and foremost it emphasises the lesson that slovenliness will not do. Nobody can shoot care- lessly and shoot well. Exactly the same amount of care Must be taken over the last shot as over the first shot, and that is all the care that any one can possibly take. The slightest Blip • is penalised instantly, remorselessly revealed by the spotting-disc. Is there any more rigorous lesson that can be put before a young boy than that instant reward or penalty, immediately consequent on his very own action or inaction? All teachers would recognise the value of that immediate demonstration of the result of going the right or the wrong way to work. As to the other, and perhaps niore obvious, benefits conferred on' schoolboy's by instruction in the elements of rifle-shooting, there is no need to insist on them here. If the educational authorities discourage experiments in ele- mentary military training, that is no reason why private enterprise should not succeed where Governmental assistance is forbidden. For instance, an experiment in the training of schoolboys in rifle-shooting has been tried, and has been attended with admirable results, by an organisation working under the auspices of the Victoria League in a certain district in Surrey. The pupils of four or five elementary schools
have been enabled, out of school hours, to practise on the ranges used by their fathers and elder brothers in the neighbouring rifle clubs, and have even held local prize meetings. Such experiments can be, and no doubt will be, tried and multiplied elsewhere ; nor, surely, will the majmity of the Minister of Education's countrymen agree with him in conceiving that to sanction their trial demands anything in the nature of an apology.
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