The influence on national life of military training in schools / by T.C. Horsfall.

  • Horsfall, T. C. (Thomas Coglan), 1841-1932.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence on national life of military training in schools / by T.C. Horsfall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of tlie training (»f every boy are, ot course, su])|)lied by the need for ensuring the safety of tlie country frrun foreipi attack. It cannot fail to liave a good inlluence on the life of a boy that he shall grow uj) with the knowledge that, if his country is attacked, it will be his duty to take part in defending her, and that he is receiving the training needed to enable him to fulfil the duty. Kvery l)oy should, therefore, not only take ])art in the military drill, of which I have spoken aheady, but should also be taught to use a rifle. The belief, which one sometimes hears expressed, that such training is likely to make boys jingos and lovei*s of war. and that to teach them to shoot familiarises them with the thought of killing their fellow-creatures and makes them bloodthirsty, seems to meto l)e based on complete ignorance of the nature of boys. Nearly all boys are ])Ugnacious internally, and gain from books, and from intercourse with comrades, great familiarity with thoughts of the slaughter which takes |)lace in war and with violent death as the result of crime and accident. To drill boys and to teach them to shoot, and at the same time to make them understand that the u.se of their skill in shooting would oidy be justified by an attack on their country, is not to make them think more lighth of war, and the infliction of wounds and death, than they would otherwise think, but is, on the contrary, to make them think much more seriously of them. It is (juite certain that in this country, where boys and men have noi: hiihei to ))ce?imadeto feel, by receiving military training, that it is the duty of each to take part in the defence ot the counfiy, there has been far more sliouting for war, far more of the worst kind of jingoism, than has been found in any nation which has com])ulsory service. And the South African war, which, by the claims which it made on so many families which had not 1 adore sent any of their members into the army, resembled more than any other war of the last niiudy yc'ars a war carried on by a conscript army, lots certainly done more to banish jingo feeling from the nation than has any other war carried on in our time. A few weeks ago I consulted a Swiss instructor who gives military diill and other physical training to a large numl)er of boys in the Canton of \’aud. He is a member of \he Peace Socicdy and dcdc'sts war. lie takes all the op])ortunilic's which he can gcd of kc*eping Indore his })upils the duty of prej)aring tluMuselves for the defence of their country, a task in which, ])eace-lover as he is, he is |)repared to share. The training does not create any chauvinistic fcH'hng in the boys.