XIX.

ONE ARMY NOT TWO

The training provided in the scheme which I have outlined could be facilitated at comparatively small cost by the adoption of certain preparatory instruction to be given partly in the schools, and partly to young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty.

It has never appeared to me desirable to add to the school curriculum any military subjects whatever, and I am convinced that no greater mistake could be made, seeing that schoolmasters are universally agreed that the curriculum is already overloaded and requires to be lightened, and that the best preparation that the school can give for making a boy likely to be a good soldier when grown up, is to develop his intelligence and physique as far as the conditions of school life admit.  But if all school children were drilled in the evolutions of infantry in close order, the evolutions being always precisely the same as those practised in the army, the army would receive its men already drilled, and would not need to spend much time in recapitulating these practices, which make no appreciable demand upon the time of school children.

Again, there seems to be no doubt that boys between the ages of seventeen and twenty can very well be taught to handle a rifle, and the time required for such instruction and practice is so small that it would in no way affect or interfere with the ordinary occupations of the boys, whatever their class in life.

Every school of every grade ought, as a part of its ordinary geography lessons, to teach the pupils to understand, to read, and to use the ordnance maps of Great Britain, and that this should be the case has already been recognised by the Board of Education.  A soldier who can read such a map has thereby acquired a knowledge and a habit which are of the greatest value to him, both in manoeuvres and in the field.

The best physical preparation which the schools can give their pupils for the military life, as well as for any other life, is a well-directed course of gymnastics and the habits of activity, order, initiative, and discipline derived from the practice of the national games.

A national army is a school in which the young men of a nation are educated by a body of specially trained teachers, the officers.  The education given for war consists in a special training of the will and of the intelligence.  In order that it should be effective, the teachers or trainers must not merely be masters of the theory and practice of war and of its operations, but also proficient in the art of education.  This conception of the officers’ function fixes their true place in the State.  Their duties require for their proper performance the best heads as well as the best-schooled wills that can be found, and impose upon them a laborious life.  There can be no good teacher who is not also a student, and a national army requires from its officers a high standard not