The military needs of Great Britain.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The military needs of Great Britain. 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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    who is himself a great athlete, lie expressed the opinion that the systems of jjhysical training in Germany and in England were both one-sided, and that a correct system ought to com- bine the two. The German training in a gymnasium tends to develop the muscles and increase the strength of the body equally in all its parts, wliilst cricket and football tend to develop the muscles of the legs in excess to those of the arms and upper part of the body. But, on the other liand, games of ball, such as cricket, develop the nerve-centres which co-ordi- nate complex movements, and make the eye, hand, and foot all work harmoniously together for a common end in a way that gymnastic exercises fail to do. English boys as a rule care but little for gymnastics, and dislike the training of a gymnasium because they regard it as work, whilst every form of play they thoroughly enjoy. It is, I think, important that training in the use of the rifle and in scouting should be regarded as play to a great extent by the children, and this, I think, could easily be <lone, though the success of the attemj)t will depend very much upon the teachers. Two of the most popular of children’s games, “ I spy ” and “prisoners’ base,” are old war games, and they, as well as “ hare and hounds,” might with a little trouble be adapted to the forms of modern warfare. One of the objections which have been urged against the training of children in the use of the rifle is that it tends towards mili- tarism ; but could any peoples be freer from this than the American settlers, who less than a century and a lialf ago defeated the British, or the Boers, who but for our great numerical superiority might have done the same to-day ? Both the Americans and the Boers had been froin childhood trained up in the use of the rifle and in scouting in their conflicts with wild beasts or with wilder men. The effects of such training when pitted against ordinary soldiers drill are well s'hown in De Wet’s book, which contains some very useful, though to a Briton very unpleasant, reading. At Nicholson’s Nek it is alleged that the English had the advantage of position aiid out- numbered the Boers by five to one. The battle lasted five hours; there were not more than two hundred Boers engaged, and their losses amounted to four killed and five wounded.