Lord Roberts Believes Patriotism Should Cause It to Take Its Place With
Golf and Cricket.
Lord Roberts has been pleading for the instruction of all able-bodied
citizens of England in rifle-shooting. He says, in the London _Express_:
The rifle is our national weapon of to-day, but unhappily neither law
nor custom enjoins that the manhood of our country should learn its
use. Cricket and football are our national pastimes; why should we not
make rifle-shooting another?
Rifle-shooting is a sport—a game attractive enough in itself; and
every marksman should bear in mind that in learning how to shoot he is
fitting himself as a member of a great empire to take up arms for the
defense of his country. Rifle-shooting should be at once a national
pastime and a patriotic duty.
The reasons for this suggestion are not few. “Bobs” proceeds to make the
most of his case, for he goes on to say:
The American authorities, in the recently published rules for the
“promotion of rifle practise,” gave it as their opinion that, “in
estimating the military efficiency of a soldier, if we consider ten
points as a standard of perfection, at least eight of these points are
skill in rifle shooting,” and with that opinion I quite agree.
If, then, the scheme which I have been strenuously advocating for some
time past is carried to a successful conclusion, we shall be a nation
whose manhood will be for practical purposes all efficient soldiers—an
efficiency, moreover, that can be obtained without the least
interference with industrial or professional pursuits.
But for the whole scheme to be successful, it is desirable that boys,
youths, and men should be given a certain amount of military training
and instruction in the use of the rifle.
It is, I am aware, urged against my proposals that they are little
short of conscription. I have frequently asserted before that I am
altogether opposed to conscription as being totally inapplicable to an
army the greater part of which must always be serving abroad.
Surely there is all the difference in the world between a nation,
every man of which is obliged to serve in the ranks of the regular
army and perform while in those ranks all the onerous duties of a
regular soldier during times of peace and for small wars, as is the
case on the Continent, and a nation which, while maintaining a regular
army for foreign service, asks every man to undergo such a training as
will fit him to take a useful part in a great national emergency when
every true Briton would be, in point of fact, certain to volunteer,
and only the shirkers, the unpatriotic, and the disloyal would be
content to remain passive.
The people of this country should identify themselves with the army
and take an intelligent interest in what the army has to do, and not
regard it as something quite outside the national life; and this they
would certainly do if military training became universal and rifle
shooting a national pursuit.
We need not be afraid that such training and a generally acquired
efficiency with the rifle would result in a spirit of militarism that
would make us anxious for war. I believe, and would I could persuade
haters of militarism to believe, that there is no surer guarantee of
peace than to be prepared for war; and if every able-bodied man is
prepared to play the part of the strong man armed, his own and his
country’s goods will remain at peace.
Those who cry out for greater military efficiency and those who argue
that less attention should be given to the things of war are seeking by
opposite means the same result—the abolishment for all time of “that mad
game the world so loves to play.”