MILITARY INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS AND

COLLEGES

The Century Magazine, November 8, 1893

Α'

You ask my opinion of the suggestion of Lafayette Post, G. A. R., of New York city, that military instruction and drill be used in all schools for boys. It is good in every aspect of it-good for the boys, good for the schools, and good for the country. free, erect, graceful carriage of the body is an acquisition and a delight. It has a value in commerce as well as in war. Arms and legs are distressing appendages to a boy under observation, until he has been taught the use of them in repose. The chin is too neighborly with the chest, and the eyes find the floor too soon; they need to have the fifteen paces marked off. The sluggish need to be quickened, the quick taught to stand, and the willful to have no will. The disputatious need to learn that there are conditions where debate is inadmissible; the power and beauty there is in a company-moved by one man and as one man. Athletic sports have their their due, perhaps undue,

attention in

most of the colleges and high schools; but in the graded schools, within my observation, exercise is casual and undirected. None of these exercises or sports is, however, a substitute for military drill; and some of them create a new need for it. A good oarsman need not be erect or graceful; a good arm and plenty of wind meet his needs. The champion "cyclist" is not apt to have square shoulders. The football captain is so padded that a safe judgment can hardly be formed as to his natural "lines"; but a good leg and momentum seem to me- -a non-expert— to be his distinctive marks. In baseball the pitcher seems, to an occasional observer, to have parted with all his natural grace to endow the curved ball.

A military drill develops the whole man, head, chest, arms and legs, proportionately; and so promotes symmetry, and corrects the excesses of other forms of exercise. It teaches quickness of eye and ear, hand and foot; qualifies men to step and act in unison; teaches subordination; and, best of all, qualifies a man to serve his country. The flag now generally floats above the school-house; and what more appropriate than that the boys should be instructed in the defense of it? It will not lower their grade marks in their book recitations, I am sure. If rightly used, it will wake them up, make them more healthy, develop their pride, and promote school order. In the centennial parades in New York, in April, 1889, the best marching I saw was that of some of your

school children. The alignment of the company front was better than that of the regulars or of the Seventh regiment.

If all the school boys of the North had, from 1830 on, been instructed in the schools of the soldier and of the company, and in the manual of arms, how much precious time would have been saved in organizing the Union army in 1861. We were in a very low state, as a people, in military knowledge and training when the great civil war broke outvolunteers in plenty, but few soldiers. I very well remember how hard it was for me to learn which was the right of the company, and to understand why it continued to be the right when the right about had made it the left; and how we had, in 1862, to send to a distant city to find a drill-master competent to instruct the company officers, not one of whom could go through the manual of arms; and how the regiment, after a few half-learned lessons in the company drill, was sent to the seat of war with guns which they had never loaded or fired. Fortunately, the men had the American adaptability and quickness, and our adversary only a little better preparation. It will not be safe to allow war to come upon us again in that state, for war's pace has greatly quickened, and the arms of precision now in use call for a trained soldier. Under our system we shall never have a large standing army, and our strength and safety are in a general dissemination of mili

tary knowledge and training among the people. What the man and citizen ought to know in order to the full discharge of his duty to his country should be imparted to the boy. Nothing will so much aid to enlarge our state militia, and to give it efficiency and character, as the plan proposed. The military taste and training acquired in the school will carry our best young men into the militia organizations and make those organizations reliable conservators of public order, and ready and competent defenders of the national honor.

AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW ENGLAND

SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA-When my good friend and your good neighbor and president, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to be present to-night, I felt a special demand upon me to yield to his request. I thought I owed him some reparation for appointing him to an office, the emoluments of which did not pay his expenses. Your cordial welcome to-night crowns three days of most pleasurable stay in this good city of Philadelphia. The days have been a little crowded. I think there have been what our friends of "the four hundred" would probably call eight distinct functions, but your cordiality and the kind words of your presiding officer quite restore my fatigue and suggest to me that I shall rightly repay your kindness by making a very short speech.

It is my opinion that these members of the New England Society are very creditable descendants of