on 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 thei