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time necessary for drill is not so long as is generally supposed. During the football season an hour a-week on an off football day is all that is necessary, when the corps can be made efficient in squad movements and in the manual and firing exercises. The real training season of the cadet corps should coincide with the athletic season-the month of March and the first half of April. The one form of exercise would aid and supplement the other, and both would tend to the full occupation of the play-hour, and thus prevent aimless loafing about the field, which is so hurtful to health and character. All the boys of a school should be drilled under the same system-the younger ones being armed with carbines, and the older ones with the regulation rifles. In youth the mind and body are pliant and plastic, and drill movements and formations are picked up and learned with ease. The

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drills should never be of long duration short sharp drills, with as much movement as possible, keep the boys lively, and prevent the existence of dulness and monotony, which are fatal to efficiency and smartness. In the training season, in addition to company and battalion movements, the practice of the attack, and field-days in conjunction with other military units, should be encouraged. A cadet corps worked on proper lines, under strict discipline, in which a high degree of efficiency and smartness is insisted upon, is always popular in a school. The valuable lessons of strict and sharp obedience to

the word of command, of smartness in person and movements, and in the case of section commanders, of responsibility in leading and directing others, much more than compensate for the time and money expended on the corps.

It has been pointed out that the individual forms of exercise which go to constitute the physical training of a school should not overlap or impede each other, but should be arranged so as to be mutually supplementary. The same principle should regulate the arrangement of the mental and physical education of a school. Both have the same aim in view-the preparation of a boy for the work of life: each should therefore receive its due share of the time and of the best periods of the day. It can hardly be expected that a boy who has been engaged in school-work continuously from nine o'clock till three, with the exception of a short mid-day break, can take much interest in, or derive much benefit from, gymnastics or other forms of exercise which he can only engage in after his school day is over. At the present day much good to consumptive patients is said to result from open-air treatment and sunbaths. Would it not be displaying superior wisdom to apply similar treatment to the youth of our country during their school days, and thus prevent the existence of consumption or kindred diseases? boys should undoubtedly spend from one to two hours in the open air during the best part of the day, so as to gain the

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full benefit of potential health and stamina, which fresh air and sunshine alone can supply. During this break, between morning and afternoon school, the physical training of the day could be engaged in, and thus the mental and physical sides of school life would act beneficially upon each other. In addition to this, the boys should be turned out into the open air for five minutes at the end of every hour of school work, and should be made to run a distance of about a hundred and fifty yards, as this would expel every particle of foul air from the lungs and charge them with a fresh supply. Meanwhile the class-rooms should be thoroughly aired. This scheme would lengthen considerably the working-day of the schoolmaster in actual hours, but the mid-day break and the fresh air and the sunshine would benefit him as well as the boys, and he might thus be induced to take a more active interest in schoolboy life beyond the class - room. The great benefits which have already accrued to the army from the system of physical training instituted a few years ago, may in time induce the Government to make physical development

not only necessary for qualification, but also count as a marked subject in the competitive examinations for civil as well as military appointments. Such a scheme would give to every school an interest in promoting health and vigour among its pupils, and would impart a lasting impulse to the progress of physical education.

Already General Chapman's appeal to the school authorities in Scotland to institute a system of physical training in the schools under their management has awakened a keen and growing interest in the subject. But the physique of the nation is far too important a matter to be left to haphazard or individual effort. It is the obvious duty of Government to see that every pupil that passes through the schools of the country is sent out as physically fit as it is possible to make him. The responsibility is not to be evaded, and as a scheme emanating from the officer commanding the Forces in Scotland seems likely to suggest the military side of its character alone to the public mind, it is well to point out the full aim and meaning of physical education.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN AS A HISTORIAN.

THERE is in Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales a very suggestive fable. A certain hobgoblin once made a looking glass which had the quality of causing everything that was good to look small and everything that was bad bigger. His pupils carried this looking-glass about with them everywhere, amusing themselves with its distortions. They even attempted to carry it up to the angels. It fell from their hands, however, and broke into a million of pieces. The tiny atoms, getting into people's eyes, made them see through a distorted medium. What was bad seemed good; what was good seemed bad; and the world has suffered ever since from that remarkable catastrophe.

We do not desire to be too personal; but after reading Sir George Trevelyan's first volume on the American Revolution, we cannot help suspecting that he was one of the victims of the hobgoblin's mischievous mechanism. He has presented to the public a volume which contains in every chapter, and almost on every page, a wrong view of every important event in one of the most interesting and most familiar periods of our national history. Long after every historical student with a conscience has relegated Charles Fox to the limbo of failures that might have been successes if they would, he brings him forward as a serious statesman and an effective

worker in a great cause. Long after even American historians of eminence in our time have abandoned most of the old Whig theories of the Revolution and most of the hysterical paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, he comes forward to restate every one of them with a vigorous confidence that leaves us in doubt whether to be amused or indignant at his amazing credulity.

The reader of these pages may perhaps think that it is not worth our while to write, or his to read, a refutation of oft-refuted stories, misstatements, and misunderstandings. But we must beg a moment's attention. Our history as а colonising empire is not at an end. Our interests as a mother country of self-governing dominions, colonies, and dependencies are still at stake. We are perhaps but in the beginning of a period of growth that may lead to change, of change that may lead to the alteration of our attitude as a parent State. It can hardly be wise to permit to pass uncontradicted into our national literature а set of theories that are false, a relation of facts that is inaccurate, and a philosophy of government that finds its logical conclusion in no government at all. can serve no good purpose— it may serve a very bad oneto see popularised without protest ideas concerning our government of colonies in the eighteenth century which may

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be used-nay, will most assuredly be used to discredit our government of colonies in the twentieth century. The virus of vindictive criticism which the friends of the American revolution, in England, infused into the minds of their followers did not exhaust itself in the parliamentary conflicts which ended in the Treaty of 1783. It animated them during the conflict with the French Revolution and with Napoleon I., making them in effect the enemies of their country. When that period had passed, the virus, still active and malignant, animated all those who encouraged disaffection in the colonies that remained to us. The mischievous effects of Whig theories of colonial rule are to be traced in every disturbance that has taken place from the Canadian rebellion of 1837 to the very latest kick against "Downing Street rule that may still be hidden in the despatch-boxes of the Colonial Office. What mischief there may lurk in the popularisation of these mischievous theories we may fear, but may not realise till their consequences rise up to confront us. This is the chief reason that moves us to go once more over beaten ground, and to expose once more the inaccuracy and untruthfulness of old-time affronts to our intelligence and our loyalty.

It is not necessary to quarrel with Sir George Trevelyan about the literary form of his work. To make the History of the American Revolution part of the Life of Fox is indeed preposterous. The history of

Europe might indeed be made part of the Life of Pitt, for Pitt impended over Europe during the most momentous period of its modern history. But the career of Fox was only an episode of Whig politics in England. No American historian has ever given to Fox special prominence in the history of his country's struggle for independence. The name of Chatham, the name of Burke, the name of Barré fill some space and share some reverence and regard; but the name of Fox has to be dragged in and magnified outrageously in order to occupy any place of pride in American history. Even Sir George Trevelyan, as far as he has gone, finds little to say of him. Fox enters late into the story, and does not linger long. The very opening sentence of the volume challenges our instant contradiction. "When Charles Fox," we are told, "left office in the February of 1774, the first marked period of his political life came to an end. From that time forward he moved across the stage a far wiser man, pursuing higher ends by worthier methods. We have to put in at once a peremptory protest. Fox did not "leave office " in 1774. He was dismissed. "His Majesty has issued a new Commission of the Treasury in which I do not see your name," wrote Lord North. That was not exactly "leaving office." office." And as to the higher ends and worthier methods, we are unable to find them in the career of a man who made personal animosity to Shelburne the principle of his political life,

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who served under him and with him, yet hated and overthrew him, joining in order to do so the very man who had formerly dismissed him, and whom he had always, since his dismissal, fiercely denounced. Nor can we find them in Fox's support, as the colleague of Lord North, of the Treaty of 1783, in opposition to which Shelburne had been dishonestly defeated by Fox's machinations. Still less can we find them in the career of the man who declared that "if we can give one good stout blow at prerogative, I care not how soon we go out," yet becam so complaisant to his king that he declared, "I do not propose to vex my sovereign" by mentioning Catholic emancipation. And, finally, we are unable to discover them in the conduct of the man who, after having opposed the war with France almost to the point of treason, was able to recommend, nearly with his latest breath, its vigorous prosecution. We must crave pardon of Sir George Trevelyan, therefore, if we decline to accept the valuation he places on the merits of Charles Fox as a public man. We may, therefore, put him aside at present, in order to proceed directly to the consideration of these points in the history of the American rebellion on which so much has been laid in the volume under review.

In order to provide as solid a basis as possible for the support of his theory of rebellion, the author from the first insists on the "subtle despotism" of the king, the "subservience of Ministers, and the " 'corrup

tion" of Parliament. This may be politics; it is not history. The firmness of the king, his domestic virtues, his great industry, his regard for his people, his courage in confronting such riots as that of Lord George Gordon, his respect for law, his determination not to be controlled by cabals, were just the qualities required to secure to Great Britain a stable dynasty, which within a short period had been assailed by two rebellions and was threatened still by factions, by the spread of dangerous theories, by enemies abroad, and by obvious disaffection among a party at least in the Colonies. It may be very fine to call this subtle despotism, but reasonable beings will prefer a more righteous name. If the king's Ministers were subservient, their names are some guarantee that subserviency was not their chief quality. Chatham can hardly be called a subservient Minister; no king ever stood from any Minister such neglect and stubborn resistance as George III. stood from Chatham. Grenville as a Minister used to lecture the king at great length. North was constantly in private opposition to the king, and was accustomed to ask to have his resignation accepted. Fox finally forced himself on the king, and at any time can hardly be said to have been subservient. Rockingham and his friends were not subservient. Pitt was the most imperious Minister that ever a monarch had. In fine, no king with a taste for subtle despotism was ever so very frank and fearless

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