The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-01-22
MILITARY DRILL IN SCHOOLS.

| It is painful to have to disagree Win
J the fair sex, for we know that what
ever women advocate is commended &c
their understanding by gentleness and
mercy and all sweet and goodly attri-
butes. But objection must follow the
protest of one OF the powerful o-saniza-
! tons of women against military drill
in schools. 1t is based on 4 'nisappre-
tension. They say that d law enforc-
. Ing such drill would be the education
! al blunder of the century" With all
! respect for that belief it must be in
sisted that such a law would he one d
the best ever enacted by t.le Congress
! of this nation. In the first place II IS
not intended that military drill SHAH
convert the children into DULLES IN
cities where it is already d part of tho
course it has had no results liz making
them pugnacfous. II is Intended only
that the children shall haze the ad-
vantage of real exercise instead o. the
feeble calisthenics that are now
taught \ few minutes of brisk action
at the setting-up exercise, or the man
uaI of arms, or marching or wheeling
and running will set the blood in
healthy circulation, refresh the pupil,
make him hold his head up and his
shoulders back and he viii return TO
his desk in better trim to continue his
book work than If he had waved his
arms a few times and shuffled his feet
in calisthenics or had oyert2xed his
heart and nerves at football.
It Is no theory. II is a fact, that boys
who have undergone military training
are better behaved, more orderly, more
courteous, more obedient, than those
who have not. Promptness and faith
fitness and honor are as much part
of drill as knowing how to shoot
rifle. There is moral as well as
physical advantage in the proposed ex-
ercise. Bodily activity of any normal
kind is one of the preventives of i'm
morality. The runners, walkers, oars !
men, ball-players. athletes of many |!
sorts and the laborers who toll with
their muscles, are men who are rela
lively free from vice, because the en- |
ergies that, in the idle man. run into |
vicious channels. are healthfully en- |
ployed.
But even suppose that drill has a ten
dency to make the boys fond Of the
they are bound to be in |
any event-just as girls are fond of !
dolls and parties. What harm? The
soldier Is never as fierce for war as
the man who knows nothing about 1t.
And are We always to rely on chance
to fill the ranks of our armies in case
Of foreign invasion? Are the women
willing to let the country
go unguarded? Do they realize what
war means? Do they understand its
lawlessness? Do they know that the
expense of maintaining a large army
IS as nothing to being defeated?
War may one day be forced upon US
by a well-nigh combined Europe,
Europe already Jealous of our CONNER
,ial wealth and numerical power. In
such a case the existence OF some mill
ons Of young men with the rudimenls
IF military training might prove our
salvation. The army we have, judged
by European standards, Is small, and
[ is not large with the militia added.
But an army comprising the educated
American youth would be a buttress
against which the waves of invasion
would dash and be stayed.