The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-11-03
THE TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
REFORMATION BUREAU
By FREDERIC j. HAsKIN. Director.
Washington. d. C.
AFTER DRILL AT THE TRAINING
CAMPS.
Gloves and Bayonefs.

ing, which a few months ago was
known chiefly as a professional sport.
prohibited as such by law in many
parts of the country. has been ele-
waited by the war department into the
important place of an essential of
military training. Every man of the
national army is to be made as pro-
ficient with his fists as his natural
limitations permit. The stars of pro-
fessional pugilism have been called
away from their contracts and made
intructors in the American army.
Benny Leonard and Kid Mccoy, Bat
thing Levinslxy and Johnny Schiff have
promptly left the glories of ring and
sporting page to teach the soldiers
the most primitive and fundamental
of all methods of fighting. Richie
Mitchell, Milwaukee's star lightweight,
has gone to Camp Doniphan, Packey
Mcfarland has left his brewery and
his family to teach the rockies at
Camp Macarthur how to use their
hands. These are only few of them;
there is a professional gladiator at
almost every cantonment.
This interest of the United States
government in fist fighting is based
upon a discovery, much of the credit
for which belong to a sergeant named
Armstrong. This man has been teach
the bayonet, often leading groups of
seven or eight hundred men thru the
primary movements from an elevated
platform. Armstrong soon noticed
that the essential moves in bayonet
duelling were the same as those IN
boxing. The left lead at a mans
head or body, the uppercut at his
jaw or throat, and the right swing at
the side of his head with the butt of
the gun, are all fundamentally SINH
Iav- In e-fo .Iov HI fI1a
gloved hand. The foot work of side
stepping, rushing and retreating are
almost exactly the same. 1t follows,
of course, that the same co-ordina-
ton of hand and eye, the same abil
ity to watch the other fellow and
guess what he is going to do, are nee
essary to success in both bayonet
fighting and boxing.
DueIling With Bayonets.
To practicing duelling with bayonets
is not highly practicable. You can
teach a man the lunges with the help
matching two men, armed with
eleven pound guns, so that they may
learn to defend themselves, the wear
and tear on the pupil is adpt to be more
than the instruction is worth. Even
with spring bayonets and padded
suits and helmets, men are often bad
ly hurt, and to provide these accou-
trements in large numbers would of
course be a heavy expense. Hence
the value of teaching a man in boxing
the speed, the nerve and the funda-
mental movements upon which his
success as a bayonet fighter will de-
pend.
The Importance of bayonet work in
modern warfare is well known. The
last struggle for every trench is
hand to hand struggle with bayonets.
The superiority of the British in
bayonet work has been one of their
greatest sources of strength. The
British soldier is a boxer. The Ger
mans in 1915 got hold of the British
bayonet drill and began teaching it to
their troops. The British have now
worked out a new set of tricks with
which to confound their enemies.
The athletic training of the Ameri-
can national army is entrusted to the
commission of training camps activi-
ties, of which Raymond B. Fosdick
is chairman. This commission has the
twofold duty of providing the men
with exercise and amusement, and of
safeguarding their health when they
are amusing themselves on leave DR..
Joseph E. Raycroft of Princeton uni
versity has charge of the athletics for
the commission, and he is the man
who, more than any other, is response
BILE for the extensive training in the
use of their fists, which the American
recruits are to receive.
The system of athletic instruction
which he has devised for the national
army consists primarily of a director
of athletics at each training camp,
together with assistants in all the
various sports. Some of these, like
the professional fighters chosen, will
be from outside the army, but. men
with special aptitude or experience
among the recruits will be used as in
structOrS.
In addition to regular lessons in
boxing, supplemented by bouts. the
recruits will be shown the relation be-
tween boxing and bayonet fighting
by means of motion picture films, in
which the fundamental movements in
the two methods of fighting will be
graphically compared.
The athletic directors at the various
camps will nearly all be college ath-
letes of note. chosen as much for per-
sonality and organizing ability as for
knowledge of the various games
men, combine a spirit of play with a
grim determination to win in exactly
| the way that the captains and coaches
of college athletic teams work. But
the system will differ radically from
| that followed in the universities in
| that men, not teams, will be the i'm
portant product. The athletic activi-
! ties of the cantonments will not be a
selective process designed to discover
and improve aptitude, but an effort
to raise the average of physical fit
ness and ability.
Boxing, tho perhaps the most i'm
portant, will be only one of the sports
| cultivated at the cantonments Thus
at one of the camps there are to be
| seven hundred teams of various kinds.
At Camp Macarthur, Texas the men
will play upon twenty-seven baseball
| diamonds; I26 basket ball courts, and
as many volley ball courts Certain
| hours of each day will be set aside for
athletics, and in most of the camps
all of Wednesday and Saturday after
moons and Sunday will be available for
/ this purpose Football baseball. SOC
! Ger, basketball, volley ball, hand ball,
| track athletics, and in the north, ski
ing, skating and toboganning will be
! practiced. Never before. probably.
have such extensive plans been laid