MILITARY TRAINING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16502, 1 August 1919, Page 2

MILITARY TRAINING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —May I be allowed to make r a few remarks re your sub-leader in \\ cdnesday’s issue. Rational people will confirm your statement that "the old Territorial system was both inefficient and costly,’'"but, 1 ask, can the alternative system suggested by Sir James Allen be" regarded as an improvement : Any system of military training under peace conditions must necessarily tall short of actual war requirements, and years of intensive training, even under the best of instructors, can never equal the value Sf a few months of actual campaigning. At the time of the New Zealanders’ engagement at Rossignol Wood, no troops received more intensive training than those of the American army, and yet the ignorance, of the practical arts of war displayed by most of Uncle Sam’s soldiers brigaded with us then was almost appalling; and until they bad unlearnt a lot of their camp-imparted erudition, and acquired a more practical education they proved an easy proposition to the warseasoned—not the peace-trained—Huns. Say another war broke qut, and it was found necessary to raise a body _of troops. Who would be forthcoming mid best fitted to be despatched to right ! J AVhy those men who had taken part in the last war, of course. And their value as soldiers would have very little to do with the duration of their training in Trentham or Featherston. It being out of the question to make war simply for the purpose ol training our young men to light—though, that obviously is the most efficient for instruction —\Vc have to devise some system of training that will give ns, when the time comes, the most manpower best trained to acquire the arts of war. Our task, then, is to improve the physique of our young men by inculating in their minds the habits of exercise and hygiene, to develop their powers of endurance and resourcefulness by sports and competitive work in both practical and theoretical subjects: in short, to give our boys a training that will deserve as high a compliment as the one paid the other day by Sir Douglas Haig to the work of the public schools of England. And this is to he accomplished, not by the spasmodic influence of a few months spent in camp, but by the gradual moulding of character in a process to be measured in years. The rest—the training ot the "citizen to know bow to kill—is but a detail; the superficial accomplishment of a good citizen. Thanking you for vour space,—l am. etc., J 1 ’ PRO PATRIA.