Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/Pastimes of peace an exercise for war
PASTIMES OF PEACE AN EXERCISE FOR WAR.
The rapid and healthy growth of the volunteer movement in our land bids fair to restore to us an institution from the decay of which we have long suffered. Play—honest, physical, hard play—has been, of late, far too much neglected by our adult and youthful population, and with the inevitable results. At thirty we are very apt to give up boating and cricketing, while a tramp over the brown stubbles after the partridges and a gallop over the breezy downs with the hounds, are luxuries obtainable but for a few months in the year, even when they come within the means of a working family man. To the vast majority they are, of course, unattainable, and to such, physical pastime, consequent upon the martial duties we have voluntarily undertaken, has become an admirable substitute for the physical play which we have given up from necessity or neglect. In our hearing the other day a barrister, of mature age and considerable practice, was dwelling, with unmistakable relish, upon the benefit he was deriving from the evening-drill to which he was subjected as a conscientious effective of one of the metropolitan rifle-corps. He had shouldered a rifle from a sense of duty, and already he was more than rewarded by his enjoyment of that hearty, physical play for which the healthy muscles never lose their relish.
Again, let us look at the physical pastime of those of us who were boys but yesterday. Of late years the business of life has increased immensely, while its recreation has been decreasing in an inverse ratio. The mind is taxed in a hundred ways unknown to and unthought of by our sires, and the strain is felt from the highest to the lowest worker in the land. The progress of the age has been everywhere to substitute mechanical for manual labour; and while an almost perfect system of locomotion compels us to dispense with pedestrian exercise, the wondrous development of machinery almost as completely supersedes manual exertion.
Nor is this all. With—and it may be in consequence of—these great changes, has arisen an ardent desire for knowledge, to which all classes alike yield. So that, in addition to a vast and daily-growing increase of mental labour for business purposes, we tax the mind with the acquirement of that information which we need to elevate us intellectually to the level of the age. And this tax is, in almost every case, levied upon our already reduced physical recreation. Mechanics Institutions, Young Men’s Associations, Scientific Clubs, all admirable in their way, may yet be injurious to the youth of our towns in inducing them to neglect the body’s weal, and so throw out the economy of that system the regularity of which depends so entirely upon the perfect well-being of all its component parts.
It may be thought that our remarks upon the decay of physical pastime will not apply to the rural population of our land, whose daily manual labour must sufficiently exercise their muscles and develop their physical growth. But, fortunately for that self-defensive movement which is stirring us so deeply, the lack of physical pastime is just as strongly felt in country as in town. Any one with the least experience of rural England must often have regretted that the honest healthful play, to which we have before alluded, has been allowed to die away.
Stroll through any of its villages on a summer-evening and take note of the group of men and youths you may see lounging round the pump in awkward contortions of ease, or through the red-curtained windows of the public-house, smoking, drinking, gambling, breathing air morally and physically impure; and say whether they had not better be upon the village-green wrestling, leaping, quarrelling if they will. Ask the drill-sergeant or the man-of-war’s boatswain, whether he draws his better and more promising lads from the mural or rural districts of England, and we shall be surprised indeed if his answer does not upset your conception of the muscular strength and physical superiority of the ploughmen of merry England over their “Town” brethren.
Nor must it be thought that, after the hard labour of the day, the agricultural workman needs absolute repose of the muscles. Physical labour by no means incapacitates for physical play. From the study of the most abstruse science the student turns for relief, and with redoubled zest, to the delights of poetry, although they, too, are mental, and call into action similar organs. So the wearied ploughman would gain rather than lose strength and freshness by the physical pastime of the evening, which would rouse into action qualities of hardihood, emulation, and endurance, seldom required in the daily labour of his life.
Concluding then that such a pastime for peace, which should be part of and fitly tend to a sterner exercise for war, would be beneficial to the physical welfare of all of us, of every class and age, but few words are necessary to convince our readers of its national importance. The present defensive movement, to become of real and lasting benefit to the state, must permeate through every class, and settle, finally, into a recognised pastime of peace. A few months or years may see the clouds, that at present appear to threaten our national safety, broken and dispersed, and an almost absolute security restored to us. When such a time comes happily, if the nation does not disarm as rapidly and completely as she is now arming, it will, we firmly believe, be owing mainly to her having, in the meanwhile, made of the rifle a national toy, and of martial exercise a national pastime.
Such play, with such a meaning in it, has never been long neglected in our own or any other land, without consequent peril. The wisest men of old knew its importance, and not only advocated but practised it.
King David thought it worth his leisure while to instruct the youth of Judah in the use of their national weapon—the bow; in free Greece the olive-crown of the athlete and the poet were alike honoured, and Pindar commemorated the triumph of mind and of valour with equal impartiality. As it was a bad day for Grecian independence, when its youth neglected the gymnasia for the barbers’ shops and the baths, and began to be critical about the cut and folds of their white toga,—so it was a bad day for Saxon England when her sons left their martial sport for the revel and excess in franklins’ halls or village ale-houses. Old chronicles are rife with remonstrances and anxious fears upon this point, and sure enough they were but too literally verified when the Saxon went down before the Norman shaveling on Hastings’ field.
It may not be amiss for us to remember that the Anglo-Saxon rallied from revel and ale-house to meet with that defeat, and to struggle for two hundred years before he could force upon his victors the language and institutions of his race. Again, let us compare old Roger Ascham’s definition of an English youth with that of Etherege, remembering the while that the brave schoolmaster’s lads grew to be the men who laughed at the Spaniard’s beard and blew his vaunted Armada to the winds, while the latter stood idly by to see England become the pensioner of France. Says mincing Etherege, “My complete gentleman should dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love-letters and an agreeable voice for a chamber:” outspeaks the brave old dominie, my English lad shall “ride comely, run fair at tilt and ring, play at all weapons, shoot fair in bow or sure in gun; vault lustily; run, leap, wrestle, swim.” He will have him able to “dance comely, sing, play of instruments cunningly;” but it must be only when he can “hawk, hunt, play at tennis, and all pastimes generally which be joined with labour, and so contain in them some fit exercise for war.”
We come now to consider how best this pastime of peace and exercise for war can be combined and cultivated among us. If, as we have before said, the volunteer movement is to be anything more than a temporary expedient, the pastime of our lads should be so directed that it should lead them naturally to, and fit them effectively for, the use of arms in later life. With our public schoolboys such a pastime would soon become most popular. The youthful population of town and country would be more difficult of access, but if nothing dies quicker, nothing at least spreads faster than a martial spirit, and if we can but catch it at its red heat, and form it into an institution, the rest may be safely left to its own intrinsic charms. Practical details come awkwardly from an unprofessional pen; but surely there are no towns, and but few villages, wanting in some war-veteran who would gladly shoulder his walking-stick and instruct the youth of his neighbourhood in the rudiments of his old profession.
If we were to go so far as to advocate the regular military training of our lads, their early enrolment into bands, and their instruction in the use of the rifle, we should most probably injure a good cause by over zeal. But we will not deny that we regard such a development as probable and desirable, and we are prepared to show that it is not without good precedent. With the exception of America there is no nation which owes more to the individual skill of its citizens in the use of the rifle than Switzerland. The respect which a true Swiss has for that weapon dates from his youth. He puts aside his holidays to public exhibition of his skill in its use, and devotes many a leisure hour to private practice with it. By the borders of his lakes—behind the wooden village-houses—in the thick soft pasturage at the foot of the hills in which the dun cows browse, fetlock deep, you catch sight of his rifle-target; indeed, his chief social fault is, that he is a little too prone to the use of his favourite weapon in his Cantonal disputes, and that he is not always content to wait for the blue or white coat, against which he may sooner or later legitimately level it.
Steaming down the lakes of Zurich in the autumn of 1858, we were attracted, soon after passing Rapperschwyl, by the distant smoke of musketry and the glistening of bayonets on the far shore. The steamer’s course was at once directed towards it, the engines were stopped, and as we stood off the shore, crew and passengers leant over the bulwark, and with equal interest watched the progress of the mimic fight. We were yet too far off to recognise the combatants with any distinctness, but we could see the plan of the battle, and that its chief fury raged about an old stone tower at the top of a little hill of vineyards, that sprung up abruptly from the lake’s edge. This tower was evidently the key of the enemy’s position, while their right rested upon the vineyard wall, their left upon a little knoll of trees. The whole line came into engagement as we looked on, and while the wings had enough to do to hold their own, the one gun which formed the whole artillery in action, was brought to bear upon the tower. The spit, spit of the skirmishers’ rifles, the roll of the platoon firing, the heavy boom of the one gun, were plainly audible, until in time the wings seemed to waver, they fell back, and the whole line advanced at a run, their bayonets flashing out brightly in the sunshine. At this juncture we steamed away, leaving the defenders of the old tower making a last obstinate but, no doubt, ineffectual resistance.
Sipping our coffee in the salle à manger of the Belle Vue Hotel on the very margin of Zurich’s fair waters, on the evening of that same day, we were attracted by the glare of many lights, and the sound of many voices without. Making our way into the open air, we found the blue lake lit up by several blazing rafts of flame, while the streets and quays were bordered with cressets of fire; and, at intervals, handfuls of rockets were thrown up into the clear sky as though to taunt the noble comet then in its glorious zenith, into a more grand and beautiful display. Attaching ourselves to an obliging bourgeois—“grossier comme un Zurichois,” say the guide-books; but who believes them?—we are told that these festive preparations are intended to welcome home the warriors we had seen fighting on the lake’s border.
“They are disembarking, just now,” says our companion, and we hurry over the bridge and along the quays to meet them. Quite a crowd, for a continental city, is waiting on the wide Platz, and along the line by which they must pass. They are some time forming under the green acacia trees, but at last the drums roll out a brisk march, the bayonets are seen glistening through the murky air, and forward they march. And then these warriors prove to be the boys of Zurich and the neighbourhood, from sixteen years of age down perhaps to ten—dressed in a neat pretty uniform, armed with a rifle, proportioned to the bearer’s strength and age, and each wearing a sprig of green in his shako—who have been out for a day’s play on the lake’s border. Play, you will say, with a very deep and practical purpose in it; remembering, as they very likely do, how often in the French revolutionary wars this home of theirs was taken, squeezed, and flung away, by the various combatants.
It is evident that the lads are weary and foot-sore, but they bear themselves manfully, the boy officers, with their little swords drawn, tripping along the line, and dressing up the ranks briskly. As they march along, quays, bridges, and streets, are illumined with blue and crimson lights, which throw a picturesque glare upon the quaint German houses and the old towers of the cathedral in which Erasmus’s preaching helped to secure the freedom of thought and action for which these lads of Zurich may some day have to fight. At the Stadthaus the young troops halt, more coloured lights are burnt, a few words are addressed to them from one of the windows, their arms are grounded on the stone pavement with a crash, and the weary Kadetten disperse to their homes. That it is not altogether an English sight is the reflection which occurs most readily to the English mind; but we have since thought that if our battles are as likely as theirs to be fought upon home ground, the sooner such a sight becomes familiar among us the better.
The adoption of such pastime in England, would not be without its attendant difficulties, but we can scarcely think them serious, far less insurmountable. Brighton would, no doubt, look aghast at Dr. Swych, if that worthy pedagogue should propose to lead out for a few summer days’ martial training upon the Downs, those young gentlemen whose exercise in dreary file has so often excited our sympathy and, it is to be feared, contempt. But we feel sure that Dr. Swych’s young gentlemen would gain immensely, if only by becoming English boys for one week in the year, and that they would return to their Plutarch and Euripides with a zest and freshness which would surprise Dr. S. beyond measure. Conceive, too, with what novel and unbounded delight a week under canvas in the Windsor Home Park would be received by Eton. Why it would more than compensate it for the loss of its Montem. And we believe it would not be long before such an example would spread, and our English greens and commons would witness a wholesome revival of that manly pastime of peace which has fitted Englishmen so well for the stern exercise of war.
Nor would such a revival be without other, if secondary, importance to society. That so little sympathy exists just now between class and class is owing less to un-English pride on the one side, or unmanly reserve on the other, than to a want of opportunities of intercourse and labour-fellowship from which appreciation and mutual dependence would surely spring. The pastime which we recommend would soon attract our youth from hall and cottage alike. Show us the true English lad of any class, who will be able to refrain from taking part in play of this nature, established as it should be on our country commons and village greens. Before the spirit of honest emulation there engendered and fostered, the frostwork of conventionality will melt and disappear. The young gentleman will soon be piqued to owe his rank and position not so much to the accident of birth as to well-won superiority in physical pluck and strength. Should he succeed, a more willing and hearty respect will be conceded him. Should he fail, he will learn to respect his victors as superior to him in some respects at least, while they will admire and appreciate his generous self-denial. Such a pastime of peace which shall be at the same time an exercise for war, will knit future squire and yeoman, apprentice, master, and man in an honest, hearty fellowship which would surely be a sufficient recommendation for its speedy adoption, were other and more important ones wanting.