The influence on national life of military training in schools : [an address delivered before the Medical Officers of Schools, Thursday, February 15, 1906] / by T.C. Horsfall.

  • Horsfall, T. C. (Thomas Coglan), 1841-1932.
Date:
[1906?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence on national life of military training in schools : [an address delivered before the Medical Officers of Schools, Thursday, February 15, 1906] / by T.C. Horsfall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    unsatisfactory as are those under which the great majority live, those conditions would be far worse, and that for hun¬ dreds of thousands of persons who now have some health and comfort, physical, mental, and moral ruin would be inevitable, but for the work done to help them by persons whose sole motive is a sense of duty. But though very much work of this kind is done by many persons, we all of us know that there are a vast number of persons, including many who, if they chose, could do most to help the community, who do nothing to help it. The commonness of the non-existence of even the beginning of public spirit is shown by the large number of persons who on getting out of a railway carriage in cold weather will not take the trouble to shut the door after them, and, in the country, by the large number of carters who leave the big stones which they have used to scotch the wheels of tlieir wagons lying in the middle of the road, where they will very likely trip up the next horse which comes that way. Moreover there is a remarkable perversity on the part of many of those who do some work, in their choice of work. A man who could raise the level of life of a large town, if he would serve on its town council, often satisfies his conscience by accepting the position of a churchwarden. One who could fight for his country in a South African war is contented to play cricket for it in Australia. As it is certain that the future of our people cannot be saved unless far more work is done for both our urban and rural populations, it is very desirable that, if this be in any way possible, every boy and girl shall be made to feel the desire to do the best possible service for the country and shall possess the power to do good service for it. We ought, therefore, to find out why it is that the desire or the power is so often non-existent, and so often badly directed. I am sure that the chief cause is that far too little effort is made to create and guide desire to serve the community in children. I have met a considerable number of persons who, so far as I could learn, have never done any good work for the community nor had the least desire to do any; but I have met hardly any whose lives did not seem to show that they could have been easily trained in childhood into willingness and power to be useful. Probably we have all of us met with cases of lives which have long been useless in which a change has taken place that apparently might have been easily brought about much earlier. I will mention only one typical case. I knew a rich man who, when I met him, was doing much good work in East London by which liis