The occupations of civil life, if not constantly accompanied by systematic, scientific mental and physical training throw us out of balance. The success of Muldoon's famous human repair-shop depends entirely upon building up by proper food and strenuous exercise long-neglected organs and faculties.
The lower branches of a tree, which do not receive the necessary exercise from the wind, and the necessary vitalizing stimulus of the sun, gradually atrophy, and wither, die, and drop off; likewise do unused and unstimulated organs and faculties of the body shrink toward atrophy and pale toward death. The only part of a tree that is alive is where the sap runs. All the rest of the tree is dead. Organs and faculties of the human body not adequately exercised to circulate through them the required amount of sap, gradually begin to die.
Lord Kitchener is the Muldoon of the new English army. The raw recruits are trained for their coming fight in much the same manner that a pugilist is trained. They are made to take the long walk out and the sharp run home, carrying weights; they wrestle and spar; perform all manner of calisthenics and gymnastics; are fed proper food, and are made properly to bathe. To the great majority of them, this man-making training is a revelation, but they find themselves so improved in health and so strengthened in body and mind that, when they return to civil life, they will still utilize much of the useful knowledge of how to get fit and keep fit; and just as the hard work imposed upon the soldiers is made easier by their military training, so, when they return to civil life, they will find all their tasks much easier of accomplishment.
The following is quoted from a letter just received by me from a prominent English clergyman:
"The war is making the Britisher a new man, and he is blissfully unconscious of the conversion in himself. Every class is feeling the uplift. He will be stronger in his religion, his politics, and his commerce. Half the men in Kitchener's Army hate fighting and taking life. They have enlisted for conscience' sake. Naturally they will make the finest soldiers."
Soldierly fitness includes not only those sterling qualities of higher manhood—cleanliness, temperance, efficiency, and moral stamina, raised from a semi-subconscious latency into conscious action by a military training—but also it includes that very important attribute—devotion. A military training develops a vague sense of patriotism whose height is a hurrah for country, to that height of devotion where one will gladly die for his country.
In South America, there is a very potential little republic where military training produces just such beneficial results in a very high degree. Chili, perhaps, comes nearer to Germany in economic efficiency than any other country in the world.
Nothing could be more absurd than the fear of the American people that a good-sized standing army of trained soldiers would menace their liberty. The very preparation, by education and training, necessary to make a good soldier, being the very best training in the world to make him a good citizen, would constitute one of the strongest fortifications possible to defend us against ourselves. It would act as a gyroscopic stabilizer for our democratic institutions, and an equilibrator for our vacillating hot-air ship of state.