s, crowded occupations, and great competition. Who shall make the
needful sacrifice? The returned soldiers? But they have given precious
years of time already. The inexperienced? But they will naturally
reason, that they have already borne the immediate financial burden of
the war, and that the drilling should be done by those to whom it will
cost no additional time to learn it. Thus all will regard their days as
being too valuable to be used in preparing for a contingency which may
never arise: one half standing aloof because they have been soldiers,
and the other half because they have not.

A difficult problem seems, then, to lie before us: To find a class
available for purposes of military training,--a class which shall claim
exemption on grounds neither of experience nor of inexperience,--which
shall be discouraged neither by the ennui of knowing too much, nor by
the awkwardness of knowing too little,--and which, withal, can spare the
time, without financial detriment to the community. Fortunately, the
solution of the problem suggests itself, in part at least, almost as
soon as the problem itself is stated. Train the school-boys.

Every person who has taken any interest in athletic exercises knows the
enormous advantage in their acquisition which the mere fact of youth
confers. In gymnastics, swimming, skating, base-ball, cricket, it is the
same thing. As a mere matter of economy, one half the time at least is
saved in teaching children as compared with full-grown men. But more
than this, it is for them not only no loss in time, but, if it can be
taken out of their regular school-hours, it is a positive advantage.
There is probably but one conceivable position in which all the
physiologists agree, and that is, that the average time now given to
study in our schools is at least one hour too long. Take this hour and
devote it to military drill, and you benefit the whole rising generation
doubly,--by what you take away, and by what you give.

We fortunately have the experience of Switzerland and England, to which
we may appeal, in respect to this method of military instruction.
Charles L. Flint, Esq., Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of
Agriculture, in his report of an official visit to Europe in 1862, gives
the following brief summary of the Swiss method.

"The amount and thoroughness of military instruction in the schools vary
somewhat in the different cantons, though in all the cantonal schools
military inst