estion came home to me with force while watching the drill of
the Battalion Club at St. George's one night recently. It has long been
the favorite idea of a friend and neighbor of mine, who is an old army
officer and has seen service in the field, that a summer camp for boys
from the city tenements could be established somewhere in the mountains at
a safe distance from tempting orchards, where an army of them might be
drilled with immense profit to themselves and to everybody. He will have
it that they could be managed as easily as an equal number of men, with
the right sort of organization and officers, and as in his business he
runs along smoothly with four or five hundred girls under his command, I
am bound to defer to his judgment, however much my own may rebel,
particularly as he would be acting out my own convictions, after all, in
his wholesale way. In any event the experiment might be tried with a
regiment if not with an army, and it would be a very interesting one. The
boys would have lots of chance for wholesome play as well as drill, and
would get no end of fun out of it. The possible hardships of camping out
would have no existence for them. As for any lasting good to come of it,
outside of physical benefits, I think the discipline alone, with what it
stands for, would cover that. In the reform schools, where they have
military drill, they have found it their most useful ally in dealing with
the worst and wildest class of the boys. It is the bump of organization
that is touched again there. Resistance ceases of itself and the boys fall
into line. Too much can be made of discipline, of course. The body may be
drilled until it is a mere machine and the real boy is dead. But that has
nothing to do with such an experiment as I spoke of. That is the concern
of reform schools, and I do not think they are in any danger of overdoing
it.

I spoke of managing the girls. It is just the same with them. I have had
the "gang" in mind as the alternative of the club, and therefore have
dealt so far only with their brothers. Girls do not go in gangs, thank
goodness, at least not yet in New York. They flock, until the boys scatter
them and drive them off one by one. But the same instinct of
self-government is in them. They take just as kindly to the club. The
Neighborhood Guild, the College Settlement, and various church and
philanthropic societies, carry on such clubs with great success. The girls
sew, darn stockings, cook, m