Читать книгу The Montreal Highland Cadets - Ernest J. Chambers - Страница 9

Whichever of these corps is the senior, there is no doubt that one is senior of the cadet corps unattached to educational institutions; the other of those cadet corps recruited among the boys of the big public schools.

The “London Rifle Volunteers” were not long to follow the example of the Queen’s Westminster, and before the end of 1860 the first named regiment had a cadet corps organized. Early in 1861 the South Middlesex Volunteers, commanded by Lord Ranelagh, followed suit, and other regiments in London and elsewhere in course of time fell into line.

And the other great public schools were not slow to follow the example of Eton. In the spring of 1860 the Rugby School Rifle Corps was organized and a uniform of light grey, with dark blue facings, edged with scarlet cord, adopted. Only a few days later Harrow organized its rifle corps, and so the movement extended.

The volunteer cadet system has attained to great importance in the British volunteer service. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge furnish a complete volunteer battalion each, attached to their Territorial Regiment, namely the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, and the 4th Volunteer Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. Eton, the pioneer of the school cadet movement, has the honor of furnishing a complete cadet battalion to its territorial regiment, known as the 4th Volunteer Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry. Bradfield, Cheltenham, Harrow, Charterhouse, Dulwich, Forest School, Haileybury School, Marlborough College, Rossall School, Rugby, St. John’s College, Trent College, Warwick Grammar School, Wellington, Whitgift and Winchester Colleges, all have corps of one or more companies which form part of the volunteer battalion of their respective territorial regiments. Across the Tweed there are especially fine cadet corps at Glenalmond College in Perthshire, in Edinburgh and Dundee. These corps are attached to the volunteer battalions of the Black Watch and the Royal Scots. Many new cadet corps, attached and unattached to public schools, have been organized in Great Britain since the outbreak of the Boer War.

And while the movement inaugurated by Eton, Rugby and Harrow is being kept alive so well in the educational institutions, the system inaugurated in the Queen’s Westminster, the London Rifle Volunteers, and the South Middlesex has been carefully nourished and extended. Most of the volunteer regiments have cadet companies attached to their strength and, very useful, they find them as auxiliaries and feeders. In 1886 the radical departure of organizing at Birmingham a complete cadet battalion, independent of the volunteer corps, was effected. This battalion is known as the 1st Cadet Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The officers may be adults, but the age of the rank and file is to be of lads not less than fourteen and not more than seventeen. The battalion consists of ten companies of one hundred boys each. The whole expense, including bands and armory, with the exception of the arms and instructors, which are provided by the government, is provided by the patriotic citizens of the great manufacturing city, which is a model in so many respects.

The efficiency of the British cadet corps has for many years been recognized at Aldershot and the other great military centres in Britain. As showing the value the army officers place upon this cadet training, it might be stated that the general officer commanding at Aldershot has set aside a day every year during the annual training of the army corps, for all the cadet corps to mobilize at that great military centre, to be brigaded with the regular troops and to participate with them in a field day. Upon these occasions, the cadets are usually accorded prominent places in the firing line, and the manner in which they acquit themselves shows the value of their training.

It is a fact not generally recognized that boys acquire military training much quicker than men. The writer of these pages has in his time had the honor to command a company of cadets and a company of men, the latter composed largely of the most intelligent and skilful class of railway mechanics, and there was absolutely no comparison between the best work of the active militia company and the average work of the cadet one. Boys could pick up drill even from boy officers and non-coms in half the time it took the men with professional instructors, and they learned much more thoroughly. A few years ago, as acting adjutant of one of the frontier rural battalions, the writer of this picked out the youngest men brought into camp, and placed them in one company. At the end of the absurdly short period of training, the boys’ company was twice as smart as any in the battalion.

And this is easily enough explained. Boys fall into their work and settle to it far better than their elders do. There are many reasons for this, and not the least among them are the elasticity of spirits which boys possess, and the facility with which they receive and comprehend instruction of any kind, combined with the power of throwing themselves entirely into any absorbing and fascinating pursuit, qualities which every man will allow he has enjoyed in earlier years, but which become broken and blunted in after-life by daily cares and responsibilities.

One is naturally led to ask, is Canada doing her duty to the Empire, whose paramountcy means so much to her, in neglecting to drill the boys of Canada? The time may come when the struggle to hold our present proud position as a component part of one of the mightiest empires the world has ever seen, may be even more severe and protracted, and attended with a far greater drain upon our natural resources than that into which Canada was plunged in the War of 1812. Is Canada doing her duty in neglecting to provide for young Canada more physical training under a regular system?