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practically scholarships for games) often become professionals. Individually, these men are tolerable enough; collectively, as a term representing a nation too eager to win at any cost, they are rather objectionable. The American team which took part in the Olympic Games of 1908 certainly did not distinguish itself as a company of sportsmen and gentlemen-much to the disgust of many American residents in London.

The points to bear in mind when the Stockholm results come in are: (1) that the antique ideal of beauty and effectiveness combined is not realised in the persons and methods of these lop-sided specialists; and (2) that our University and Public School athletes, for whom running or jumping is a ráрeрyov, must not be accused of physical degeneracy because they are beaten in the contests for Olympic crowns. The public school athlete only practises track and field events two or three weeks before his school sports, which are generally held at a time when the interest in football is waning and cricket is already the subject of eager expectation. He does not worry about training at all, for everybody leads the simple life at a public school and takes plenty of open-air exercise as a matter of course. One or two spins with his rivals and a few hints from a master who is an Old Blue, and he is ready for his race. More often than not he enters for all the events (like the young Orestes in the Electra), and he may win more than one and take the inexpensive pot provided for the Victor Ludorum of that year. If he goes on to Oxford or Cambridge he may or may not specialise to some extent; even if he does so he will not abstain from cricket, football, hockey, and other sociable diversions. If, however, he is plunged forthwith into the strenuous life of the business man, his spiked shoes are seldom used any more. his natural ability wasted? Not a bit of it if his sprinting powers enable him to save fours in Saturday afternoon cricket or make fast dribbles down the wing at Association football; or even to catch the morning train to the city.

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Our object is to produce a kind of general-purposes athlete who can find health and joie-de-vivre in a variety of sports. That, no doubt, was the authentic Hellenic ideal. But the American notion is to obtain, by means of eliminating trials and a prolonged course of special training, a small number of surprising experts. But it is only necessary to look over the records of this year's public school sports, to see that our wealth of innate athletic ability far exceeds that of the United States. With little training, and next to no coaching, mere lads run the quarter in less than 54 sec., the mile in less than 4 min. 45 sec., the hurdles in less than 17 sec.; in the jumps they beat 21 feet and 5 feet 6 inches. Put any of these school champions into

the power of an American trainer for two years, and he would make Olympic victors of them. Fortunately, the athletic system in vogue at the American universities would never be tolerated by young Englishmen, who prefer freedom to the meagre rewards of the specialist. Yet if one wishes to see and admire the Hellenic ideal of athletic grace and force combined it is to be found in our school playing-fields rather than in the Stadium at Stockholm. Ethnologists tell us that the ancient Greeks were essentially the same race as the Englishmen of yesterday. A study of Greek busts and statues confirms their assertion. In Paris and in London Mrs. Roger Watts has brought the Greek antiques to life again to the delight of many. But her ingenuity has been wasted if she only knew. For these Greek statues were alive all the time in the green meadows of our English gardens of youth. There you see the true Olympic athletes.

E. B. OSBORN.

VOL. LXXII-No. 425

SOME STRATEGIC PROBLEMS OF THE

EMPIRE

As long as men are men and States are States the question of limiting armaments will remain insoluble.-THE GERMAN IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR, 30th of March 1911.

NATIONAL Defence is admittedly the first duty of Governments, and should be the first concern of every patriotic elector. We have recently, in the Morocco crisis, had a most important object-lesson in National Defence. But the stormy nature of recent party politics has diverted the attention of the electors and prevented them from grasping the full, or anything like the full, significance of that object-lesson. They appear to have already forgotten that during the Morocco crisis we were compelled to commit ourselves to a totally new military policy-namely, that of supporting France with our whole military strength directly war breaks out.

This forgetfulness is most unfortunate, for the Morocco crisis is to us a warning of the very gravest import. It is a warning that if we intend, as we do intend, to preserve the balance of power with the necessary independence of France as its cornerstone, we may at any moment, and when least expecting it, be challenged to prove our words by deeds. It is a warning that to this end we must adjust our military system and our mobilisation arrangements to the European conditions of to-day. It is a warning to us to reconsider most carefully our whole military system from the point of view, not of party politics, but of a great national war, and to make that system a reality and not a sham. The word 'sham' is used advisedly; because our present Territorial system is not capable of performing those tasks which the nation believes it is capable of performing and for which alone it exists, and is therefore a sham and a delusion. This is well known to all soldiers: it has been openly proclaimed by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts: it is denied by none but a few political lawyers.

The farcical deficiencies of the Territorials in all the essentials that constitute an effective army have been so often placed before

the public in Parliament, on the platform, and in the Press that it is not intended in this short article to weary the reader by repeating the oft-told tale. One may take it for granted, as a matter of common knowledge. With the most patriotic zeal, but with insufficient numbers, inferior organisation, inferior training, inferior armament, inferior mobility, what chance could they possibly have against regular European troops? The solitary military apologist for the make-believe system, General Sir Ian Hamilton, has himself confessed that they would require to be in a superiority of three to one against continental troops. And such a superiority they can never have.

The whole question of Imperial Defence in the future has so far received most inadequate consideration from the politicians. who rule our country. They will not face the reality of the matter because in the first place they fear the expense, and in the second place because they fear that by so doing they may have to face a little temporary unpopularity among a certain section of the electors. So it comes about that up to the present time there has never been a clear statement in Parliament as to the actual purpose for which our army exists. Hence the prevalent confusion of opinion on this subject. One of the strangest features, and the strongest proof, of the partial consideration of Imperial Defence by our rulers is that it has been based entirely on present conditions, whereas the governing factors in the matter are entirely future conditions. A startling instance of this shortsighted method was given to us last year by the publication of that curious and unfortunate book Compulsory Service by Lord Haldane and General Sir Ian Hamilton, in which the future strategical problems of the Empire were not even mentioned. But it is surely sufficiently plain to us all that in any consideration of the necessary strength and composition of our future army we must have regard to the time when that future army shall be in being and to the tasks with which it will be confronted, rather than to the ephemeral conditions of to-day. We require to look as far ahead as possible, as far ahead as Germany looked when framing her Naval Bill of 1900-from 1900 to 1916.

As regards compulsory service it will probably take four or five years at least before public opinion is sufficiently educated and aroused to bring about legal liability to national service. It will then take another ten years before a national army thus formed can become an efficient instrument of warfare-allowing for the time required to train officers and non-commissioned officers, to provide all the necessary services, to allow for the necessary experiments in mobilisation, &c. So that we find that it is the conditions, the probable or possible conditions, of fifteen years ahead, as far as they can

be foreseen, which are the governing factors in the question. Before we can form an opinion as to what kind of an army we want we must consider the kind of war, the biggest war, for which that army will be required. In other words, no judgment worth anything concerning Imperial Defence can be formed without at least some consideration of the strategical problems with which in the future (not merely to-day) the Empire will be faced, and by the necessities of which the strength and conditions of service of our army must be fixed. But this is exactly what Parliament has never been told. For what our military system exists, what the strategical problems are which must govern its strength and composition, what the tasks are which it must be capable of carrying out victoriously—all these essential things we are left to find out, to work out, for ourselves. A few reflections on these matters may therefore at this present time perhaps not be out of place.

The great fact, the accomplished fact, to which we have now to adjust our Imperial strategy, our peace preparation for future wars, is that owing to the building of the great new transContinental railways, coupled with the wonderfully rapid rise of German naval power since 1900, we may have to conduct great and distant land wars with the ever-present menace of the German Navy hovering on our flank. With the great fleet which Germany already possesses, and with the still greater fleet which she will shortly possess-a fleet which will then be, as Sir Edward Grey put it, the strongest the world has ever seen-this fact becomes of supreme and dominating importance. Should we ever be involved in a dispute with Russia over Afghanistan or Persia, or with Turkey over Egypt, the opportunity of Germany will arrive. At the crisis of any great struggle in which we may be engaged German armed intervention may take place, as so nearly happened, as would have happened during the war in South Africa had it not been for the then overwhelming strength of our fleet. If during such a struggle our navy, as it may have to do, shall have sent such powerful squadrons to distant seas as to render our Home Fleet only equal to the German Navy in the North Sea, such German intervention may be followed by a German naval victory, and that again be followed by invasion and conquest. That is the situation we have to face during the twentieth century. It is vain to attempt to ignore it. The stern fact is there, plain for all men to see. Not all the optimistic speeches in the world can make it otherwise. It only remains for us regretfully to accept the fact as the chief new factor in our twentieth century strategy, and, while accepting this very unwelcome fact, equally to accept its two unavoidable consequences. These are the absolute necessity of maintaining our

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