=Military training.=--We may shrink away from military training in the
schools, just as we shrink from the regime of pugilism; but we may
profit by observing both these types of training in our efforts to
develop some method of training that will render our young people
physically fit. We need some type of training that will eliminate round
and drooping shoulders, weak chests, shambling gait, sluggish
circulation, and shallow breathing. The boys and girls need to be, first
of all, healthy animals with large powers of endurance, elastic,
buoyant, graceful, and in general well set up. These conditions
constitute the foundation for the superstructure of education. The
placid, anaemic, fiberless child is ill prepared in physique to attain to
that mastery of the mental and spiritual world that makes for an
approximation to complete living.
=Examples cited.=--If one will but make a mental appraisement of the
first one hundred people he meets, he will see among the number quite a
few who reveal a lack of physical vigor. They droop and slouch along and
seem to be dragging their bodies instead of being propelled through
space by their bodies. They can neither stand nor walk as a human being
ought to stand and walk, and their entire ensemble is altogether
unbeautiful. We feel instinctively that, being fashioned in the image of
their Maker, they have sadly declined from their high estate.
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