SPORT VERSUS SPORTS

When I wrote my book on revolver shooting, in 1900, I caused indignation amongst many, by saying that the time wasted over games would be better employed in learning to shoot.

I was told that, although pistol shooting might be amusing, it was “such a waste of time and of no practical use,” and this by men who waste most of their time over golf!

Later, the Kipling poem on Flanneled Fools and Muddied Oafs came out, and there was an outcry as if one of the dogmas of the church had been assailed.

If games are so good for the health, why does one see so many young men with round backs and contracted chests, and heads poking forward, in England?

Until the war is forgotten, shooting men will be considered as making better use of their time than players of games, and the latter will not consider themselves superior to all others, and, figuratively speaking, carve footballs on the tombs of their heroes (as the feet were crossed on the tombs of crusaders) to indicate the greatest deed of the deceased.

A great deal of this worship of “Sports” is the confusion, owing to the similarity of the sound and spelling, between “sport” and “sports.”

“Sport” is the backbone of all manhood. It is the hunting instinct inherent in all healthy, normal males; it means the cultivation of skill in shooting and horsemanship, and men proficient in it are ready to rise in the defence of their country.

This is what “sport” means. Now, however, the term “sportsman” is employed to mean a man who has never fired a shot or swung his leg over a horse, but one who is merely a kicker or hitter of balls, or worse, one who sits sucking at a cigarette watching others playing games. The things he indulges in are called “sports,” and it is “sports” which, before the war, were considered to overshadow all else, and were taught at schools and colleges.

A feeble old man, past active participation in “sport” can be, of course, excused if he keeps himself in health by playing golf, but a healthy young man should shoot or ride.

The general public, not knowing the training necessary before a man can either shoot or ride, imagines that there is no necessity to learn either.

They think that the moment a man puts on a military uniform he can ride in a cavalry charge, break wild horses, or hit a man a thousand yards off with either pistol or rifle.Besides the absence of skill in shooting, there is not in such men the instinct to shoot.

A shooting man has in him the instinct of shooting, so innate that he aims and presses the trigger as instinctively as he lifts his foot when stepping off the road on to the curb.

He does not have to think at all.

If he is crossing a field in which there is a savage bull, when carrying a gun, rifle, or pistol, his only anxiety is not to be compelled to shoot. It might get him into trouble with the farmer. Any danger to himself from the bull he knows does not exist.

A man who knows nothing about shooting, even if given a loaded pistol, gun, or rifle, before crossing the field, would be more afraid of the firearm going off than of the bull, and, if attacked, would club the gun or rifle to hit the bull with, or would throw the pistol at it.

Painters of battle pictures depict soldiers using their rifles as clubs or pikes, not as shooting with them.

As an artist myself, I know one excuse for this.

You need a model who is a shooting man, to pose correctly for a soldier shooting. Such a model is expensive, but you can get any one to pose as a man clubbing with the butt end of his rifle.

When I say that every able-bodied man should know how to shoot, and that it is a disgrace if a man cannot both shoot and ride, I am answered: “Shooting is a gift, I could not learn to shoot if I tried all my life.” This is nonsense. A man may be more apt for it, which generally means that he has a liking for it; and this enables him to learn to shoot sooner and to become a better shot. But any normal man, and with even moderately good sight, can learn to shoot well enough to make of himself a very dangerous opponent.

It is the way shooting competitions are conducted (as I will explain later), which makes shooting so uninteresting to the average man.

It is to him like having to take a black draught of medicine.

I confess the usual shooting gallery has the same effect on me; I always pass by on the other side when I see the notice “Shooting Gallery.”

The constant paragraphs in the papers announcing a “did not know it was loaded” accident bear testimony to how ignorant the public are of even the elementary knowledge (I will not say common sense), not to point a firearm at another in play.

The public think that a bullet goes only where the shooter wants it to go, “You pull the trigger and the bullet does the rest” sort of idea.

They believe the bullet goes direct of itself to that object and stops there, when the trigger is pulled. They have no idea that the bullet may miss that object and hit someone beyond.

People will stand in the direct line of fire to watch a wounded buck in a park being shot, and are indignant if asked to move to one side.

They think it is absolutely safe to fire into the air, even in a crowded city. They do not think that the falling bullet may do any injury.

As there is only slight danger from falling shot, this fosters the idea. They do not know the difference between a shotgun or rifle. Both are “sporting rifles” to them and a military rifle is a “gun.”

A man does not put a razor to the throat of another in play, but he thinks it “humour” to take up a firearm, point it at another and pull the trigger.

The extraordinary thing is that if the “did not know it was loaded” man were taken to a range and asked to hit a target, he would miss it every shot, but he never misses his victim when he is playing at the game of “I did not know it was loaded.” He kills his victim every time.

The reason is that the fool takes very good care to go up to within a few inches of his victim before killing him with his “I did not know it was loaded” joke.

Some people have no sense of humour.

They handle horses in the same way, but, fortunately, animals make allowance for ignorance in human beings but a firearm makes no such allowance. Therefore there are fewer accidents to human beings from horses than from firearms, in proportion to the silly things the humans do.

A dog will allow a small child to poke its fingers in its eyes. If a grown person attempted it he would get bitten, but a pistol makes no such distinction.

I was being shown round a remount depot where the horses were picketed out with a hind leg tethered to a peg, when a sour-looking, underbred artillery horse, began kicking at his neighbour.

The horse kicked himself free and trotted off to the corner of the field, where he stood, sulkily, with his ears laid back, a piece of rope wedged between his near hind shoe and the foot.

A man was ordered to bring the horse back. He was wearing a pince-nez of very near sighted type.

Now what he ought to have done was to first catch the horse, taking care not to get kicked whilst doing so, then to hold up a fore leg (so that the horse could not kick), whilst someone else removed the bit of rope from the hind shoe, standing to one side.

Instead, he walked up straight behind the horse. When he got within a few yards of him, to my intense horror, he went down on his hands and knees and began crawling towards the horse’s hind legs.

The horse had been laying back his ears and showing the whites of his eyes and measuring the distance for a kick at the man.

This manoeuvre on the man’s part, however, so surprised the horse that he stood quite still, looking at the man enquiringly.

The man crawled up close to the horse’s heels, took out his pocket knife and, putting his nose within a few inches of the horse’s near hind foot, quietly sawed away at the piece of rope with his blunt pocket knife and jerked the ends out from between the shoe and hoof. The horse stood like an angel all the time.

The man to this day has not the least idea he ran any risk or performed an act worthy of the V. C.

The horse evidently thought such a fool was not worth kicking. There is no fun kicking a man who is not frightened.