Sporting notions of present days and past

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IN FRESH WATER 169
Council on Education can do by refusing the
School Board's syllabus of instruction in swim-
ming and life-saving in the water, and insisting
that for their purposes only instruction on land
will be recognised, the unofficial mind (especially
if what headpiece you have holds affection and
respect for the science and practice) finds it is hard
to see. On one side—our side, we will call
it, readers—is a very strong argument indeed,
appealing to the dullest comprehension. Accord-
ing to my observation, the densest understanding
is to be quickened by a touch of
Z
s. d. Now,
this matter of swimming and making swimmers,
also educating them into usefulness as handy
people in the water to rescue such as are in
trouble, has very strong economic
Z
s. d. bearings.
As somebody remarks apropos other amusements,
we want soldiers. So we do. Also we want
our active strength in population kept on a
good level of all-round efficiency. To that end
the British tax and rate payer has to pull out,
and so acquires proprietary interest in the people
for whose raising in the way they should go his
pocket is so often touched. John Bull's family
costs him too much to allow of his affording
to waste it, and the difference between promot-
ing swimming in every way and snubbing its
forwarders, or, at least, we will call it putting
the drag on, means the difference between going
for reasonable protection of property and expos-
ing it to wicked waste. We are taught—the
English law teaches us—that a citizen's life
is not his own to play with, but belongs to his
country. I only wish we could get the pro-
prietor to freeze on to the notion that everyone
who cannot swim is taking unwarrantable liberties
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