Part 4

It is only necessary to watch small children splash about in pool or bath to understand what great joy can be given them and in a very easy manner. Taught and helped they make marvellous progress and even the quite small ones will strive to perfect themselves in stroke or dive--also love of the water seems to breed good temper and good fellowship, therefore surely that love is to be encouraged. As to the harm that can be got from swimming I think it is the same that can be found in any exercise that is practised in a harmful manner. Overstrain is particularly liable in children who are allowed and encouraged to race each other until their hearts are bumping, which also leads to bad swimming. I am sure no serious racing ought to be allowed to the young until the strokes are sure and perfect. Again, children, in baths especially, are allowed to stay in far too long. No time limit can be given, I know, as one child can stay in the water a great deal longer than another, but constantly one sees children blue with cold and exhaustion, and when they are taken out of the water only too often parents and teachers hurry them off to stand under a hot shower-bath or, a still worse evil, take them into the hot room of a Turkish bath to get warmed up, consequently an overtired, flushed child is the result, instead of a happy, brisk, and refreshed one. Less time in the water, and, if cold, a few exercises or a romp to warm up after, will be far more successful and also stop the plaint which is often dinned into our ears--‘Such a pity my child can’t learn to swim, but she or he always catches cold afterwards.’ Small children can learn, apart from the ordinary breast and side strokes, all the so-called fancy work in the water, of which there are many different varieties--all of them being a great aid to gracefulness and sureness, and delighting children as well as grown-up people.

Personally I am no believer in high diving for young children, as the muscles are seldom either strong or controlled enough to make a fair certainty of the dive being a good one, and if it isn’t I do not think it is good for a small child to hit the water in the wrong position. They certainly ought to learn to dive and to dive well, but not from more than a ten-feet board--until they can really make a certainty of a good clean dive from that height. I mention this as often one sees ambitious parents urging on their children to dive from a thirteen or fourteen feet board, when they cannot properly dive from three feet. Of course a good teacher will not permit this, but good teachers are few. Grown-up people also often make the same mistake, and go falling off high boards long before they can dive from a low one. Also in the minds of non-swimmers or divers there seems to exist the curious belief that high diving is a gift. I have often been met with reproachful looks after a dive, and the words, ‘I really don’t know how you do it, it is _quite_ wonderful; and you know I have tried and I can’t spring a bit like you can; isn’t it a shame!’ When answered somewhat prosaically that it has taken fourteen years of hard practice to acquire that spring, and that it is necessary to have the muscles developed in the legs and body before it is possible to dive at all with any skill, watch the non-swimmer’s mouth and you will see the one word ‘liar’ forming silently thereon! These are a type who appear in swimming-baths and stand about on the edge rarely venturing into the water, and, when they do, struggle about in a half-drowned condition, believing that to show any muscle or knowledge of swimming is to be thoroughly ungraceful--if not hopelessly vulgar.

They also have another trying habit, and that is of paddling feebly round in circles always just on the spot where the divers from the high boards must enter the water. When the frantic instructor tries to explain the situation, they stare wildly round the edge, but nothing will ever induce them to look up to where the danger comes from. More than once I have become weak from laughter, standing on a high board watching the instructor and paddler--also when eventually the whole bath starts shouting at them and they are removed, it is a certainty that in a sort of hypnotised condition they will be back in the same spot shortly. There is also another type very prevalent at swimming-baths, as I know for my sins, and these are women who come and stand about on the edge of the baths, for what reason I never could discover, unless it is to talk, but it seems a damp and uncomfortable spot for indulging in conversation. They always stand with their backs to the water, and seem to be absolutely unconscious of both bath and swimmers. It does not the least matter that there may be the most convenient balcony with comfortable chairs provided for those who wish to watch the swimming, not at all--nothing short of violence will move them, and if there is a low diving-board handy, they always stand on it. Polite remarks such as, ‘I wish to dive, please,’ or ‘Please I want the board,’ uttered in a beseeching fashion, has no effect whatever. For years I treated these people with politeness, but eventually my temper broke, with excellent results, and I have now adopted a way which is instantaneously effective, and I offer the suggestion with great pleasure to any of my fellow-swimmers who have suffered in the same manner.

Here it is--brush past them heavily once or twice so that they get thoroughly wet, if that is not effective run lightly up behind and shout ‘_Board!_’ with all the strength your lungs are capable of, that will generally cause them to jump several feet into the air, and while their nerves are still trembling place them in the hands of an attendant to conduct to the aforesaid balcony! It is extraordinary how keen people get about swimming even when they have taken it up quite late in life--I know several who swim regularly, and work away at diving with the greatest diligence, and it is much to their credit, as learning diving after you are full grown is a most painful exercise, and if you are well on in years and heavy I should have thought doubly so--and one would have imagined not a very healthy exercise, but I know one or two women who are well past middle age who have only the last year or two taken up swimming and diving, and they seem to benefit greatly by it. I think it a very great question as to whether giving swimming-baths to the very poor is an advantage or not--I do not mean for a moment that they ought not to have swimming-baths and also learn to swim, but done as things are at present with insufficient instruction, and water that is changed only once or twice a week, the risk of infection is great. If people who do not wash regularly use swimming-baths, and a bath with soap is not made compulsory before entering the public water, then running water through the bath ought to be the alternative. Let me once more urge parents to have their children taught to swim, in the proper fashion, and with the proper ideas as to its value and place in life, for there is no better sport or exercise than swimming and diving to instil in a child’s mind purity and self-control, and drive away that present-day great usurper of the mind, uncleanliness of thought, the beginnings of which, alas! can sometimes nowadays be seen in even the quite young. BIG GAME SHOOTING Nowadays it is the fashion for the wealthy young man about town to go to India or Africa to hunt big game. So it may be of interest to discuss a little this big game shooting from an educational point of view--which point of view had not arisen, and of which there was no need, before or during the last generation. But, alas! different times and different men have turned hunting into a mere pastime of the lowest kind--into an excuse for killing in an unsportsmanlike fashion, to be used as a sop for a feeble, decadent vanity.

Such mighty hunters as Mr. Selous and the late Captain Gordon Cumming made it possible only to honour and respect in every way such men, who hunted in a clean, hard, fearless manner, spending their lives and caring little of the way they risked them, so long as the task set was accomplished. There was no necessity then to question as to the sportsmanlike manner in which big game was hunted. It is more than a pity that the same cannot be said at the present day. In imagination one sees the many mighty hunters of bygone days: the men who laboured and sweated in Africa during the time when elephant ivory was a paying game. The years of hardship, of carrying one’s life in one’s hand--the only thing that kept death away, an antiquated rifle that took a minute to load--these were men to whose memory all real sportsmen must doff their hats and bend their heads in reverence. One or two are still left to us, and written on their faces is the story of the lives they have led--a story clean and fine to read--eyes that look out with no shiftless look, bright and clear as steel; firm lips that have suffered, perhaps, but have never trembled from fear; lines drawn plentifully by the sun-god, but each line shaped by a wholesome thought. No sagging lines of self-indulgence in these faces; even if they had their merry roystering times on their few returns to civilisation, they wiped out the marks by the months of arduous and self-denying living which they spent hunting.

Some to make money, others because they had been born hunters and would continue to hunt until the Most Mighty of all Hunters stretched forth His hand and claimed them in their turn. Sportsmen these in the greatest sense of the word. Turn in your graves, ye who have passed on! Or, rather, let us pray that it is denied to you to see the men and methods that follow so feebly in your footsteps. Let me try and compare the going forth to hunt of a rich young man of the present day, and one of these old hunters. The rich young man starts, say, from Mombasa--it is the pet place of rich young men, as it is easily got at, and a non-feverish hunting-ground can be reached with little trouble. He, the rich young man, is quite often accompanied by a professional white hunter, who takes all trouble from off his shoulders, engages his men, runs the whole outfit for him, and generally acts as male nurse to the rich young man, seeing that he does not run his valuable head anywhere in the direction that danger might lurk. He is, as a rule, a first-class shot, so if his charge misses or maims a dangerous animal, he can always rectify matters.

In fact, he sets the scene, writes the play, acts as audience, and the rich young man plays the chief part, and the whole thing as much resembles real big game hunting as the theatre resembles real life. Of course the running of the caravan is in itself no light work, as the rich young man would find it terribly uncomfortable to travel with less than sixty or ninety men, there are so many things to carry, tents, chairs of different kinds to rest the aching back, tables, dozens of plates, spoons, forks, and knives, beds, a mosquito-room to dine in, champagne to restore the rich young man after his fatiguing day, two or three portmanteaus of clothes--he might get fever if he did not change constantly, and to sit about in sweaty clothes is very dangerous he has heard--and then, my God! he might die, if he hasn’t brought a doctor with him this time: he most certainly will if he ventures back into Africa again. The above may seem exaggerated, but I can most sincerely assure my readers that it is not. It is merely the modern young man’s idea of sport. Bah! let me take a deep, clean breath, and get back to talking about the real men, the hunters of old whom we can respect and look up to, and feel glad that sometimes they will let us sit at their feet, and learn from them a little of the wisdom they have massed together during years of solitary travel. They are always quite modest men, putting little value on their brave deeds, regarding it all in the day’s work--though sometimes their eyes will sparkle as they tell of some great adventure in bygone days. For it is near to their hearts, this life of wandering, and they would lead no other. To do an unfair or cowardly act would be an impossibility to these men, they are just good sportsmen, and they want no fairer name.

How different their hunting! One or two men would carry all they needed for months of travel; no stock of tinned food here, they ate what they killed, and if they killed nothing, went without. A little flour and rice, a knife, a spoon, perhaps a fork!--it was not a necessity, so why take it? A small tent, a few odds-and-ends, a couple of shirts. Everything worked down to the lowest limit. Not how much can we take--the new gospel--but how much can we do without, and they did without most things. They were there to hunt to the best of their ability, not to coddle their bodies; they would have been ashamed to do that at any time, as coddled bodies and clean souls do not as a rule go together, and these men were essentially clean-souled. Yes, they were out to hunt big game--man against beast--teeth and claws against rifle--fair and square we met him and the best of us won.

Sometimes they died of fever, sometimes they were killed by the animals they hunted--but one thing may be a certainty, and that is that each and all who met his death did so fearlessly and with no repining. They had taken the chances, and if the chances were too many for them, it was all in the day’s work. How pitifully few of our modern young men will stand comparison with these old hunters--and it is in the comparing of the old with the new which brings up the question in one’s mind as to whether it is not actually excessively wrong from all points of view to hunt in the manner indulged in by the man of the present day. The question as to our right in the taking of animal life is bound, I suppose, to arise in the minds of all who have children to educate, and who think at all--and I personally find it one extremely hard to answer, and am fain to make a compromise, which I know is, as a rule, a great mistake: the young as a rule do not question, they hunt and take life in a purely heartless fashion, seeming to feel no doubt as to the right or the wrong of it, and while this is felt I should say hunt if--and this is a very large if--the hunting is done so that benefit for mind and body is got from it; but there is little doubt that, indulged in as it is by the rich at present, it becomes a merely degraded form of amusement. In the future, perhaps, we shall understand more clearly and realise more definitely as to whether the taking of an animal’s life is wrong or not. Let me try and explain what I mean when I say sport ought only to be indulged in when of benefit to body and soul. It seems to me the only permissible excuse for killing ought to be, firstly, for food; and secondly--by far the most important--that in the pursuit and killing of game, a man becomes a finer, cleaner type owing to the life he is forced to lead during that pursuit. It is a life in the open air.

He has to work hard, to lead a primitive life, and generally has a chance to brush away from his mind and body the uncleanly thoughts and clothes that are fostered and imposed by civilisation. He must be independent, relying only on his own strength and skill; he must live and hunt as nearly as possible as his savage forefathers lived and hunted, and, having shaken clear of civilisation, he has time to examine his mind and generally get things into their proper perspective. He gives himself a chance to face his God and himself if he does this fairly (and a few months of a primitive, clean life will make him do it in spite of himself); he will come back from his hunting trip a better, saner, and stronger man mentally and physically than when he started, and his hunting will have provided the object necessary to encourage him to lead this kind of a life. And now we come back to the question, to kill or not to kill. There are certain people, but rarely young people, who can go out and lead a hard, primitive life, for the sheer love of the thing and for the good of their souls, and not need any definite object to lure them on and keep their minds busy. But the average man has travelled such a little way along the big road of thought, that he requires to have something to amuse the superficial part of his mind while he is straightening and patching his tired soul and body. Therefore, if killing is only used as an excuse for leading a clean, healthy life, and it is done in a sportsmanlike fashion, it seems to my humble judgment better to hunt and be clean, than not hunt and be unclean. A compromise, I know, but the only one my poor judgment allows me.

If sport is not undertaken to make a better man of you, nowadays, when it is not a necessity to hunt to live, then leave it alone, for it can only deteriorate and hinder. Worthless is the man who goes out hunting with no reason for his going beyond nurturing his personal vanity, with the desire only of bringing home so many heads and skins and showing them off to admiring relations and friends. Only too often, he cares little if the trophies were gotten in a sportsmanlike manner; he goes, accompanied by all the trappings and comforts of civilisation, everything arranged and made easy, often even to having the animals he hunts found and marked down for him. In fact, he sets forth to accomplish a series of well-arranged animal murders, and he calls it sport. It would be truly instructive, if it were possible, to turn one of these so-called men loose in Africa out of reach of civilisation, and make him live as the real hunter of past days lived, dependent entirely on his own eyesight, skill, and endurance. I very much doubt if one week would not see him dying or dead, as from constant self-indulgence from earliest youth, and soft living of all kinds, his eyesight is rotten, his hearing is of no use whatever, and his staying power, unless bolstered up by incessant stimulants, does not exist at all. Unless the hunter of old had had all his senses very finely developed, he would not have got very far, and Africa would have claimed more white lives than she has already done. The unfortunate thing is that this type of decadent young man who overruns the healthy hunting-grounds of Africa, has done, and is doing, a great deal of harm to sport.

He has more money than brains and he has no self-respect whatever. Therefore he indulges in a form of sport that is no sport at all, but merely the seeking of a worn-out, unhealthy mind after amusement. He goes in for a form of vice in sport, which is a lust to kill in large numbers--how, does not in the least matter, it is the quantity that matters; quality even does not attract him largely, rather three small heads than one good one. Also, to be cruel is perhaps more amusing than not to be cruel. I do not think I am wrong in saying that in the old days the man who did not kill as quickly and cleanly as possible would have been called a bad sportsman. Boys were brought up to consider sport a very serious thing, and to be named a good sportsman more or less hall-marked you. They regarded sport very seriously, these great-grandfathers of ours, and often in a manner which would appear to us with wider interests somewhat ridiculous. But the trouble is that sport is still freely indulged in--big game hunting more than it used to be, since great distances can now be covered with ease and comfort--and the good old rules as to what made a good sportsman and what didn’t, have, instead of becoming more stringent, almost ceased to exist.

The high ideals which the old sportsmen kept constantly in front of them have gone, and in their place reigns a most unwholesome desire to slaughter at all costs, which has naturally led to many cruel forms of hunting that would not have been tolerated in the old days. Fair play for man and beast was the gospel of the old hunters. Amusement for the hunter is the cry nowadays, and a poor lot of human beings indulging in a very poor form of sport is the result. A ceaseless endeavour to kill dangerous animals, and to remain perfectly safe while doing so, is, from a sportsman’s point of view, a somewhat nauseating sight. A favourite device of this sort is tying up a live animal, such as a donkey or a goat, climbing up a tree to a safe perch, and from there shooting lions, &c., which will come to devour the tie-up. The feelings of the said tie-up during the hours of waiting do not require much imagination to realise. Hunting a lion with a pack of hounds, four or five men on ponies with rifles, is another very favourite pastime nowadays. It has its advantages in being fairly safe--for the men; the hounds, of course, may suffer.