THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1907. MOUNTAINEERING FOR SOLDIERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8534, 12 September 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1907. MOUNTAINEERING FOR SOLDIERS.

The British officer works a good deal harder than he used to, but he still regards outdoor games as one of his serious duties. A correspondent of the London Times contends, however, that if he is to be criticised it is not for devoting too much attention to sports, but for not discriminating sufficiently between, those which afford pleasant outdoor exercise, and train the hand and eye, and those which are of real value as training for war. Golf and pheasant-shooting should only be played as occasional 'diversions; polo and hunting stand higher, and big game shooting higher still, for it takes the sportsman : nto difficult country, and pits him against a cunning and relentless adversary. But every subaltern cannot shoot lions in East Africa, or even play pob or hunt. There is one sport accessible to most men, which provides ideal training for war, yet not one officer in a hundred takes it up. That sport is mountaineering. In mountain warfare an army ignorant of the elements of mountaineering will be as helpless as a flock of sheep in the midst of wolves, if it has to deal with an enemy led by men skilled in rock . and snow craft. The region which occupies most of the attention of our strategists is nothing but a great sea of mountains, says the correspondent, as difficult to move in as Switzerland was in tha days of Hannibal, and if Great Britain comes to fight Russia on the Indian irontier it will be of immense advantage to her to have

officers who can find their way about without being tied to the main routes. The complexion of the Natal campaign might have been altered if General Buller's staff had had sufficient knowledge of mountaineering to climb the barriers of the Dralcensburg, and had then fallen on the Boer communications. The conditions of mountaineering are very similar to those of active campaigning. Nothing ever happens on a mountain quite as was expected. A mountain has to be conquered by plan. Difficulties are constantly being met with which demand decision, nerve, judgment, and the power of ruling men. The danger of mountaineering is greatly exaggerated, but the surmounting and avoiding of danger by skill and judgment give the sport its greatest fascination. Then a good mountaineer must make a capable supply officer. He knows exactly what to carry; not for him are the 4lb tins of preserved meat supplied by the War Office to the\ troops in South Africa.