216 
FOREST AND STREAM 
HOOTO^DAIL ©©[MIMHINnr 
on happenings of not© in the outdoor world 
THE LESSON OF OUR FOREFATHERS. 
HE arm of the early Americans was the rifle. Nearly 
three hundred years ago, when all the white population of 
the north Atlantic coast lived in half a dozen tiny villages, 
the settler began to learn that if he wished to be safe when he 
went abroad, he must carry his weapon with him. After a time 
the people who lived in these little settlements began to wonder 
what there was in the forest beyond, and to make their way 
back into the wilderness. 
Exploration went on, and more than a century ago had passed 
the Missouri river and was moving westward to the mountains; 
and the chief reliance of each man who pushed farther into 
the unknown beyond was his rifle. It furnished him food; it 
protected him from the attacks of enemies. 
They were riflemen and the sons of riflemen who won Amer¬ 
ica’s early wars. The traditions of America are full of the 
rifle and the riflemen; of shots made; of enemies conquered. 
The years passed and as there were more people, so there was 
less use for the rifle. Now, to many of us it is an unknown 
weapon. To-day there are neither riflemen nor the sons of 
riflemen. An untaught generation must be trained to look 
through the hindsights. We must relearn the lesson of our 
forefathers. 
It is time that a wider interest be felt in the matter of train¬ 
ing the citizens of the United States to use the rifle, for none 
of us can know when we may be called on to take it up in our 
own defense. 
The readers of Forest and Stream understand the use of 
firearms, and each one should take an active interest in 
this training and by influence and advice strive to arouse 
iii friends and acquaintances something of his own interest and 
his own enthusiasm. Patriots ready to aid in National Defense 
see our weakness; the War Department has appointed an officer 
to take charge of civilian rifle practice, and has appropriated 
money to set on foot the training of our citizens in rifle shoot¬ 
ing. By himself, the officer appointed can do little. The public 
must help. It must wake up to the country’s needs and must 
feel, and show, its interest in this work. Newspapers all over 
the land will share that awakening, and will do what they can 
to encourage the movement, but the interest must be felt and 
shown by the plain, everyday people—by the farmer, the store¬ 
keeper, the lawyer, the minister, the doctor—by us. 
Years ago the opportunity came to us to shoot a heavy, long- 
barrel, muzzle-loading rifle that had belonged to Davy Crockett. 
Along the barrel were written the famous words: “Be sure 
you’re right and then go ahead.” It thrilled one a little to read 
these words and then to put the old gun to his cheek and look 
along the barrel and hear the flat crack of the small powder 
charge. One thought of early times in the south, and of the 
stirring days that followed; of Texas and the Alamo, and how 
Crockett and Bowie and others gave up their lives. They were 
men! 
Let the readers of Forest and Stream remember America’s 
history and consider the question of preparing to defend our¬ 
selves—if we are attacked. As good Americans let them think 
also of the words spoken only a few days ago by one of the 
best of all Americans: “No man is fit to live in this country 
unless he is ready also to die for this country.” 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE INEVITABLE NOW 
IRRESPECTIVE of the ultimate issue, the impending crisis 
of war has forced the American people into a wholesome 
period of national analysis. 
1 he surprising evolution of international events, remote two 
years ago, but gradually encroaching in their development until 
they have reached our shores, has finally roused us to a proper 
sense of present as well as future peril. If we are to continue 
as a nation, those greater problems of a nation from which we 
have long been exempt must be squarely met. 
. Apace with the revelation of our inadequacy in the forma¬ 
tion of an army, the only salient remedy evolved points steadilv 
to universal service, under Federal control. During the past 
two years, the keenest minds of the country have been trained 
upon its merits and defects. They have kept the subject con¬ 
stantly before the public eye. They have definitely exploded the 
colossal fallacy that universal service is synonymous with uni- 
\ ersal belligerency. This obstacle removed, today press and 
public stand squarely behind it in overwhelming majority. 
A bill must pass for universal military training and service, 
under exclusive Federal control. 
The volunteer system to which every able-bodied American 
considers himself pledged, has through costly experience been 
declared worse than obsolete. In these days of modern effi¬ 
ciency, service without training and its attendant wastage of 
men, versus service with training, cannot be considered bv the 
practical mind. 
The National Guard system is, at its best, an unfair system, 
whereby the burden, which is legally universal and should be 
borne by all the physically fit, falls heavily upon the shoulders 
of the willing few. With co-ordination recognized as the cry¬ 
ing need of the hour, the retention and development of the 
National Guard system would mean the development of an 
army made up of forty-eight component parts. Organized and 
fostered under local political conditions, local influence can 
never be entirely obliterated. 
Climatic conditions have rendered the material interests of 
the New England states widely divergent from those of the 
gieat cotton belt; the problems of the mining ranges differ 
radically from those of the wheat growing farmer of the west¬ 
ern prairies. 
The vast area of the United States, the rapid accumulation 
of great fortunes and their immediate influence on class dis¬ 
tinctions, the steady influx and assimilation of the foreign born, 
offei increasing problems which keep well apace with the na¬ 
tion’s growth. 
A national army for defense is a Federal proposition. Stripped 
of all counter issues, it must exist as a unit representative of 
the central government, as united and clear in its significance 
as the national emblem that waves over us. 
The situation calls for some great leveller, whereby the youth 
of California, removed from his native heath, shall meet and 
1 ecognize the young manhood of the east; whereby the sons of 
Minnesota shall learn that the problems of the sons of Texas 
are his. own immediate concern; where rich and poor shall 
mingle in equality, united by a sense of national obligation. 
Universal service, under the national flag, will do all this. It 
will render our manhood more physically fit; it will teach the 
piinciples of good citizenship; it will emphasize the salient fact 
that we are pledged to share alike in the obligations of the re¬ 
public as well as in its privileges; it will crystallize into vital 
being the deeper significance of patriotism. 
In great emergencies, the patriotic zeal of the American 
people is safely to be relied upon. The sense of universal ob¬ 
ligation inculcated with the original principles on which the 
American republic was founded, exist not as a theory but as 
a fact. 
Rich in resources of men and material, the dominant issue 
of the hour resolves itself into the problem of co-ordination 
not alone of our material resources, but as a fusion into one 
great cumulative force of that patriotic spirit which latent or 
active exists in the hearts of the American people. 
50,000 SPORTSMEN TO ANSWER "READY!" 
T a time when every American must stop and think to 
what extent his services can be available and effective for 
the defense of his country, it is appropriate that the peri¬ 
odical press take stock of how usefully it can serve toward co¬ 
ordinating America’s ideals for the successful prosecution of 
the war. 
On the affection which binds members of Forest and Stream’s 
family of readers and contributors to it as a journal interpret¬ 
ing their outdoor Americanism, it is not necessary to dwell. 
That is a tie long established and widely recognized. 
The extent to which this influence is reaching out and be¬ 
coming more and more truly national in scope as each succeed¬ 
ing issue carries its message afield, can not be set forth better 
than in the language of figures. Of this issue—May —Forest 
and Stream will circulate fifty thousand, an appropriate mile¬ 
post to breast as the scope of its influence becomes perhaps an 
item in the moral and industrial readiness of America for war. 
This widening of its field has been accomplished through 
steady increases of some five thousand readers with each suc¬ 
ceeding issue through nearly half a year, and shows no signs 
of abating. 
