TCDE-Team at 15:45, 18 August 2016

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''Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit'' is a letter written by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] first published in [[The Times]] on 14 june 1905.

== Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit ==
[[File:The-Times-1905-06-14-rifle-shooting-national-pursuit.jpg|250px|right|thumb|[[The Times]] (14 june 1905)]]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir, — Will you permit me, as one who has had some small
experience of the founding and working of such clubs, to say a few
words, now that Lord Roberts's splendid appeal to the nation is
likely to give the movement a fresh impetus, and to turn what has
been a sporadic development, depending upon local spirit and
generosity, into a truly national organisation?

The first point which is worth insisting upon is that a man
trained at a miniature range (whether Morris tube or otherwise)
does become an efficient shot almost at once when he is allowed to
use a full range. What with the low trajectory and the absence of
recoil in the modern rifle the handling of the weapon is much the
same in each case. I am speaking now of an outdoor miniature
range, a hundred yards long, where a man must allow for windage,
and where he must raise his sights to fire. Such a range is not a
mere toy, but can and does produce riflemen who speedily become
excellent service shots. If the country were covered with such
ranges we could soon realise Lord Roberts's ideal of a nation of
marksmen. Since it is becoming more and more clear that our
alternative in the future will lie between some form of actual
compulsory service (a hateful but possibly an inevitable measure)
and a great development of the rifle club movement, it is a very
serious matter to consider what are the easiest and most practical
steps to bring the latter into existence.

This leads me to the second point worth insisting upon, which is
that the miniature rifle range, besides being efficient, is
exceedingly cheap. Given the land, which should be not less than a
hundred yards long and twenty yards broad, with a natural or
artificial bank at the end of it, the remaining cost of rifles, targets,
markers pits and the rest of it should not come to more than £50.
There are few parishes, one would hope, where some landowner
would not spare a strip of his land for a patriotic purpose.
Common land or heath land which has no other value, is exactly
that which is best adapted for a small range. Therefore, in many
cases the young club would only be faced by the necessity of
finding the small sum already mentioned, with some additional
subscriptions for the purpose of providing small prizes or badges
for successful riflemen.

At present, in hundreds of places, this money has been found by
local effort, and the club has been duly started. In many cases it
has gone on running successfully. In many others it has
languished after the first novelty was past. The reason for the
latter state of things is sometimes, as in the district where I reside,
that most of the young men have actually learned to shoot to some
extent, and the clubs have therefore done their work. But
indifference is also due to the fact that the man has to pay some
small fee towards the upkeep of the club, and has also to pay for the
cartridges which he uses. A poor working man feels very naturally,
that instead of paying he should rather be paid, since he is giving
up his time to the services of the State. With free clubs and free
cartridges a great stumbling-block would be removed. As the long
Morris tube cartridges, which are, in my opinion, the best for the
purpose, can be retailed at four a penny, the drain upon the public
purse would not be a serious one.

If the ranges are, as I have tried to show, both efficient and
cheap, the next point is to determine how they could be best
organised as a public institution all over the country. As Lord
Roberts says, it was the skill acquired at the parish butts which
made England the first military Power in Europe during the
fourteenth century. My suggestion is that the parish butts be
restored in the shape of a parish miniature range. For the
establishment and control of this we have an existing organisation
in the shape of the parish council. I think that if the matter were
handed over to the parish councils in rural England, and to the
town councils (or committees thereof) in the small towns, with
definite orders to construct such ranges and with power to levy a
small rate towards their formation and upkeep, we would within a
twelvemonth have exactly such a network of rifle clubs as is
needed to realise that condition which is our alternative to
national service. With a controlling head in London and a local
inspector in each county to check or encourage the parish councils,
a great question could be solved with a ''minimum'' of friction and
expense.

What would be needed then to attain this great end? Simply a
law by which each parish council must establish a rifle club, with
power to levy the money for that end. Also a trifling addition to our
war budget for the inspectors and central authority. It seems a
very tiny matter when compared to the revulsion of our habits and
dislocation of our lives implied in national service. Having got the
butts, would it be necessary to pass a further law making some use
of them compulsory for every adult in the parish? We could only
answer that question when we saw how far they were voluntarily
used when a couple of hundred rounds were given free to every
applicant. But suppose that it was eventually necessary to pass
such a law, it is surely the very smallest demand that any country
in Europe makes upon its citizens.

In conclusion, we should have to consider the question of
Sunday shooting. It was the Sunday shooting which gave the
nation the benefit of the archery butts in the Middle Ages. What is
the use of the most perfect machinery if the individual has no time
in which to use it? So long as the workmen have only one half
holiday a week it is. I fear, useless to hope that any but a very small
proportion of them will voluntarily spend it at the butts. Sunday
shooting, out of church hours, is equally permitted in Catholic and
Calvinistic countries - indeed, it is more characteristic of the latter
- so that its reprobation seems to be not so much a matter of
religion as of local custom and prejudice. For my own part it seems
to me that our young men would be better employed in learning to
serve their country than in standing round doing nothing at the
road corners. No doubt this introduces another and very
controversial subject; but I am convinced that it is bound up with
the first, and is very essential to its solution.

Yours faithfully,

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.<br />
Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere.

----
* [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:Complete Works|Back to Complete Works]]
* [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle|Back to Conan Doyle]]

Rifle Shooting as a National Pursuit - Revision history

TCDE-Team at 15:45, 18 August 2016