Originally Posted by
Geezer
Sorry for the slight derail earlier (but isn’t that what conversation is about - you start off discussing football and end up with whether you’d rather have had dinner in the 70s with Roger Moore or Tony Curtis? Or is that just me?).
Someone (Sherlock Holmes?) said that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But I am struck that no-one here has evidence of organised air rifle competitions in Wilhelmine Germany paralleling bell target and miniature rifle in the U.K., both of which are very well-documented. Unlike either the HY days, or post-1951 when they basically invented 10M comps and the associated rifles and pistols, very quickly.
My hypothesis (and I may be completely wrong) is that 1900s Germans did shoot a lot in an organised and competitive manner, but with centrefire, rimfire and even Flobert, (as well as hunting practice with c/f) but not with air guns, and that their air guns were, domestically, garden “toys” and export products.
Garvin is 100% right that our lacklustre performance in the Boer War was attributed by some of the ruling classes to the need, for the next war, to grow a rough, tough, fit, outdoor-minded proletariat skilled in marksmanship, leading to the 1890s and beyond boom in all sorts of shooting disciplines (not just bell target), the Scouts, the TA (Haldane reforms) etc.
That helped them avoid dealing with the myriad failures in the Boer War of political and military leadership, planning, and logistics. It was also largely pointless. Apart from the Haldane reforms to the army, if we had really wanted to prepare to win in 1914, we’d have trained civilians on systems engineering, logistics, gunnery, aeroplanes, and the operation of the Vickers gun.
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