Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/69

 In the new world, after the first sharp pinch of necessity for protection against the savages had passed, military training degenerated in the same way. The company drills, which had begun bravely enough once a week, gradually ran down to once a quarter. The discipline and instruction amounted to almost nothing. The professional drill-masters, who had been specially imported for the purpose, either died off or tired of the job and returned to the more exciting fields of Edgehill, Marston Moor, and Dunbar. A prolonged period of peace added to the demoralization. The arms deteriorated, and were handled with increasing carelessness. Accidents were frequent, sometimes fatal. So were brawls and affrays, a “muster” affording capital opportunities to settle private grudges and pay off old scores. If swords were not precisely beaten into ploughshares, helmets were quite possibly converted into punch-bowls. Training days became little more than authorized occasions for letting off steam. Altogether, in the opinion of the Harvard College authorities, the militia was an excellent thing to keep their young divinity students away from.

The decline of discipline began very early. In 1641, the Reverend Thomas Shepard, minister at Cambridge and chief sponsor for Harvard College, evidently after viewing a drill of the local train-band, was moved to