Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 279, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1918 — JOHN PHILIP SOUSA THANK ON SHOOTING [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JOHN PHILIP SOUSA THANK ON SHOOTING

’p m IA/ith Rftth Pvaq Ooafi ■— men—Makeh Clever Demon- : stration of His Point I . . A OWn That’s the advlce-of John Philip Sousa, sometimes known as a bandmaster, sometimes as Lieutenant Sousa, U. S. N., but for the moment speaking as a trapshooter of long experience' and for some years president of the American Amateur Trapshooters’ association. * The trapshooters are in high glee lust now, because shotguns have been playing an important part in the re-« cent successes of our troops, so important a. part that'the Germans were provoked to the point of calling them barbarous, there being some subtle distinction in the German mind between scattering shot with fl shrapnel shell and with a shotgun, shell. The load they are reported as using In the shotguns in the trenches will go through a two-inch plank at I<X> yards, covering an area of nine square feet. ' “The Germans can never stand against our marksmen. We are. too good shots,” Sousa believes. “But why do you say, ‘Shoot with both eyes open? Isn’t it instinctive to close one eye when sighting a rifle?* “Yes, it Is instinctive, but most instinctive things are wrong. We have to specially train and put .checks on

our instincts all the time, and shooting is no exception. •'“Why should you use only eye when shooting? Do you look at s pretty girl with only one eye? Do you squint up one eye when you read ' “No, sir; my boy, keep both o: your eyes , open when you shoot—rile- or shotgun. Nature has taken car 1 that one eye will do the actual sighting—we call thatftlft pilot eye—an I that the other will remain passive ’The arrangement of vision varies in different people.’’ And to demonstrnte this point Sousa made the interviewer sight an object across the room through a finger ring, keeping both eyes open. “Now close one eye.” / The Interviewer did so, and the object was still in range. “Now the -other.” The object appeared a foot out of range. “That* merely shows that in your case the right eye is the pilot eye. But your passive left eye, if you .kept it open, would be roving around, doubling your horizon, and free to detect the slightest motion* elsewhere. “Let a Hun stick his head up three feet away froni where you happen to be aiming with one eye do-ed, and you’d probably never see hT.n. And you want to see-all the Hurts you can when you’ve got a gun handy. “So, I say, shoot wltlr both eyes open.”

John Philip Sousa.