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HOW BRITISH OFFICERS ARE GROWN . It might be said with little risk of mistake that the victories of an army will be in direct ratio to the capacities of its officers . The reason is clear : the officers are the nerves of the army , its mediums of sensation , intelligence , and direction . They are begotten out of the same stock with the people that
compose the ranks ; but selected from this people , trained to a higher calling , they represent ¦ with the courage and the natural military capacity the scientific art of the race . Given , good officers , and you will in most cases find good soldiers ; not only because the soldiers will be well-governed , but because the quality of the two will be aboriginally the samethe stuff of which the men are made the
same . But good soldiers may exist , and yet good officers may be wanting , through faults of system , instead of nature . The general reader needs be told that the conduct of a regiment will depend upon its officers . It has been observed of the ^ French soldiers that they will ¦ follow if the officers will lead—of the officers , that they are always ready to take the lead . -In our own army , disasters and disgrace have been incurred by soldiers for deficiencies in
the officers . Regiments have turned and run away , have been publicly reprimanded , possibly marked with permanent disgrace , where the blame lay upon the officers ,. The officers may be , and in most cases were , as brave as the men ; but if they are deficient either in training or experience , they may not know what to do ; and blundering may simulate cowardice . A cavalry regiment must achieve its best exploits at a dashing pace ; but a dashing pace in , the wrong direction will have a very equivocal , appearance ; and it is well known that unless an
officer be well studied and trained in the tendencies of a cavalry regiment to break ita ranks , the regiment may get " out of hand , " and become an embarrassment instead of an aid . Bad weapons may entail suffering upon soldiers , but their place may be supplied by resolute self-sacrifice in the men and dashing invention in the officers . Bad clothing , bad health , even deficient drill , have not prevented great exploits , as the annals of Napoleon or "Wellington can attest . But with indifferent officers , an army is without intelligence or power of correct action ; ita . nerves are vitiated—it ia insane .
It is a somewhat formidable fact , therefore , that oii the commencement of what appears likely to be a great war , our Government should be looking to its actual store of officers , and find it in a state anything but satisfactory . Its conditions are the reverse of those which promise victorious results of action . We have , indeed , insuperable faith in the power of the English character to surmount difficulties , and in its inborn aptitude for military service . "We believe that in no
country do the natural faculties for action survive to so great an age , and in no country does the inherent faculty of intelligent application , —the resolve to do the right thing if possible , and at once , go so far as to supply deficiencies of training . But , according to the report of the Commiaaioaera on promotion , the officers that we actually possess are , speaking generally , either too old For the
service required of them , or untrained for service , —are cither decrepid or raw . Tliia ia the result of the system of promotion which has followed the genius of our cominorcinl country in considering rather the interests of tho individual , or the rights of a purchaser , than the necessities of tho State , or tho efficiency of the whole army . This commercial tendency was perhaps aggravated in its bad effect by the blind confidence that peace would last for ever ; tho army was treated
partly as a gewgaw , a concession to old ideas of aristocratic government and war upon the continent ; and partly as an instrument requisite for keeping down riots at home ; and it was thought that old officers , or crude officers would do as well for pageantry or home campaigns as any other . The younger men were allowed to purchase showy sinecures , while the officers of the late v ? ar remained as honorary pensioners . In 1840 there was an examination into the
existing system , which was thoroughly exposed ; but it was not thought necessary to do anything during the peace ; so the abuse has continued to be re-exposed . We have crowds of colonels and generals of venerable age , sixty , sixty-five and seventy years and more . Of 182 colonels on full pay , 146 are above forty years of age , and 53 are between sixty ana sixty-five . Of 177 lieutenantcolonels on full pay , 161 are above forty , and 78 are between sixty and sixty-five . The average age of the major-generals at present , is sixty-five ; lieutenant-generals are of course older .
" The army cannot be said to be efficient in all its ranks wlaen , in the grade from which the commander must foe chosen , upon whose vigour antl energy the success of a campaign may mainly depend , there are no officers below that age after which but few men possess the physical strength necessary to endure the privations and fatigues' incidental to service in the field . Nor is the evil limited to this . There results from it this further disadvantage : either
inexperienced commanders are employed , or , if experienced , their experience is wasted . Thus , should some of these major-generals he still young enough for employment in . the field , they are still too old to make the experience they so gain available for further services . One command , probably , brings them to an age when retirement from active service becomes necessary , and the experience they have gained is lost to the country , and , as it -were , buried with them , and they are again succeeded by untried
men . " It is stated , in his evidence before the commission of 1840 , by Lord Fitzroy Somerset , that in the last war , ' -with the exception of Lord Lyndoch and Sir Thomas Picton , they had no general officers in command above forty years of age . ' They were all between thirty-five and forty . " This is the result of promotion by seniority . It is a system which does no credit to the profession , for it presumes that every man must l ) e of equal capacity—that any man
for qualifying promotion by seniority with conditions of actual service , and with the promotion of officers to particular service for the benefit of the state , or with promotion as a reward for brilliant exploits , will diminiah the evil with which we liave to contend ; but if it may within a few years remove the multitude of aged officers on whom we have to depend at present , will it supply the trained officers , possessing the strength and fire of youth , whom we may require at a month ' s notice ?
If the Government , in whose hands our passive countrymen leave the affairs of the nation , were really impressed with true patriotism , or with a full sense of responsibility , it would grapple with this difficulty in a much more serious fashion , and would , at once , break up a system that is oppressive to the English people , beneficial only to our enemies . Slow and partial " retirements , " partial promotion for service , occasional promotion in reward of merit—but always amongst the list of commissioned officers— -are
measures far from being enough to introduce the true quantum of youth , blood , and ambitious spirit into the army , tinder the Bourbons , before the revolution , the French army had become the victim of routine ; its commanders had made'it a toy , had wasted their attention upon coxcombical refinements in evolutions , such as those which exasperate Captain Nolan , in our own day , in , pur own cavalry ; and the army proved to be inefficient and tame , until a comparatively violent measure introduced officers of the tiers etat into its
ranks . New blood was infused , men were sown about the army fired with the ambition of achieving an immense social elevation for themselves , and the beneficial result anticipated was realised . At present , while our officers are deadened by the long occupancy of a monopoly for a class , undisturbed by competition from other classes ; those classes of society who have not enjoyed elevation , and
to whom , therefore , it would have the keenest zest which ambition could give , are kept out . There are men in the ranks , or men who are promoted to the dignity of a non-commissioned officer , who have by nature all the qualities that the rank of officer requires . Place them in the upper ranks , and their emulation would be , at all events , an . useful stimulus in its competition to those who are there by birth . ,
who can purchase a commission has outy to grow into a general officer . It presumes , indeed , what is quite counter to the fact , that officers are , like wine , improved with age . Counter to reason , and counter to fact , the system could of course only have bad results , and we see , on the authority of commissioners representing the highest officials in the army and in the military department , without regard to party , that our officers are either too old for service or too inexperienced for the field .
Again , however , let us say , at the cost of fatiguing the attention of our readers , that it ia idle waste of work to heap censure upon the Government for those abuses . "We charge them upon the people . The people has sold its birthright for a mess of pottage—it has given up ita duty of self-defence to be free for the pursuit of lucre . It is natural that the worst abuse of a state which has sur-I'endored its own right in . tho possession of arms to a class , should bo found in tho
In the approaching contest , which may shake all Europe , we cannot beforehand tell what armies we may be called upon to face . It may bo that of Prussia , in which special facilities have been afforded to every youth of good birth for obtaining tho training of an officer . If "Waterloo were again to occur , the Napoleon of the futiu $ might find himself in face of an army officered by aged men or by untrained men , whereas that Napoleon of the future would find in hia own ranks colonels and captains , if not down to tho very sub-lioutennnts , who would bo still young , yot would havo beer * trained in the field in regimental and general commands . Tho BMoaus and tho ! Laiuoriaioro&
army . We often "boast of our guarantees for political liberty , but there is no guarantee like a material guarantee , and those which we boast aro likely enough to break down on trial , unless , through the irrepressible energy of tho English character , our sons should rou ghly recover that which our fathers have as tamely lost , and which wo havo as tamely permitted to bo nlionatod from ua . Wo sneer at the
oppression undergone by tho French ; but , in truth , no conqueror could long put upon the French people a Government in which they did not concur , becaiiBo tho French , not having been long alienated from the use and practice of arms , would speedily put tho question to tho issue of battle . And in that oppressed country of Franco , a fixod proportion of the commissions ia reserved for men who rise from the ranks . The Prussian ICing cannot , in groat matters , permanently
contrawero young mon when they ioso to their general command—young men with full and recent oxporienoo . Wo havo gomo approach to the same class in our Indian and Capo ofneers ; but the system of promotion has kept tho class scanty in numbers , and haa debarred it from ita full opportunities . Tho plan proposed by the coinmisaionerH
Untitled Article
660 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 15, 1854, page 660, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2047/page/12/
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