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    660 THE LEADER. [Saturday,

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    HOW BRITISH OFFICERS ARE GROWN. It might...

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    660 The Leader. [Saturday,

    660 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

    How British Officers Are Grown. It Might...

    HOW BRITISH OFFICERS ARE GROWN . It might be said with little risk of mistake that the victories of an army will be in direct satio to the capacities of its officers . The reason , is clear i the officers are the nerves oi the army , its mediums of sensation , intelligence , and direction . They are begotten out 1 of the same stock with the people that

    cornpose the ranks ; but selected from this people , trained to a higher calling , they represent with the courage and the natural military eapacity 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 . Hegiments have turned and

    run away , hare 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 defteient 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 its 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 . ; its nerves are vitiated—it is insane .

    It is a somewhat formidable fact , therefore , that on 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 it possible , and at once , go so far as to supply deficiencies of training . But , according to tlie report of the Commissioners on promotion , the officers that we actually possess are , speaking generally , either too old lor the service required of thorn , or untrained for service , —areoithordecropid or raw . This ia the

    result of tho system of promotion which haa followed the genius of our commercial country in considering rather tho interests of the individual , or tho rights of a purchaser , than , the necessities of the State , or the efficiency of tho whole army . This commercial tendency was perhaps aggravated in its bad effect by the blind confidence that peace would last for over ; the 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 war 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 venerahle 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 and sixty-five . Of 177 lieutenantcolonels on full pay , 161 are above forty , and 78 are between srxty and sixty-five . The average age of the major-generals at present , is sixty-five ; lieutenant-generals are of course older . " The army cannot le said to be efficient in all its ranks when , in the grade from which , the commander must be chosen , upon whose vigour and 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 frem it this further disadvantage : either

    inexperienced commanders are employed ; or , if experienced , their experience is wasted . Thus , should some oTThese major-generals be 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 ia the result of promotion by seniority . It is a system which does no credit to the profession , for it presumes that every man must be of equal capacity—that any man

    who can purchase a commission has only 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 oould 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 .

    In the approaching contest , which may shake . all Europe , we cannot beforehand tell what armies wo may be > , called upon to face . It may be that of Prussia , in which special facilities have been afforded to every youth of good birth for obtaining the training of an officer . If Waterloo were again to occur , tho Napoleon of the futuro might find himself in face of an army officered by aged men or- by untrained men , whereas that Napoleon of tho future would find in his own ranks colonels and captains , if not down to tho very Buh-lioutenants , who would bo still young , yet would have boen trained in the field iu regimentul and general comnmiuls . Tho B < ideaus and tho Lamorieioroa

    were young men when thoy rose to their general command—young men with full and recent experience . We havo some approach to tho same class in our Indian and Capo officers ; but tho system of promotion has kept tho class scanty in numbers , and has debarred it from its full opportunities . The plan proposed by tho commissioners

    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 diminish the evil with which wre have 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 ' fr 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 ambitions spirit into the army . Tinder the Bourbons , before the revolution , the French , army had become the victim of routine ; its commanders had made'dfc a toy , had wasted their attention , upon coxcombical refinements in evolutions , such as those -which exasperate Captain Nolan , in our . own day , in our own cavalry ; and the army proved to be inefficient and tame , until a comparatively violent measure introducedofficers 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 ar ^ 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 he , at all events , an useful stimulus in its competition to those who are there by birth .

    Again , however , let us say , at the cost of fatiguing the attention of our readers , that it is 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 haa given up its duty of self-defence to be free for the pursuit of lucre . It ia natural that the worst abuse of a state which has surrendered its own right in the possession of arms to a class , should be found in the army .

    We often boast of our guarantees for political liberty , but there is no guarantee like a material guarantee , and those which we boast are likely enough to break down on trial , unless , through the irrepressiblo energy of tho English character , our sons should roughly recover that which our fathers have as tamely ; lost , and which wcr-havo as tamely permitted ! to be alienated from us . Wo sneer at the oppression undergone by tho 1 'Yench ; but , in .

    truth , no conqueror could long put upon the French people a Government hi which they did not concur , because tho French , not having been long alienated from the use and practice- of anna , would spocdily put the question to tho issue of battle . And in that oppressed country of France , a fixed proportion of the commissions ia reserved for men who rise from the ranks . The Prussian . King cannot ; , in great matters , permanently contru-

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 15, 1854, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15071854/page/12/