19 APRIL 1873, Page 1

When it was settled that the rank of the Household

Troops was in future to be no higher than that of their comrades of the Line, it was generally supposed that the overbearing manners of the Guards, and the keen jealousy felt of their privileges, would cease. Yet it is the very set of Guards appointed under the new conditions who have turned our new School for officers at Sand- hurst upside down in its first term, driven its authorities to re- sign, and, if report be true, all but openly defied their Commander- in-Chief. Doubtless the score or so of young aristocratic subalterns concerned thought they had their grievance in being sent to school at all. Their professors, too, all Line officers, or Artillery- men, or Engineers, selected for mere competence, were to them little better than snobs. Their Governor, Sir Duncan Cameron, though a soldier of repute, seemed to them a mere pretentious pedagogue. As to the Duke of Cambridge and his visit, one can hardly believe that he would make concessions to what was, in plain terms, disorderly and mutinous conduct ; but undoubtedly he was weak enough to shrink from sup- porting his own subordinates on the spot ; and the rumour that to spare these disobedient Lieutenants' feelings, the Captains they objected to are to be relieved by Field officers, whether it be true or false, shows the deep prejudice of the mili- tary administration under which we have lived, more eloquently than a whole debate on purchase. Certainly, military reform has not reached the Guards too soon, and if Mr. Cardwell does not See to it that the apparent bias of the Commander-in-Chief is over- ruled, we shall have have just, deep, and universal indignation in the Army, and also, we do not doubt, a wholesome explosion of wrath in the House of Commons.