THE REPORT OF THE WAR COMMISSION.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
have been away from home, and have only lately seen the Spectator of August 29th, in which you say, in an article on the Report of the War Commission, that " probably about one per cent." of the boys who get scholarships at the public schools enter the Army.
It is not very safe to generalise from one instance, but from what I know of the one public school with which I am well acquainted, I should think that you greatly underestimate the number. My two sons were both fortunate enough to get scholarships at a leading public school, where the competition for scholarships is keen and the standard high. The elder was in a batch of fourteen scholars, the younger in a batch of eleven. Of those twenty-five boys, four have gone into the Army ; one, I believe, intends to go to the University, and thence into the Army as a " University candidate "; one has gone into the Royal Marines ; and one into the Navy. Omitting the "University candidate" and the Marine, sixteen per cent, have gone into the Army out of those two batches of scholars; and during the eight and a half years over which the school career of my two sons extended I can recall the names of at least six other scholars who went into the Army, besides the four mentioned above. It is fair to say that the great majority went into the Artillery. In the same article you say that the Bar is a career open to poor men with brains. Speaking for myself, I should strongly dissuade any young man from going to the Bar unless he had a private income at least equal to the allowance necessary for a subaltern in a Line regiment, or was one of the fortunate few who have such interest and connection behind them as make their future a practical certainty.
[Perhaps " one per cent." does not exactly represent the proportion of scholarship boys who enter the Army. Still, how many parents of scholarship boys who have only a small income look upon the Army as a possible career ? And what is the proportion of scholarship boys, in any case, who enter the cavalry ?—En. Spectator.]
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