SCHOOLS FOR CfFFICERS.
THE failure of the English at the Redaa is as natural a conse- quenee of our own actions as the fewness of the French at the Ma- lakoff was of theirs. Thaeontrast exhibited by the successful evolu- tion at one point and the failure of brave men at another point, is not more striking than the contrast between the schools in which the successful French and the unsuccessful English prepare the offi- cers to lead their armies. We do not, indeed, worship "education," man idol, and believe that nothing-can be done without the pe- dantry of schools. Quite the reverse. Unless the scholar be greater than the pedantry, he will end in being a pedant to the last, and will excel better in examination than in active life. But science snakes its own work. In earlier ages, the man who could handle a... coasting vessel off our rough shores could expect to be a British Admiral and rank with Drake and Raleigh ; just as, some one has observed, in the days of Virgil and Ovid there were no Latin au- thors for them to study, for the classics themselves had no classics. But in our day, the shortest way to excel in literature is to have some competent knowledge of literature; and .since engineers have cultivated the arts of fortification, gunnery, castrametation, and exact evolution, no officer can expect to beat the general opposed. to him unless he be equally able to command a knowledge of the materials needed to construct forts or the forces required. to destroy them, of the distances between bodies of men, and the calculable effects of artillery upon given substances. As usual, there are two routes. Genius may work its way by the rule of thumb in the great school of practice, and beat the school-prizemen after all ; but the great majority will find the shortest way through the school. There is scarcely a reader who will not accept what we say as a commonplace, and yet our representatives in Parliament will persist in stultifying the truism by the manner-in which they deprive our army of schools for officers. We make the remark.with the report of the Select Committee. of the House of Commons on the Sandhurst Itoyal Military Col- lege • in our hand. Such an institution. exists, as if to recognize the truism, while the practice is reduced to a minimum. We have had such a school upwards of half a century ; but it was al,. ways starved ; it was always reduced exactly at the time when we most required it. The College was founded through the exer- tions of General Le Merchant in 1799 ; the junior department wan organized in 1801; in 1808 it was placed under a Board of Com- missioners, consisting of the Commander-in-chief, the Secretary at War the Master-General of the Ordnance, the Quartermaster- General, the Adjutant-General, the Governor and Deputy Go- vernor of the College. The senior department was established fbr- the purpose of instructing officers in the scientific part- of their profession.; the junior, for the instruction of young students. But the College has always had the /lease of Commons in dread, and the expenditure has been kept down. The students consist of three classes,—the sons of officers in the Army or Navy, who have died in the service, and whose families are in pecuniary distress; the sons of regimental officers; and the sons of private gentlemen and noblemen. After the war, when the Army was crowded witht officers it was expected that the students of the College would not all be able to find commission; and it was then proposed: that they should not be bound to pursue the military profession. At the same time, it was resolved that the College should be- self-supporting ; and to that end payments are exacted from the students. Pupils of the first class pay only 401. a pear;. of the second, from 501. to 801.; of the third, 1251. In order to. meet its expenses, the College has been induced to increase the number of the third class, and to diminish the number of those classes which either do not pay their expenses or pay no more than their mere cost. In fact, the Slate has traded in the in- struction of young officers, and in 1854 the income exceeded the expenditure-by 7621. Since 1832, with the exception- of 529/. in 1839 to meet a special' casualty, the College appears to have paid. its own expenses. It has been, therefore, nothing more than a school, existing under sanction of the State, but self-supporting, andepen to "a limited number of young gentlemen," some few of whom have been the sons of officers admitted at a reduced rate, while the majority were expected to pay as in an ordinary aca- demy.. We do not go into the question of education, its character and-degree. _ In some respects the curriculum appears to have been. of too high a standard, in others too low; but it is evident that, whatever was the quality of the instruction given, the school could only have-been valuable as a seminary for the upper classes,, and.00uld not have been open to the profession at large.
Instead of imposing restrictions which prevented the Army' from being so open as other professions, the chief Continental: countries have given real State assistance to the establialiment and development of schools for the purpose of training officers. Let us take the case of France. The Ecole Polyteohnique was established, like-so many of the existing institutions of 'France, at an early period of the Revolution, to encourage, cultivate, and spread a very general knowledge of the mathematical, physical, and. chemical sciences, and of the graphic arts. Students are admissible in this college from fifteen to twenty years of age ; they are not required to embrace the military profession ; but the etu- dents who are successful at a trying public examination have their choice of admission to one or other of the senior military schools—Ecole d'Application des l'Etat Major, the Artillery, and the Military and Civil Engineering School. There are also the military preparatory school of La Fiache and the Eoole Speciale de St. Cyr, both of which supply the Ecoles d'Applicatione. There is a system also in the military government of France, by which officers are sent from one service to another, and, as Sir Howard Douglas expressed it, " worked "; by which they secure a step in their-profession, and acquire a-very extended experience. In the preparatory school of La Raabe there are 600 scholars, of whom 300 are maintained and educated at the public expense. There are also artillery schools established at the- head-quarters of each regiment—at Metz, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Donay, Auxonne, La Fere, Valence, Rennes, and Vincennes, with some others. In 1831 the number of pupils in the lower wheels was 35,000 ; in the upper schools, between 7000 and 8000.
In Belgium, almost all the officers are originally privates, or become cadets at a military schooL Young gentlemen of good families often enlist ; after they have been one year in the ranks, or in the class of noncommissioned officers they pass a stringent examination, and are then educated entirely at the expense of the nation. They may avoid preliminary examination by paying for their education • but the general rules of the service require every student to go through a real education, and to exhibit ca- pacity as an officer ; or the student- is not only excluded from ad-
vance, but his brother officers "turn their backs upon him.'t The statement put in by Sir Howard Douglas reports on very
similar institutions in Prussia ; in Russia, where about 18,000 receive instruction ; in Austria, where the military colonial are used as schools for the training of officers ; in Sardinia, Sze. Thus every country of the Continent, throughout the peace, has been studiously cultivating the growth of officers for the present
time. We, on the contrary, no sooner closed the last war, which ought to have convinced us how much depended upon the cultiva- tion of cfficers, than we began to reduce the very small machinery
• Report from 'the Select Committee on Sandhurst Royal Military College; to- gether with the Proceedings of the Committee. Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, mod Index.
-t Evidence of Mr. John Godwin, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 1404. that we had for the purpose. Before the Committee last session, Sir Howard Douglas put in a paper which he addressed to the Royal Military College in 1818, protesting against the diversion of Sandhurst College from its original purpose. "If even it could be adapted to the wants of a state of peace in the manner recom- mended," said Sir Howard, "such an institution would not be neces- sary at all, for to a state of peace a military college is not required. In a state of peace such institutions are indispensable to prepare for a state of war." The occurrences in the Crimea are the com- ment on this irresistible argument. It was the constant remark of Wellington while he was endeavouring to train his army in the Peninsula, that he required officers who knew their duty and could maintain discipline by setting an example of it. One of the most important departments at Sandhurst is the senior department for teachinc,° officers their duty. While Sir Howard was at Farnham, the lateSir Charles Napier, and other officers of rank who had dis- tinguished themselves in the previous war, came to the senior de- partment as students. There were four or five Lieutenant-Colonels there at the time, and eight or ten Majors or Captains of compa- nies. In the attack upon the Malakoff, independently of the supe- rior facilities that the French found, one consisted in their training and practice to use the instruments and the evolutions applicable for the occasion. Sir Howard Douglas mentioned before the Com- mittee an important instance to show "the want of military science in the British army during the last war." "When a military force was preparing for foreign service in 1808, a gene- ral officer, a friend of mine, came to me at High Wycombe, and said, that he had been appointed to the command of a brigade, and knew not what he might have to do in the course of service—perhaps in the operations of a siege, with the nature of which he was quite unacquainted ; that he knew infantry might be called upon to cover the opening of the trenches, to cover the formation of parallels, to guard the trenches, to furnish working parties, to oppose and drive back sorties, and to assault the enemy's works; but was totally ignorant how he should act in such cases; • and intreated me to give him at least a general notion of approaches, parallels, the formation of ga- bions and fascines, saps, and all the other processes of attack and defence. I had caused to be made, by a very intelligent cabinetmaker of the place, one of the large models which are now at Sandhurst, in constant use for the lec- tures on the attack and defence of a half hexagon, of Vauban's first system. It was an easy matter to give to my very intelligent friend a very considerable and useful idea of such matters, illustrated by reference to the model. He soon afterwards served at a siege ; and when we met, he said that he never should forget the three du) s he was shut up with me in the model-room at High Wycombe, and that it was impossible to conceive the confidence which that instruction gave him, from a feeling that he understood something of the operation in which he was engaged.'
We had begun to repair the fault when the last war closed ; we went back to our mistake during the peace ; and we recommence the present war with the same wants that we felt so severely in the last war. The English call themselves a provident nation— and they rush up as they did to the Redan
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