ARMY Y. CIVIL SERVICE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—May I take the occasion of the death of the most success- ful Civil Service coach (after the late Walter Wren) of the day to draw attention to a prophecy of his which he was in the habit of holding out as an inducement to those of his pupils who had had a good " commercial " education but did not consider their chances sufficient to warrant their entering for Class I.? He said there were plenty of opportunities of attaining Class I. or higher division appointments (now called the Administrative Class) through the avenue of Class II. Examination or lower division (now styled the Executive Class), and that it was a man's own fault, though he might know no Latin, if he did not eventually rise to £1,200 a year, though all that the regula- tions held out to him was a maximum of £350 in the course of service.
I do not know whether Mr. Braginton included the chances of extraordinary promotion, owing to a war, in his forecast : in his early days the Crimean War was said to he worth twenty years' service to a Government clerk. But he probably foresaw that " temporary gentlemen " in the field would be dispensed with much more easily when there was no more work for them than the " temporaries " who had once obtained a footing in Whitehall, and who were similarly redundant, and owing to the difficulty of dislodging whom there is little prospect of the normal course of Civil Service examinations being resumed for ten years to come. It will take this period to absorb those who obtained their appointments on far easier terms, while officers are disestablished by the hundred and whole regiments swept away. Which of the various new Departments that have arisen since 1914 has been
abolished, or even seriously depleted?—I am, Sir, &c., S.
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