SANDHURST EXPENSES AND THE SUPPLY OF OFFICERS.
[To THE EDITOR Or Tar " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—A new set of regulations dealing with commissions in the Army was issued from the War Office last week. The first concerns the limit of age of admission to the Royal Military Academy and the Royal Military College. In the case of the former the lower limit will be reduced to 161 years after December, 1911, and for the R.M.C. the lower limit is to be reduced from 174 to 17 after Midsummer, 1912. At both the upper limit will remain at 194 for the present, but will be reduced eventually, and after due notice, to 19. It has also been decided to extend the course at the R.M.A. from three to four terms, and at the R.M.O. from two to three terms, the change to apply for the first time to a portion of successful candidates for Woolwich at the examination of December, 1911, and to a portion of the successful candidates for Sandhurst at the examination of Midsummer, 1912. The age of admission to the Army Qualifying Examinations is to be reduced from 17 to 16 for the examinations to be held in September, 1911, and March, 1912, after which no farther qualifying examina- tions will be held.
A second communique announces that it has been decided to reserve a certain number of cadetships each half-year at Sandhurst for candidates nominated by the Army Council from schools which maintain a contingent of the Officers Training Corps and are inspected at least once in every five years by certain educational bodies. Finally, the Army Council have decided to offer a certain number of prize cadetships to successful competitors at each half-yearly examination for Woolwich and Sandhurst. A prize cadetship will carry a reduction of £35 per term, the remission of the sum of £35 paid by cadets on joining for uniform, books, &c., and of £15 at the commencement of the second year's residence, and an outfit grant of £65 after the cadet has passed his final examination. The number of prize cadetships will be announced each half-year three months before the competitive examination, one-fourth to go to those highest in order of merit on the R.K.A. list and the remainder to those highest on the R.M.C. list. At the examination to be held in November, 1911, not more than five will be awarded to the former, and not :wore than fifteen to the latter. These regulations, which have since been commented on by Mr. Haldane in his speech on the Army Estimates, un- doubtedly constitute a serious endeavour on the part of the Army Council to deal with the shortage of officers and such complaints on the score of expense as are preferred by "An Indignant Father " in a recent issue of the Times. But when Mr. Haldane maintains that there has been no appreciable falling off in the supply of candidates for Sandhurst since the five years before the war, and that the Army is as popular a profession as it was at the end of the last century, I confess to a feeling of amazement. The statement may be correct for the period selected, but there can be no doubt that the number of candidates who presented themselves twenty or thirty years ago was very much larger than it is at present. My impression certainly is that the ratio of candi- dates to admissions was twice what it is now. One reason for this falling-off in the supply has not been noticed, and, in my opinion, it has a most important bearing on the question of the pay of officers, which Mr. Haldane admits to be a most serious problem. The aim of the military authorities—a very proper and desirable aim—has been to place a greater premium on intelligence and keenness, and to make the Army a more strenuous calling generally. The result of this move has un- doubtedly been to discourage those candidates who looked to soldiering not so much as a career as an agreeable pastime for a few years, and who counted on having no more examinations once they got into the Army. They were drawn largely from the well-to-do classes—people of good social standing, county families, &c.—and they represented a type of Englishman who, if not highly intellectual, had certain qualities of leader. ship, and a taste for sport, which were not without their advan- tages. For good or evil, young men of this stamp are not forthcoming in the same quantities as of old. The area of selection has been enlarged, and the appeal is now made more and more to the professional classes and people of moderate incomes. In these circumstances the provisional institution of prize cadetships is a tardy but logical recognition of an altered situation.
There are many other interesting points raised by the new regulations—e.g., how the new age limits for Sandhurst can- didates are to be reconciled with encouragement of University candidates, and how headmasters will discharge the respon- sible task of nominating boys without any examination at all. In this context it is rather amusing to hear the military critic of the democratic Westminster Gazette exulting (quite pre- maturely, in my opinion) at the abandonment of the competi- tive system : " Everybody," he writes, " will be thankful to hear that the absurd examinations for Sandhurst are to be abolished and a system of nomination set up in their stead." The writer cannot have read the regulations in which the con- tinuance of the half-yearly competitive examinations is explicitly insisted on. But these are matters foreign to my present aim, which is to call attention to the urgency of the problem of expense. Even with the assistance now offered, the disparity between the average cost of preparing a boy for the Army, both before and daring his Sandhurst course, and the pay given him after joining his regiment is grotesque. A system under which a parent, after his boy has passed into Sandhurst, should have to pay for a year and a-half at the rate of an expensive school—it works out at about £170 a year—and then, when he is gazetted, assist him for an indefinite period with an allowance of £100 at the very lowest, is utterly irreconcilable with continued reliance for the supply of officers on the sons of people of moderate means.—I am,
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