TUE ARMY BILL.—A POSSIBLE COMPROMISE.
WE do not feel certain that the Government could not, if 11' V it pleased, effect a compromise with the Lords upon the Army Bill. Upon the main principle of that Bill, the redemption of the prerogative from pawn, the restoration of the control of the Army to the Ministers of the Crown, there can of course be no concession. That is imperative, if discip- line in its highest sense, that is, the power of investing a mass of men with an organic life, obedient\ to a single impulse, is to be maintained in the British Army. So also is the absorption in the State of all power over the Militia as the first and the most effective Reserve of the Army, and needing, therefore, as strict a unity of command, of system, and of tradition. But it is not, that we can see, essential to this great object to main- tain a pedantic uniformity of system under the new organiza- tion, which may end in expelling powerful classes from the fighting Services of the State. We do not want to deprive the rich of their chance of military careers, but only to destroy their monopoly of them ; and to secure that true end we must remember certain circumstances. We take it to be a moral cer- tainty that admission by competitive examination will expel the aristocracy and the very rich as a body from the Army. The conditions will be too severe for them. The hungry sons of the professionals, brought up from childhood in an atmosphere of culture far more favourable to early acquirement than an atmosphere of mere refinement, whipped to the work by ambition, and trained from infancy to be two years earlier with everything than their rivals, will beat them hopelessly in the examination-rooms. They would not do so later. In any competitive examination whatever which did not include book-keeping the Lords would probably beat the Commons, but their sons at twenty will be no match for the sons of the educated poor, whom circumstances have made two years their superiors in age. They will be nowhere, to the benefit, it may possibly be, of the whole Service—though a Queen's regiment in the old days was at least as good as a Company's, the exclusive preserve of the middle-class,—will be by circum- stances forbidden the Army, and it is natural that the Lords should both resent and dread such an exclusion. Wo believe this apprehension will weigh with the Peers much more than any regard for Purchase in the abstract, Purchase as a principle being opposed to their whole raison, d' gtre, and we do not see why it is impossible that it should be met. As it happens, there exists in the Service an arm in which competition may possibly work some mischief. Unless the Cavalry is reorganized from the ground, it can never be so tempting to poor mon as the Infantry or -the scientific branches, and we can see no reason except a pedantic theory of equality, which has no relation either to Liberalism or to our society, why the conditions of entrance into that arm should not be modified, why, for instance, the Cavalry should not be reserved to competitors with a guaranteed allowance of £300 a year, or taken out of the area of competi- tion altogether. Why reject a class which must have influence, is willing to serve almost at its own expense, surrenders any claim to monopoly, and, Purchase being abolished, can be con- trolled as readily as any other ? The rich with us is the riding class, and if the troopers had less chance than in the Line they would know that before they entered, and probably care as little as did the men in the old Company's Artillery who had no chance at all. If there were social jealousies between the branches of the Service, what then ? Social jealousies penetrate the whole of our society without much weakening it, and we question if a privilege avowedly based on readiness to spend money for the State would be so grievously out of accord with existing popu- lar feeling. When all is said, the money which sends a can- 'didate to the University helps that candidate in any competi- tive examination based on scholarship, and there is no sound reason why, if wealth is useful to the State, the State should not place wealth among the qualifications of certain of its servants. It does, in fact, so place it every day, though its rulers have not the honesty to avow the fact.
We are quite aware that we are suggesting a plan against which it is possible to raise a fatal cry. The public is always possessed by broad and simple ideas, and just now the dominant idea is equality of right to enter the service of the State, but nevertheless it is not as yet the national habit to push sound principles to extremes. In this case, as in that of the Diplomatic Service, logic is merely inconvenient, and for nearly the same reasons. We cannot throw open the Foreign Office to competition without excluding the class which of all others is most acceptable to the Courts with which business has to be done. That is in- jurious, first, to the State, which requires the services of all classes, and next, to the people who insist on the change, and yet want to be represented abroad by men who can win with- out jangling or risk of quarrel, who will be contented with very small pay, and who enjoy habitual access to circles pos- sessing, in many countries, a monopoly of early information. We cannot apply competition unrestrictedly to the Cavalry without excluding the class which is, of all others, best fitted to the work, which alone is willing to share the expense, and which, from its very foibles, would rejoice in all the eircuni- stances that deter its rivals. That is injurious, first, to the State, which does not wish to drive its aristocracy either to the life of the jidneurs so common in Europe, or to that of the reflective, cultivated, and useless cynics so common in the United States ; and secondly, to the Army, which risks the total extinction in its Cavalry of the Murat element. Of course, if the compromise would involve the retention of Purchase, it would not be worth discussing. An army in which a useless grade cannot be abolished because the officers would lose money is not an army at all, but a corporation owned by its officers, and paying only a formal obedience to the Crown. But Purchase is not involved in any way in the success or failure of this suggestion. Take as an illustration the Diplomatic Service. If the highest bidder had, partly by custom and partly by law, a right to the Embassies, Minis- tries, and Secretaryships of Legation, we should, except by accident, be sure either of inferior service or of service so inde- pendent as to derange the policy of the State. But if, as Mr. Odo Russell proposed, an income were made, like a good character, a condition of examination, the State would lose nothing except the possible service of a poor man of genius, and discipline would be just as perfect as before, the control of the Office being equally complete. Nor, as we contend, would there be any very perceptible loss to the competing classes. They do not want to enter professions like diplomacy, which cost money instead of bringing it, or like the Cavalry, in which the single specialty is increased opportunity and justification for expense. Nor, as wo believe, though Professor Fawcett would, we imagine, contradict us, do they heartily desire to exclude from the Army a class which in every other department of life they regard with a little too much respect for its right to lead.
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