The principal punisher of the cadets was the Captain of the Cadet Company, who investigated and tried cases that occurred during any part of the time that cadets were not in study. If any cadet committed a very grave offence he was then brought before the Governor, and received the heaviest punishment. For offences committed in academy, or during hours of study, cadets were amenable to two other authorities, viz, the Inspector and Assistant-Inspector, who used to visit the class-rooms each day, and see that all was going on as it should go.
There was in this system the great defect that the cadets were under several authorities, and not under one head, while the system of entrusting to corporals the power to inflict punishment on their juniors, without inquiry or without comment, opened the door to a system of tyranny that was too often practised with the worst effects.
Another drawback at that time was the great age of the majority of the professors and senior officers. To deal with young, energetic men, such as the greater number of the senior cadets were, required active and energetic men with judgment and discernment, and thus appointments to posts such as those referred to should not have been allotted merely as quiet sinecures, but should have been given to men capable of real work.
In such a Military College as Woolwich a strict discipline is absolutely necessary. The first lesson to teach a soldier is the importance of subordination and obedience. These essentials, it is true, were taught formerly, but there was too often favouritism shown, which made the cadets feel that the scales of justice were often unfairly weighted. To once allow any sign of a want of proper respect for authority to pass over with a light punishment is to sow the seeds of a most dangerous condition. Another necessary item in the training of the cadet is to instil into him a high sense of honour; to teach him that there are certain things which his position as a soldier renders it impossible for him to do without disgrace. At the Academy there seems to have ever been this conscientious feeling, even at times when the discipline and general tone of the establishment was not what it is now. A cadet who was placed in arrest was bound on honour not to break this arrest, and it was often amusing to see two or three cadets in different rooms with their doors open talking to one another and leaning out of the doorways just so far that their centre of gravity was within the room. If one cadet added “honour” to any statement he might make to another, it was always considered certain that this was true.
Considering that the course of education at the Academy rarely occupied more than three years, and that many cadets had their characters entirely formed whilst they were at the “shop,” it is evident that too much importance cannot be given to the training bestowed during this period. A military training college which is not maintained with the strictest discipline becomes a mere pandemonium, where young men soon endeavour to rival one another in acts of folly, and from which men are turned out unfit for command or for the service.
The defects formerly existing at Woolwich have been remedied; the almost irresponsible authority of the older cadets over the juniors does not now exist. The professors, instead of being octogenarians, are men in the prime of life, and are given the authority over the cadets which their position entitles them to; and the result is that with an active, intelligent, and distinguished soldier at the head, the Royal Military Academy at the present time may be fairly claimed as a model establishment.