Course of Second Year
| Obligatory | |
|---|---|
| Tactics, | 4 hours. |
| Permanent Fortification, | 2 “ |
| Special Geography and Geology, | 4 “ |
| 10 hours. | |
| For Choice | |
| Universal History, | 4 hours. |
| Mathematics, | 6 “ |
| Logic, | 4 “ |
| Physics, | 4 “ |
| Lectures on Horses, | 2 “ |
| 20 hours. | |
| Total, 30 hours. | |
Course of Third Year.
| Obligatory | |
|---|---|
| History of War, | 7 hours. |
| Staff Duty, | 3 “ |
| Art of Sieges, | 2 “ |
| Military Jurisprudence, | 1 “ |
| 13 hours. | |
| For Choice | |
| General History of Literature, | 4 hours. |
| Mathematics, | 6 “ |
| Higher Geodesy, | 3 “ |
| Chemistry, | 4 “ |
| 17 hours. | |
| Total, 30 hours.[8] | |
It will be seen that the above course is entirely theoretical; no practical work (as in France) relieves the sedentary labor of ten hours daily for more than eight months of the year. But as soon as the first year’s course is ended, all the officers who are supposed to know drawing before coming to the school, are sent into the country for three weeks to practice military drawing and surveying; and those of the third year go through (also for the same period) a similar course of staff duty. These last are sent under the direction of the officer who is Professor of Staff Duty at the School; each student officer gets his separate orders, and they meet and are told off every morning for their day’s work, reconnoitering fortresses, surveying the frontiers between Austria and Prussia, &c., &c. During the remaining three summer months the students are sent in successive classes to those arms of the service which are not their own, and after the usual military exercises are completed they must bring back with them a certificate of proficiency from the commanding officer. This amount of time was spoken of as being too little.
If we are surprised at not finding a greater amount of practical work included amongst the labors of the school, we must remember that it is chiefly postponed to a later period of the officer’s career, when the probability of his being required to use it on the staff is greater. This is when he has gained his place in the Topographical Department, and is working there upon trial to test his fitness for the actual staff. He is then employed during winter in working on the Theory of War, and during summer in military surveying and drawing.
Such is the method and extent of the officer’s work at the Staff School; a few more words are needed on the character of his examinations, which here as everywhere else must greatly influence the character of the work.
There are no less than nine examinations during the three years, one for every three months, but the final one at the end of each year is the more important, as a sort of summing up of the year’s work. In marking for this the merit of the essays done at home is taken into account. The result in each branch of work and on every examination is entered by the several professors in a book kept at the directory, and the pupils have a right to inspect the report of their own work. The net result of his own three years’ work is also sent to the officer after leaving the school through the authorities of his regiment. The certificate of this contains the criticism on each branch of his work in detail.
The subjects given for essays will show the nature of the chief examinations (i.e. those at the end of each year;) four or five hours is the time generally allowed to a difficult subject, the examination stretching over a number of days, in proportion to the subjects taken up. The pupil may bring in his notes of lectures, on which extraordinary care is bestowed, and which must contain everything that can be said on the subject. Much value is said to be attached to the rapidity with which an essay is worked, as showing a quality valuable in an officer. There is, as we have observed, no vivâ voce of any kind in this School. Some competition exists in the Staff School, (and it is almost the only Prussian school where we find it,) for the knowledge that only eight or ten out of the forty pupils can obtain the Topographical Department, and only two out of these eight or ten, the staff, acts as a competitive stimulus. We must add, however, that although a minute account of the positive merits of the pupils is drawn up and sent to them at the end of their career, they have no means of ascertaining their relative positions; and this may always leave room for doubt, whether the places in the Typographical Department and on the Staff are strictly given by merit, or whether patronage does not here step in. Another ambiguity may be remarked in the fact that the relative importance of the subjects of study is not known. It may of course be surmised, that a knowledge of the Peloponnesian War is not marked so highly as that of the Seven Years’ War; but any indefiniteness as to what is or what is not important, will generally lead to an attempt to know something of all the subjects mentioned, and it would undoubtedly be better to affix its definite value to every subject. It would prevent what seem to us valid objections to the present system of the Staff School, the attempt to crowd in too many subjects, instead of mastering thoroughly a few.