Two Majors.
Sixteen Captains.
Sixteen Lieutenants.
Four Sous-Lieutenants.
The staff school consists of thirty pupils taken from all arms of the service, fifteen being received each year, and the course of study lasting two years. It is under the direction of a general and a lieutenant-colonel; and, with few exceptions, such as might occur in the time of war, no appointments on the general staff are to be given to any officers who have not passed through the staff school.
In order to enter the school for the staff corps, an officer must have served at least two years with his regiment, and be unmarried, and above twenty-one and under twenty-six years of age. He may then forward to the chief of the staff, through his colonel, his claim to be admitted as a candidate at the entrance examination. Further inquiry is made, and a good many of the names sent in are struck off the list. Such, we were told, was the case last year when the names sent in were very numerous, but out of these only forty-five were allowed to compete, and out of these again only fifteen (the regular yearly number) were selected. The competition for entrance into the school is indeed said to have been very active ever since it was opened. Most of the students are Neustadters; the seven professors were all, with the exception of the professor of the French language, military men, and chiefly officers of artillery, formed in the long studies of the old Bombardier School.
[The subjects] in which the candidates for admission are examined are—
1. Algebra and Geometry, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry.
2. Geography.
3. History.