Occasions had arisen, even under the old regime, when young men were permitted to enter the service of the Artillery under what may be called exceptional conditions. During the pressure of the great war of the French Revolution, the demand for officers became at one time so urgent, that it was found necessary to dispense with a regular academical education, and to give commissions to candidates who were pronounced by competent examiners sufficiently conversant with mathematics and physical science to enter upon the practical duties of their profession. Lord Panmure, taking advantage of the precedent thus furnished, threw open Artillery commissions in 1855, and has continued ever since to treat admission into the Royal Military Academy as a prize for which the youth of the United Kingdom may freely compete.
The subjects of study to be pursued in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, not less than the mode of dealing with them, and the text-books to be used, have hitherto been prescribed to the most minute particular by regulation. They embrace Mathematics, Fortification, Descriptive Geometry, French, German, Plan-Drawing, Geometrical Drawing, Landscape Drawing, History and Geography; to which, during his continuance in what are called the “theoretical classes,” the attention of the cadet is confined. When he enters the “practical class,” the student is instructed, over and above, in Practical Artillery, Surveying and Field-Works, and attends lectures in Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, and Mineralogy. As many as five years may be spent by a young man in going over this course—viz., four years in the “theoretical,” and one year in the “practical” class—though the average period of actual residence does not appear to exceed two years and a half or three years. There are periodical examinations at the end of every half-year, the second of which, by its results, determines whether the young man shall be allowed to go on to a commission, or be removed from the Academy.
The moral tone of this military college has never, we regret to say, been of a very high order. Excellent men have been at the head of it, and the ability of the professors and teachers appointed to instruct admits of no question. Yet few right-minded officers look back upon the years spent in the cadet barracks except with disgust. It is not very difficult to account for the circumstance. Long after Continental nations had seen the absurdity of pressing upon boys the sort of training which belongs to men, we refused to be guided by their experience, and persisted, both at Woolwich and elsewhere, in our endeavor to accomplish an impossibility. “Boys of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen,” says a very high authority on this subject, “require much personal supervision in order to form their characters, which young officers, very often appointed without any sufficient knowledge of their tempers and habits, cannot be expected to bestow. Such officers may indeed be able to superintend drill, but not moral training. Rarely do they draw the cadets towards them, and become their advisers; more frequently repel them by a harsh dictatorial manner, the cadet being in their eyes a soldier. There has been also, during all the time I have known the Academy, great inconsistency in treating the cadets. Honor is constantly talked of, and yet doubts as to their truthfulness are not unfrequently expressed. I have heard even the lie given in rough and emphatic terms. Confidence is professedly placed, and yet offences are found out in a way that shows that no confidence existed. Hence a contest arises between the officer and cadet, and the latter becomes tricky and disingenuous.”
In these emphatic words Colonel Portlock has struck at the root of most of the evil which has long been felt, and heretofore combated without success, in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Whatever is wanting in the morale of that establishment, it owes to the original sin of its constitution. We know how to deal with boys so long as we recognize their boyhood, even while appealing to the point of honor among them. But we no sooner dress them up in uniform, and affect to treat them as soldiers, than we lose all moral control over them. They smoke, drink, swear, and fall into other vices, not because they are overcome by any irresistible temptation, but because they look upon such acts as tokens of manhood. And the corporals, who report readily enough for insubordination, and the officers, who punish for what they call military offences, take little heed of worse things; partly because, in a military point of view, they are scarcely criminal; partly because, not being regarded as such, they are seldom brought under the notice of the superior authorities. How a seminary so conducted and so managed should have given to the Artillery and Engineers a body of officers distinguished, as those of both arms unquestionably are for talent, intelligence, and gentlemanly bearing, would be inexplicable, were not the fact well known, that one of the first lessons taught to the young lieutenant, after quitting the Academy, is to throw off the habits which he had contracted there, and to adopt the high moral tone and excellent habits of his regiment.
It was partly with a view to provide a palliative for this admitted evil, partly to encourage in our young Artillery officers the habit of sustained study, that they were required, by a recent regulation, “to place themselves under the orders of a director of studies for half a year after obtaining their commissions. Meanwhile cadets who are appointed to the Engineers proceed to the training-school for that arm at Chatham; where they go through a somewhat careful course of surveying, and are instructed less elaborately in architecture, civil as well as military, and in mining, sapping, pontooning, and so forth. According to the report of the Commissioners, it does not appear that they reach their new field of instruction over and above well prepared to make the most of it. Indeed, the whole of the Woolwich system is by these gentlemen condemned in terms as decided as is consistent with good breeding.
II. It was not till the year 1804 that the propriety of training young men in ever so slight a degree for the service of the infantry and cavalry, seems to have occurred to any statesman or soldier in this country. Appointments to both arms took place for a time by purchase only, and by and by, when the numbers of the rank and file increased, through the weight of influence, personal, political, or social. Moreover, when the pressure of the great war was at its height, a third door of entrance to military rank was opened, and ensigncies and captaincies, and even lieutenant-colonelcies, became the prize of private gentlemen who were able to bring certain fixed contingents of able-bodied men under the royal standard. So far as the candidates for commissions themselves were concerned, however, the same even-handed justice was meted out to all. Nobody took the trouble to inquire whether the candidates were qualified morally, intellectually, or physically. He might be a pimp and blockhead, or lame, or deaf, or blind; but so long as his patron had the ear of the Government, or the men whom he brought with him were able to pass muster, his commission, whatever it might be, was secure.
The Military College at Sandhurst consisted at first, as it still consists, of two departments—one, called the Junior Department, for cadets—the other, the Senior Department, for officers desirous of qualifying for the Staff. But it had, in its original constitution, this marked advantage over the arrangement which has since been effected, that whereas now cadets and officers occupy portions of the same range of buildings, and come under the instruction of the same professors, they were, in 1804 placed, the one at Marlow, the other at Highwickam—each class of students having its own teachers, though both were subject to the control and management of the same military administration.
As first constituted, the junior department afforded both an asylum and a place of education for the sons of officers exclusively. Youths once admitted ceased to be a burden to their friends, except for the necessary expenses of travelling; they were housed, clothed, and educated at the public expense. But no sooner was the great war ended than Parliament began to slacken in its gratitude to the army, and by little and little the grants for military education fell off, till in the end they ceased altogether. As a necessary consequence, the numbers of persons seeking education at the Military College fell off in like manner. And now the junior department exhibits a muster-roll of 180 cadets only, while the strength of the senior department has dwindled to nine individuals. To be sure, other causes than the withdrawal of public support from the institution have operated to produce this latter result. Whatever it might have been forty years ago, the senior department at Sandhurst is certainly no Staff school now. Indeed, the only science effectively taught there seems to be mathematics; and it is a curious fact, that though the army abounds with officers who have passed through that school, and taken high honors, the instances are rare in which Staff appointments have fallen to the lot of any of them.
Lads are admitted into the junior department at Sandhurst between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. The preliminary examination is of the most trivial kind, and the instruction communicated is, for half the course, that of a common school not of the highest order. No doubt each youth may, if he be disposed, master more than the elements of a good deal of science; for over and above physical geography and history, instruction is given in practical astronomy, dynamics, and statics, practical mechanics, co-ordinate geometry, the differential and integral calculus, trigonometry and mensuration, Euclid’s Geometry, attack and defence of fortresses, practical field-fortification, course of military surveying, the Latin, French, and German languages. Unfortunately, however, there is no compulsion to study, nor any inducement, unless the youth aspire to win for himself a commission without purchase.
III. The Hon. East India Company’s College at Addiscombe approaches nearer in its constitution and objects to what a military school ought to be, than any other of which we can boast in this country. It came into existence in 1818, previously to which date the Directors were in the habit of sending to Woolwich, for instruction, youths to whom they had given cadetships in the Company’s Artillery and Engineers. When first founded, it was intended as a place of training exclusively for these young gentlemen; but the benefits derived from it became so obvious and so great that the Court of Directors gradually enlarged its views, and now young men are educated at Addiscombe not only for the Company’s Artillery and Engineers, but for their infantry also. And herein it is that the Directors have mixed up evil with good. They consider an Engineer cadetship as their great prize, and next to that a cadetship of Artillery; and they select for these appointments, not the youths who may have exhibited special talents for either arm, but the best men, or the men reported as generally best, of their batch. The consequence is, that to the infantry—for good service in which talent is as much required as for either the Artillery or Engineers—the idlers of the College are appointed, while many a clever lad, who would have shone as an infantry officer, becomes an indifferent engineer or gunner, simply because he has been posted to an arm for the practical operation of which he has no genius.