16. To make out requisitions upon the War Office for additions to libraries, when necessary, within the annual amount granted by Parliament.
17. To receive and consider the half yearly reports of artillery and engineer libraries in duplicate, in aid of which a grant of money will be made annually to each brigade of artillery and company of engineers by the Secretary of State, on the recommendation of the Council of Military Education; one copy to be forwarded to the Secretary of State, with any remarks thereon which may appear called for, the other to be retained by the Council.
18. Hospital libraries and the schools and libraries of disembodied regiments of militia will remain under the Secretary of State for War.
19. Upon all matters connected with either schools or libraries, not specified above, and which may involve expense, reference should be made to the Secretary of State for War, previously to any decision being arrived at.
[EXAMINATIONS FOR COMMISSIONS AND PROMOTIONS.]
[I. EXAMINATIONS FOR DIRECT COMMISSIONS.]
HISTORICAL NOTICE.
Previously to the year 1849, no educational qualifications were required as a condition of obtaining a commission, except from officers appointed to the scientific corps—admission to which could only be obtained by passing through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich—and from the small proportion of officers, scarcely amounting, at that time, to one sixth of the whole number annually obtaining commissions, who entered the other branches of the service from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Examinations for admission to the army generally were first instituted by the Duke of Wellington, when Commander-in-Chief, in 1849. The examination, in addition to general subjects of elementary education, included the professional subject of fortification, in which the candidate was required to have read some easy work on the subject, and to have received some instruction in drawing. This requirement was subsequently somewhat modified; and the knowledge of fortification afterward exacted from a candidate was, “to be able to trace upon paper, in presence of the examiners, a front of fortification according to Vauban’s first system, and also the profile of a rampart and parapet.” In other subjects, modifications were also introduced; but the general character of the examinations remained much the same as originally established, and the regulations introduced by the Duke of Wellington, in 1849, continued substantially in force, until the general revision of the system of military education, which took place in 1857. It appears, however, from the evidence given by Lord Panmure, before the Royal Commission on the Purchase System, that, during the Crimean war, the stringency of the examinations was very much relaxed.
The examinations were held at Sandhurst by the professors of the College, in the presence of the Lieutenant-Governor, and were conducted to a great extent vivâ voce. The Select Committee of the House of Commons on Sandhurst (1855) did not make any recommendation in regard to these examinations, but stated in their report that in the only branch of the examination which was of a military character, namely, fortification, the knowledge required would easily be mastered in a week. The character of the examination, however, appears to have been very generally regarded with dissatisfaction. Mr. Sidney Herbert, when Secretary at War, in 1854, criticised it severely, as being “too technical, too limited, and within its limits too severe,” and as leading necessarily to a candidate cramming up a few books which happened to be in use at Sandhurst, without affording any test of general education. He contemplated at that time a revision of the examinations, and the institution of a special board of examiners, in place of the Sandhurst professors, for the purpose of conducting them; and the Treasury, in connection with this subject, suggested that the machinery proposed for the object in view should be combined, as far as practicable, with that about to be established for examining candidates for the Civil Service.