In subsequent examinations no credit will be given for the marks gained by a candidate on former occasions.
In the event of a candidate not appearing for examination at the time appointed, such candidate will not be permitted to attend on the next occasion, and he will render himself liable to have his name either erased entirely or placed at the bottom of the list of those noted for examination.
VIII. A student at either of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, London, St. Andrew’s, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, or Queen’s University, Ireland, who shall have passed the examination necessary for taking a degree in arts, is qualified for a commission by purchase without being required to pass the foregoing examination, provided he is within the limits of 17 and 23 years of age if for the infantry, 17 and 25 years if for the cavalry, and of 17 and 28 years for colonial corps, and can produce the certificates marked (a), (b), and (c).
Such candidate must furnish a certificate of having graduated, or of having passed the examinations, signed by the Registrar of the University, and showing the date on which the examination took place.
On his application being approved, the candidate will receive an order to be medically examined as to his physical fitness for the service.
The candidate will address his application, accompanied by the necessary certificates, to the Military Secretary, Horse Guards.
[III. PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION AS PREPARATORY TO MILITARY EXAMINATIONS.]
A.—GENERAL NOTICE.
In connection with the Modern Departments, at some public schools, technical instruction in military subjects is actually at present given. This, for instance, is the case at Cheltenham College, the Modern Department at which appears, in fact, to have been originally instituted with the express object of affording means of special military education, and at the present day is officially called the “Military and Civil Department.” At one time, also, even at some schools in which Modern Departments did not exist, classes were formed in which instruction in military subjects was given to boys intended for the army. Both at Eton and at Harrow such classes existed, and fortification and military drawing were taught in them. The object of the formation of these classes appears in both cases to have been to enable boys to go up straight from school to the examinations for admission to the army, without the necessity of having recourse to private tuition. At the time of their institution a knowledge of fortification was required in the examination for direct commissions, and a candidate was therefore unable to present himself for this examination without some special preparation. At the commencement of 1858, however, the direct commission examinations were entirely remodelled; the small amount of fortification previously required was at that time excluded from the subjects of examination, which have ever since been of a non-professional character, and more or less such as enter into the course of ordinary liberal education. With the exclusion of technical subjects from the military examinations, the necessity for any special instruction in such subjects in candidates for admission to the army ceased. The military class at Harrow seems to have died out within a few years of its establishment; it has not been in existence during the last ten years and more. At Eton, though the corresponding class is still maintained, the teaching of technical military subjects in it has been abandoned. Even in the Modern Department at Cheltenham the instruction appears of late years to have become of a less decidedly military character than it originally was; and fortification, which was at one time taught at Wellington College, no longer enters into the course of instruction there. In the Modern Side, which has within the present year been established at Harrow, though partially intended, among other purposes, to assist the education of boys intended for the army, no attempt is made to give special military instruction.
The question of the possibility of affording an adequate military education at civil schools was fully discussed by the Commissioners appointed in 1856 to consider the training of officers for the scientific corps.