WE seem to have entered upon an era of incessant change in the organisation of the British army. One thing certainly remains constant the diminutive strength of the regimental rank and file, although the number of officers, and especially of officers of the higher ranks, undergoes continual increase. But, with this one exception, everything connected with the army is in a state of flux. The beginning of the era of restlessness dates from the Abolition of Purchase in 1871. No one would wish to see purchase revived with its enormous inherent abuses, although, as was pointed out by more than one authority at the time, a limited kind of purchase might have been very useful. For one grave defect in the new state of things is, that the commissioned ranks of the army are being filled with penniless young men. The profession requires no capital to embark in, and no interest; it is open to every one who can gain a place at the competitive examination. The army is thus a thoroughly democratic career; the only deterrent, in fact, is the expense of the preliminary education. If that can be met, and if enough money can be scraped together by his parent to buy the youngster his red coat, then he is destined to swell the ever increasing ranks who swarm up, Chinese fashion, to the half-yearly competitions at Burlington House. In this respect truly the army has become an open profession; but coupled with this opening of it to all comers, there are the drastic new rules for clearing out the ranks at the other end, and the result is that shoals of excellent officers are turned adrift in the prime of life

with a bare pittance whereon to spend the rest of their days. It would have been a very useful check on this extension of genteel pauperism, which is one of the most unfortunate concomitants of our new army system, if the condition had been attached to competition that every competitor should deposit a round sum of money, say fifteen hundred or even a couple of thousand pounds, to be held in trust for the owner, and the interest only to be claimable by him until his death or retirement from the service. There would have been no lack of competitors of quite good enough quality under this condition, which alone would have sufficed to ensure a sufficient stream of retirement, because the certainty of coming in for a round sum of money would have furnished a strong incentive to a man to retire, just as it did in the old days of purchase, while a great deal of poverty, present and prospective, would have been averted. The truth is, that so long as a sufficient number of officers of excellent quality is forthcoming to serve on the bare pittance which forms a British officer's pay in the lower ranks, there is no call to raise the pay; but that pay is quite insufficient to support an officer of even the most economical habits. This truth unfortunately is not apprehended by the friends of the candidates who are crowding into the army. The notion has got abroad that the army has now become a profession by which a man can find a livelihood, while, as we have observed, it is an easy way of providing for a son, with out the expense involved in embarking him in any of the profes

sions which require either a capital to start with, or a prolonged support until independence is is reached. Even in India it has almost ceased to be possible for the subaltern of a British regiment to live on his pay. This is partly due to the general rise of prices in that country, partly to the more expensive habit of living amongst the English middle classes, which has found its way to India, and partly also perhaps to the greater development of field sports, which is a characteristic of Indian as well as of English life, and which, oddly enough, can be distinctly traced to the extension of railways. So far, then, from being more of a profession, in the sense of its providing a permanent and respectable livelihood, the army has become even less so than it used to be. In old days, if the poor officer could not purchase promotion, he could at least hold on to his regiment for as long as he pleased; but now this fixity of tenure is exchanged for the prospect of early compulsory retirement. Notice of the change, however, came too late to avert the disaster which has already overtaken so many officers, and still awaits so many more in the future, of being cast adrift with a mere pittance in the very prime of life.

The new rules which regulate compulsory retirement are the outcome of the report of Lord Penzance's Commission of 1876, the recommendations of which were subsequently embodied in the great Royal Warrant of 1877. This Commission, as may be remembered, was appointed to consider and report how Lord Cardwell's pledge might be redeemed, that promotion in the army, after the abolition of purchase, should be at least as rapid as it had been under the purchase system. Their recommenda

tion was briefly to the effect that, in order to ensure this condition, it would be necessary to provide that regimental promotion should be secured by producing vacancies laterally as well as at one end in the junior as in the senior ranks, so that, as they put it, the stream of promotion should not flow only through the narrow neck of the bottle. Accordingly, limiting ages were fixed for each rank, on reaching which the officer is compulsorily retired. These ages were fixed at forty years for captains, forty-seven for majors, fiftytwo for lieutenant-colonels, and fifty-five for colonels; while, in order to minimise the hardship these measures would involve, the right to pensions on optional retirement, heretofore limited to only very senior officers, was extended to all officers of twenty years' service and upwards, with lump-sum gratuities for junior officers retiring voluntarily.

The effect of these new regulations has been a tremendous clearance of senior officers and a corresponding amount of hardship. It is true that all the retirements were not compulsory: some were the result of pensions being for the first time available in the lower grades; and a good many officers have taken pensions and bonuses simply because, looking ahead, they saw that their turn would come very shortly to be put on the shelf. This, however, was merely anticipating compulsion. Practically, some of the best officers in the army have been lost to it in this way. The middle-aged captain or major is often the most valuable officer in a regiment. These men, if they have given up the ambitious expectations with which they set out, are at any rate reconciled to their lot. They have got to make a home of their regiments,

and they are liked by the men, because from long experience they are more considerate than younger officers, and carry on the duties in a pleasanter way: where the officers of a regiment are of long standing, it will generally be found that the regiment is in a good state of discipline. However, the clearance has been accomplished, and Lord Cardwell's pledge amply fulfilled, for never was promotion so fast as it has been since the introduction of this warrant. Officers have been getting their troops and companies in four and five years, without paying for them; promotion in the Royal Artillery, to which compulsory retirement has been extended, has been speeding so fast that Woolwich can hardly supply enough officers to fill up the vacancies, and this at a time practically of profound peace as far as casualties go.

So drastic was the effect, that the authorities became alarmed at their own measures. The actuaries who were consulted, discovered that only a very small proportion of the officers of the army could under the rules escape compulsory retirement, and in order to mitigate their severity, without altering their terms verbally, it was determined to make the higher regimental ranks more easily accessible by largely increasing them. Mahomet was to come to the mountain. This plan, it may be observed, was discussed by Lord Penzance's Commission, and rejected as unsuitable. More senior officers should not be created, they argued, than are actually required, merely to accelerate promotion. Nevertheless, in contravention of this sound opinion, the plan of increasing the number of senior officers has been adopted. A second lieutenant-colonel has been added to each battalion, and a

number of captains converted into majors, who, however, are still holding the command of companies. The necessary result of this change is, that in ordinary course officers will reach the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel sooner than they otherwise would have done; and thus has been diminished to a certain extent the drastic effect of the compulsory retirement clauses. But obviously the same result could have been equally well obtained by altering the ages at which the compulsory clauses come into effect. If it were found that too many officers were hit by the rule which makes the retirement of a captain compulsory at forty and of a major at forty-seven, the natural remedy would have been to raise the limit of age for compulsory retirement, say to forty-three or forty-four in the one case, and to fifty or thereabouts in the other. The result would have been precisely the same, so far as regards the age and efficiency of officers retained in the service, and it would have been attained without that degradation of military rank which is such a melancholy feature of English military administration at the present time. Heretofore rank in the English army has represented the same status as in other armies. A captain has been a man commanding a company; a field officer has always fulfilled higher functions than the command of a company; a lieutenantcolonel has had at least the command of a battalion. This is now no longer the case; and although it was hardly to be expected that the officers affected will cry out against a change by which they have gained so largely in pocket, as well as in other ways, nevertheless the general feeling in the army, even among those who have benefited by the change, is that this degra

dation of rank has been a great mistake.

The immediate effect of the Warrant of 1877 was thus a great rush of promotion. But this rush must inevitably be followed by a period of stagnation. When officers have no incentive to retire, they will hold on until their turn comes to be compulsorily retired, and we may expect that the flow of promotion in the future will be regulated solely by the action of the compulsory retirement rules. But the seniors in each grade are now so comparatively young, that their turn to be placed on the shelf is still far off. Thus the unduly rapid promotion of the present is laying up a store of bad promotion for the young officers now entering the army. The authorities at the War Office, however, have at last discovered that promotion is going too fast, and, alarmed at the increased burden thrown on the pension list, are now putting on the drag. An officer is not to be allowed to retire on a pension or gratuity unless the juniors who get the step have completed a certain amount of service. It is a great pity that this condition was not applied sooner. Or, had the rule originally been to offer optional retirements at the present rates to those who liked to take them, while leaving out the obligatory clauses for compulsory retirement at certain ages in certain grades, promotion would have been quite fast enough, and a great deal of hardship would have been avoided, as well as the inevitable block impending in the future. The great object of the regulations should be to ensure an equable flow of promotion, and not promotion by fits and starts.

The regulations governing the command of regiments have also undergone fluctuations. First, the

tenure of a lieutenant-colonel was limited to five years, as proposed by Lord Penzance's Commission, and if there is to be a fixed limit, this term appears suitable. But then, when a second lieutenant colonel was added to each battalion in 1881, the result followed that either the junior might never succeed on the command at all, or, if he was to have a full term of command, that ten years might be spent in passing through that grade. It was accordingly ruled that the tenure of the rank of lieutenant-colonel should be limited to six years, and that the time passed in command should not exceed four, the result being that a lieutenant-colonel might possibly get only a two years' slice of the command. It appears very questionable whether all or any of these complicated conditions for governing promotion in the different ranks are necessary. It is certainly desirable to have a maximum limit of age in the higher ranks, but should not that condition suffice for all the requirements of the case? In the French army there is one fixed rule: no officer can remain on the effective list after the age of sixty-two, and certainly no general officer ought to be older than this. We, on the other hand, have a sliding scale; the higher the rank the older the man may be. A lieutenant-general may hold on till sixty-seven; a major-general must not exceed sixty-two, nor a colonel fifty-five. But if there is to be any difference in the limit of age for the different ranks, the arrangement should be reversed, because the higher the rank, the more necessary is the possession of vigour and activity by the officer. The demand on the vigour and endurance of a general officer in the field is far greater than that made on the battalion commander.

An old man does well enough in the latter capacity if he can sit his horse and keep up with his men on foot; and soldiers on the whole like being commanded by old officers. But the general should be the most active man in the force, fresh and unwearied at the critical moment; at the end of the long day, when success may crown the last effort, fit to go on himself, and to urge his troops on when all others are fatigued and seeking rest. Even in the ordinary work of a campaign the general has much more ground to cover in the day's work than those under him, and much more business to get through. To take one instance only. The reader of 'Personal Reminiscences of Wellington's Campaigns' will have understood what a large factor in Wellington's success was his extraordinary personal vigour and power of endurance, his faculty of being everywhere where he was wanted, and seeing everything for himself. So with other great commanders: it may be safely asserted that, save in quite exceptional circumstances, no army commanded by a general not in the full vigour of life will achieve any great results, and few men are this after sixty. It may be objected that the experience of the German army in the Franco-Prussian war is opposed to this assertion, because the German generals who did such great things were most of them old men. that case was peculiar, although even there the leaders of the two chief armies were men in the prime of life. When such very large bodies of men are in the field as were engaged on that occasion, the movements must necessarily be of a more or less leisurely kind, and the leader must perforce see through the eyes of others. Further, it must be observed that, masterly although

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the strategy was in that war, there was a very sensible want of vigour displayed on more than one occasion in pressing advantages, notably after the battle of Worth, where the Germans allowed the beaten French army to get clear away from them. But it is not given to our generals to command a hundred thousand men in the field. The work they have to do is usually of a very different kind. To command a small expeditionary force of four or five thousand men, thrown into a strange country, perhaps a savage and unhealthy one, and where a high degree of physical endurance is required for proper leading, is what usually falls to the British general; and other things being the same, the younger he is the better he will do the job. The great Duke said, at the end of his campaigns, that he was beginning to "go off" when he was only forty-five; few are the men who do not decline in vigour after they are fifty. If efficiency be the main object, therefore, the rule of age should be as strict for the generals as for the colonels. However, this is a new doctrine which will hardly find acceptance all at once, but at any rate one rule for age might apply to all other ranks. At present, out of consideration for the existing colonels, the limit of age for that rank has been temporarily extended to fifty-nine years, but hereafter is to be reduced to fifty-five; and provided that limit be maintained, all other conditions, such as the obligatory retirement of captains at forty, majors at fortyseven, and lieutenant-colonels at fifty-two, which press very hardly upon individual officers, seem to be unnecessary. If nobody in the army, except the generals, is over fifty-five, there is no fear of the army being too old for its work. The reason alleged for these com

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