RECENT DEGRADATION OF MILITARY RANK.
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-
