The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-05-25 00:00:00

PHYSICAL TESTS IN COMPETITIVE
EXAMINATIONS.
(From Wedneeday's Times)

It is somewhat difficult to treat with becoming seriousness
the proposal discussed in the House of Lords last night to
introduce physical tests into the competitive examinations
for commissions in the army. No doubt an officer, even in
these days of scientific soldiering, needs to be something
more than a mere bookworm. If he is to enter the
mounted services, he should know how how to ride; and
even in the infantry he wilt find the art indispensable if he
is to rise in his profession; in any case he should be
sound in health and strong in limb. It would be the
merest pedantry to maintain that the modern art of
war can dispense with physical qualities because it peremp-
torily requires them to be supplemented by intellectual
attainments. Every soldier still needs sound health, physical
endurance, and muscular agility just as much as he ever did.
If he is lacking in these, he is not fit to be a soldier, but it
by no means follows that his fitness is proved because he
possesses these and nothing else. On the other hand, we
examine candidates for commissions because we require that
our officers should be educated MED, but we do not pretend
that the examination tests their fitness in every respect for
the profession they seek to enter. War is now a scientific
profession, and we therefore require that those who choose
it should show their intellectual fitness to pursue it with
success. For this purpose we test their mental qualifica-
tions by an appropriate examination. Their physical apti-
tudes need, no doubt, to be tested too; but to combine the
two tests, and thus to balance one set of qualifications
against another wholly distinct, would merely result in
confusion. A. young man who can walk fifty miles in
a day has one of the qualifications of a soldier; one who
has mastered the lunar theory has another. If the former
fails to acquire the rudiments of mathematics, or
the latter cannot be taught to ride, both ought to
be rejected ; but we can imagine no more ingenous device
for bringing the whole system of competition into contempt
than to establish an examination in which physical strength
and athletic accomplishments should be allowed to compen-
sate for mental inferiority, or rice versa. The two quali-
fications are both equally necessary, but, if tested at all,
they should be tested separately: in the one case, a mini-
mum proficiency is all that is needed; in the other, super-
iority of any kind is fairly entitled to corresponding
advantage.
There is not much ground for the fear expressed
In the House of Lords that the physical prowess of
British officers is on the decline. Not only has the
taste for athletic exercises of all kinds been
developed to an enormous extent in the present generation,
but the class from which the large majority of officers is
drawn is one to which field sports and muscular contests of
all kinds are at once a passion and a science. Moreover, the
military profession is one which is naturally chosen by men
of exceptional physical gifts rather than by men of weak
frames ax 1 sedentary habits. The opinion is generally pre-
valent that too much attention rather than too little is
given to athletic exercises in English education. Lord
Hardinge seems to think that there is a difference be-
tween public and private schools in this respect,
but we doubt if any school whatever would now be
popular among parents or boys if it did not offer abundant
facilities for athletic exercises of all kinds. Every school-
boy now boats or plays cricket or football At the Uni-
versities the annual athletic contests excite far more public
Interest than Classlista or Triposes, and we have not
heard that the students of Woolwich and Sandhurst have
manifested any undue disposition to neglect the pastimes
they learnt to love at school. To promote athletics
to the dignity of a place in competitive examina-
tions would be to invest them with an importance
the lack of which at present keeps them in their
proper position below the level of serious studies.
There is fax more danger of their being exalted above
their proper value than of their being unduly depre-
ciated. Of course every candidate for a commission should
be required to undergo a preliminary physical examination.
If he cannot ride he should be taught to do so; it is well for
him to learn to swim as well as to walk and to leap; but we
cannot see bow the possession of such aptitudes can properly
be measured against intellectual qualifications or be made
the subject of competitive tests. After all, competitive
examination is rot an ideal system of selection ; it is
adopted in default of a betters because on the whole it
is found to work fairly well for certain definite purposes.
But because it is useful as a means for securing certain
Indispensable qualities which are too important to be left to
take care of themselves, it by no means follows that it is
universally applicable for all qualities, physical as well as
intellectual If there were any fear that average English-
men would be likely to neglect the cultivation of athletics,
It might be necessary to encourage it by special means.
But if there is any fear at all it is entirely of an opposite
tendency. If men were as certain to cultivate their intel-
lects as they are to train their muscles we might almost be
content to dispense with examination altogether, for we
should be sure of good material to work with, however we
selected our officers.

No one will underrate the importance to military men of
proficieney in martial and athletic exercise.. All officers
should be required to reach a certain minimum standard of
skill and agility, and should be encouraged to cultivate
physical endurance and bodily dexterity as part of the train-
ing indispensable to an active and arduous profession. This
much every one will admit. But the proposals discussed
in the House of Lords go very much further than this.
Lord Hardinge would require every candidate for
a commission to submit to an examination in one
of four physical exercises—swimming, leaping, walk-
ing, and riding. All these accomplishments are useful,
perhaps indispensable, to an officer, but they are not on that
account fit subjects for competitive examination, nor would
there be any propriety in allowing exceptional proficiency in
any one or in all of them to compensate for intellectual
failure, is would eeetainly be the case if they were intro-
duced into one general competition. The inevitable
result would be that some of our officers would be
athletic blockheads, while others would be mere
sedentary students. It is no injustice, perhaps, to
ascribe this rather grotesque proposal to a survival
in some quarters of the old impatience against the whole
system of competitive examinations. It is very exasperating,
no doubt, for a manly young fellow, full of life and strength,
and a master of all athletic sports, to find himself distanced
and defeated by a student of modern languages and military
history, who has never handled a bat or ridden across
country. But the latter may, after all, make the better
officer if he is not deficient, as few Englishmen are, in
physical strength and love of hard exercise. Such a deficiency
would be a disqualification and ought to be treated as such,
but the qualities in which the other excels are not in them-
selves sufficient to make a good officer. Still less can the
tests of the two be combined without a serious risk of
sacrificing the advantages of both. No further security for
physical proficiency is needed than is to be found in the
ordinary training of ordinary Englishmen. When athletics
are rampant everywhere they are not likely to be found
wanting in the one profession in which they are not merely
a pastime but a duty, and when Englishmen begin to lose
their love of field sports, and of muscular exercise,
It will be time to think of special athletic tests for
the army. In the meantime we may well be content with
the opinion of Lord Sandhurst, which Lord Lansdowne
quoted, that under the existing system of examination the
young men who obtain commissions are far from being
worse than those who entered the army formerly. The in-
tellectual standard has manifestly been raised, and if the
physical standard has not declined it may fairly be left to
take care of itself.