The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-07-30 00:00:00

THE WINNER.: OF THE QUEEN'S PRIZE.

Private Beck, Third Devon Rifles, (Tiverton),
winner of the Queen's Prize at Wimbledon, arrived
at Exeter, on Monday afternoon, and met with a
very gratifying reception. On his way to the
Guildhall the horses were removed from the
waggonette, and men took their places in the shafts.
The Mayor highly complimented the Queen's
Prizeman on his prowess, and remarked that if
Major Pearse had not been unfortunate in shooting
off the tie in the first stage, three of the chief prizes
at Wimbledon would have been brought to Exeter at
the same time.

A brickmaker was killed by lightning on Tuesday
afternoon during a terrific storm which burst over Mighttn
A movement is on foot in the West of England to
mark the tercentenary of the defeat of the Armada by the
erection of a monument to Sir Francis Drake and his com-
rades in the defence of England. The site fixed upou Is the
be at Plymouth, in full view of the sound, where the
English ffeet assembled before issuing forth to give battle
to the Spaniards. A considerable fund, which haft received
the support of the Prince of Wales and other distinguished
persons, has been raised in Devon and Cornwall, and, with
the object of giving the movement a national turn, a depu-
tatihn from the original committee is, we understand (says
the Daily Arms) about to visit London end the large towns
throughout the oountry.

THE NEW ARMY ORGANISATION
SCHEME.

Tuesday night's London Gazette contains the retirements
and promotions under the new army organisation scheme.
The Standard of Wednesday published an article on the
changes effected by the new arrangements, and from which
we make the following extract :

The Ga:ette published last night is without a
parallel, and effects an absolute transformation of the
personnel of the British Army. Fifty-five Generals,
sixty-six Lieutenant Generals, and thirty-four Major
Generals are placed on the Retired List, while the
changes and promotions in the lower ranks are even
more than proportionately large. General Sir C. J.
Van Straubenzee, G.C.13., heads the list of General
Officers retired under the provisions of the Royal
Warrant of the 25th of June last, and following him
is a long list of names associated with the history of
the British Army during the last half century.
There can be no doubt that among the hundred and
fifty-five General Officers now removed from the
Active List are many who could yet have done good
service had the country needed them, and great will
be the heartburnings among them at their enforced
retirement. But the vast majority will be in reality
in no way affected by the change. The number of
commands open for Generals is so small that out
of the whole not more than some ten or twelve
could ever have hoped for one, and the tendency
of the day is more and more towards the em-
ployment of comparatively young men. Setting
aside cases of individual Thardship, this great
reduction of the list of General Officers is a distinct
and decided advantage. Their number was absurdly
out of proportion to the needs of the Service, or even
to any emergency which could conceivably arise, and
no good end was served by keeping on the list men
whose enforced idleness was a grievance to them, and
who were constantly subjected to the disappointment
of seeing the few vacancies for which they were avail-
able filled by men who were their juniors. Superfluous
lags the veteran on the stage' and when he becomes
a superfluity, his retirement is, for his own sake
and that of others, desirable. There can be little
question that, for active service in the field,
a General Officer will be at his best below
rather than above fifty. As an organiser
,of
war in the Cabinet, Von Moltke has shown that no
limit of age is assignable; but in the fielel, quickness,
decision, and energy count far more than caution and
prudence. When the rashness and impetuosity of
youth have sobered down, and when experience in
command has once been gained, a military man is at
his best. The ideal Army would have a General
between forty-five and fifty, Divisional Commanders
five years younger, Brigadiers between thirty-five and
forty, and Field Officers from thirty to thirty-five.
Whatever opinion military men may entertain of the
new Army changes as a whole, none, save those
effected, will question the wisdom and expediency of
the great reduction in the Active List of General
Officers announced last night.

An even greater change than that produced by the
placing on the Retired List of a great number of
General Officers, the greater portion of whom have
long since ceased to have any active connection with
the army, is the enormous per-centage of majors pro-
moted to be lieutenant-colonels, and of captains to be
majors. Roughly, it may be said that every regi-
mental major has become a lieutenant-colonel, and
more than half the captains have become majors.
Never was there so wholesale a promotion as this, and
what with the new names of regiments and the altered
ranks of officers, the "Army List" will for a time
become a puzzle, even to those who pride them-
selves upon their intimate knowledge of that bulky
compilation. What the " Peerage" is to the fashion-
able world, the "Army List" is to old soldiers, and
an idea of the changes now created may be conveyed
by the suggestion of the utter confusion which would
be caused in the mind of a worshipper of " Debrett "
and " Burke " were every Peer to be raised to a
superior rank with a change in title, and were the
whole of the younger branches of marriageable age
to form matrimonial alliances. A confusion and per-
plexity fully as complete as this will be caused among
officers, past and present, by the changes which have
taken place among the new Regulations. The "Army
List" for July is in itself a bewildering puzzle. The old
regiments with whose deeds for the last hundred years
every military student—and, indeed, every well-
read person—is acquainted, are no more. Uncouth
appellations have taken the place of the grand his-
toric numbers, and under such cognomens as "the
Radnorshire and West Tipperary Royal Regiments"
are entombed seven corps, whose history is part of
that of the nation. Military men will, in time learn
that the 30th (Cambridgeshire) and 59th (Nottingham-
shire) regiments, for example, have been merged into
the East Lancashire; but the general public will
never learn this. To them the regiments which fought
in Egypt, at Corunna, Badajos, Salamanca, Victoria,
St. Sebastian, Nive, Waterloo, Bhurtpore, Alma,
Inkerman, in China, the Cape, and Afghanistan,
have disappeared for ever, have been con-
jured away by some inexplicable hocus-pocus,
and there are no representatives remaining of the
famous fighting regiment of the British line. When
this annihilation of the history of the British army
comes to be understood, men will begin to ask—why
have these things been, what counterbalancing advan-
tage has arisen out of this tremendous destruction of
prestige, this rough break in the grand historical
chain? Ask as much as they may, no answer will
ever be given them; no answer can be givan to such
questions. It cannot for a moment be pretended that
it would not have been possible to amalgamate two
regiments and yet to preserve their titles. . . .

The public will deplore the break in tradition and
the loss of the old familiar names. As General
Roberts said, in hi a famous speech It the Mansion
House, there is an absolute loss of fighting power in an
Army by their loss of prestige. As a lad will fight
for the honour of his school, as a young man exerts
himself to the utmost for that of his university, so
are soldiers jealous of the honour of their regiment,
and ready to die for its credit and repute. In battle
men fought fully as much for the honour of the 50th,
or the Rangers, or the Welsh Fusiliers, as for the
honour of England. The one was an ever present
inducement to good behaviour and to brave deeds.
No man of the 30th or of the 59th cares one iota for
the credit of the name of the East Lancashire. . •