The Press.
London, England, 1855-03-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

customers where the Directors are engaged
in commerce ; or they are bartered for other
appointments, or given to voters in exchange
for political sarT; aft where Directors have
chosen to vio b they have been clan-

destinelr sold,
When a cadet is intended for the enginnets
or artillery, be is tent to Addiscombe (the
East India Cotnpany'e Woolwich), where he
studies for two years. At the end of that
period those found qualified on examination
for engineer appointments are sent to Chatham
to complete their Military education, and
thence to India ; those found fitted for the at.•
tillery are sent at once to join the artillery in
India; and those unable to pass for either of
these branches are sent out to India to be

posted to the infantry regiments as ensigns, as
are also alt those who are called direct infantry
cadets. These latter, and the cadets of cavalry,
pass through no intermediate course of study
whatever. In India a portion of the young en-
gineers are sent to join the sappers, while the
rest are employed in the junior appointments
of their own corps ; the artillery are posted as
second lieutenants to the horse, foot, or native
artillery, according to their interest at head
quarters or the exigencies of the service. The
infantry cadets are posted as ensigns to regi
ments according to their seniority ; and the
cavalry cadets are posted to cavalry regiments
as comets in the same manner. Once posted
they all rise entirely by seniority, the only
system of purchase allowed being the buying
out a senior by a common contribution of all
below him in the regiment to which he belongs.
The result is, that promotion for the most part
is very slow, and were it not for the insalubrity
of the climate, and the natural desire of almost
all to escape from it as soon as they have the
means to do so, the rate of progress up the
ladder would be intolerable. As it is, it is
nothing uncommon to see a lieutenant of se-
venteen or eighteen years standing in the army,
a captain of from six and twenty years to
thirty, and a major of from thirty to thirty-six
years ; and this, be it remembered, in a
climate the wear and tear of which certainly
ages men in a much shorter period than the
climate of Europe. In consequence of this,
and of the manner in which regiments are
constantly broken up in detachments and scat-
tered about on all kinds of service—and in
consequence, also, of the extent to which offi-
cers of the junior ranks are taken away from
their regiments for all kinds of miscellaneous
military and civil-staff appointments, to return
to them only as majors long after all their
regimental knowledge has been forgotten—the
Company's regular regiments are very much
inferior to her Majesty's, and its regimental
officers are for the most part far less efficient
as regimental officers, while among its briga•
diers and divisional commanders there are
perhaps more worn-out and incompetent old
men to be found than in any other service
whatever. But, people talking of the Indian
army forget that in nearly all the great battles
of India, from the time of Lord LANE to the
present, the brunt of the action has fallen on
her Majesty's regiments stationed in India,
and it is her Majesty's officers who have almost
invariably held the supreme command.
The Company's artillery forms a splendid
contrast to the infantry, and that is by all
allowed to be fully equal—the European por-
tion of it, at least—to the artillery of th. Royal
army. Nor has the native portion of it failed
to prove itself, to the best of its ability, to be
worthy of so high a standard. The engineer
corps also is excellent.
Again, the Company possesses an irregular
service, the cavalry branch of which is so per-
fect that there is nothing of its kind superior
to it in the world. In this service the greater
portion of the native officers and troopers are
men of good family, who purchase into the
regiment in the first instance, and are pro-
moted afterwards, according to their skill and
gallantry, while the European officers are
young lieutenants and captains, selected spe-
cially with a view to their qualifications, and
who thus have commands open to them in the
prime of their manhood which in their own
regiments they would have to wait for till they
had arrived at the rank of lieut..colonel.
For the same reason, the commissariat and
staff of the Company's army are for the most part

SATURDAY,

admirable. The officers of both branches have

ordinarily been selected after a very short term of
regimental duty—they thus learn their work at
the time they art MONS Ottisble of doing so by
nature. 'they ttre early tatight to think and
act Ng thimselves, and thus become full of
resoltteds and are•-ieblom at a loss in the most
critieg sltUations ; and, from the frequency
of st+St and the Went of its operations,
their blinds become f4Miitarised v;ith difficul-
ties and dangers, and they are able with facility
to meet anti overcome them. Had the English

army been for the same period accustomed to
the same kind of work, its staff would, no
doubt, have become equally effective; but the
operations of war were for the most part new
to it, and it had, moreover, to contend with
what we look upon as an enormous disadvan-
tage—a civil commissariat, instead of having a
commissariat composed, as the Indian com-
missariat is, of military officers—men who
know that they will be at once remanded back,
with prospects ruined, to their regiments if
they fail to give the most entire satisfaction to
the Commander-in-Chief.

From the above it will be seen that the
Royal army is not an inferior army to tho
Indian army, but, on the contrary, that, as a
whole, it is most immeasurably superior to it,
though the Indian army possesses some ad-
mirable points too. The statesmanlike mode,
therefore, of making the Indian army useful
will not be by superseding men like Lord
RAGLAN, and Sir GEORGE BROWN, and Sir COLIN
CAMPBELL, by lieutenants and brevet-majors
taken from it—who could probably hardly
manceuvre a regiment on parade— as some
papers propose, but by recalling some of the
superfluous regiments from India (as we see,
ou our suggestion, they are already doing); by
raising an effective contingent in Turkey, offi-
cered by Company's officers (another measure
which we long since recommended) ; by getting
overland some troops and batteries of the
Company's admirable artillery, whose intimate
knowledge of field service would be invaluable
at the present crisis ; and by sending out as
many of the Company's commissariat, engineer,
and staff officers, as they can lay their hands
on in England, and as can be spared—not to
supersede the staff officers of the Royal ser-
vice already in the Crimea, but to aid and
assist them by their practical knowledge of
what is requisite with armies in time of war.
Above all, there should be introduced at once
the Indian system of issue on emergent ser-
vice, and when forms and orders cannot, with-
out detriment to the service, be waited for,
a receipt headed " emergent service " should
be held by the storekeepers a sufficient
voucher for the issue of the articles required.
The evidence given bafore Mr. ROEBUCK'S
committee is sufficiently clear and explicit as
to the absolute necessity of establishing this
rule : it would be difficult indeed to form an
estimate of the vast amount of death and
suffering that have been caused by the neglect
of it.