The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-11 00:00:00

THE WOOLWICII INQUIRE

TO THE EDITOR OP THE TIMES.
Sir,—An investigation is just now taking place
as to the recent disturbances at Woolwich Aca-
demy. Before a verdict is, pronounced, I earnestly
entreat you to allow me to submit to the military
authorities and the public a few remarks upon what
has recently occurred, and what is still occurring,
at that great military school.

Formerly the Woolwich cadets were mere raw
boys, ranging from 14 to 17 years of age, admitted
to the school by patronage after a very slight test
examination. They are now young men from 18 to
22 years of age, admitted on their merits proved in
open competition, after having submitted to the
Board of Military Education satisfactory testimo-
nials of subordinate habits and general good con-
duct from the heads of the schools at which they
have been previously educated. It being clear,
therefore, that the materials upon which the gover-
nors of Woolwich Academy have now to work are
materials of preyed and indisputable superiority,
it is not unreasonable to suspect that the ferment
which has recently arisen may have been caused
rather by the mismanagement and neglect of the
governors than by the misconduct of the governed.
And I do hope that this point will be very clearly
ascertained before we hear that a verdict bringing
desolation to the hearts of parents and ruin to the
future prospects of their children has been arrived
at.

I will give my reasons for presuming to make
this appeal. Formerly the rules of Woolwich Aca-
demy, drawn up, as I have etated, for the manage-
ment of mere boys, were, undoubtedly, over strict
and harsh, and the result was that the Academy de-
servedly bore an ill-name among the educational
establishments of England. Hardly any time was
allowed the boys for exercise or games ; they were
confined within very narrow bounds ; they enjoyed
no privacy of any kind, washing all together in
public, sleeping four in a room, changing their linen
but three times a week on fixed days, and going to
bed in the dark in winter. Their fare was not only
plain, but of inferior quality; and they were allowed
to bring back from home but £2 a half-year in
order to eke it out.

Incredible as it may appear, I am now told, on
authority which I give you, and which I think you
will allow to be excellent, that the selfsame rules
are still enforced, without any mitigation or change
among the young men of from 18 to 22 years of age
who now fill the academy. They also are compelled
to wash in public, to study in public, to sleep four
in a room, to change their linen only on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, to take their exercise in
a very small playground, to go to bed in the dark,
and to content themselves with £2 pocket-money
every six months, exactly as their predecessors of
14 and 15 years of age did before them. Nor is their
food any better than it used to be ; yet for such
treatment and such fare they are charged £125 a
year each.

If this be as I have described it, is it astonishing
that they should be dissatisfied; and ought the onus
of the recent emeute to lie with the governors or
thA govarnPa

I have no doubt that we shall be told that
the latter ouga—t"o"lia-ve"m- ti-delleir complaints

" through the proper channel," and that nothing
can excuse their insubordination in the eye of the
War office. It requires, however, but a very mode-
rate supply of common sense and knowledge of the
world to know that no proper channel exists through
which complaints made by cadets who have just
entered Woolwich against the system which exists
there, and with which all its officials are identified,
would have met with either indulgence or even at-
tention, while the youths who complained would
have been indelibly marked at head-quarters as
agitators and troublesome fellows. Indeed, the
stereotyped reply to all suoh complaints has hitherto
been, " We are not going to change our system for
you—if you do not like it, you need not remain
here."

The question at present at issue is not a narrow
question of discipline; it is a question which con-
cerns the nation at large. Through Woolwich
alone can admission be now obtained into the scien-
tific branches of our:military service; to prepare a
young man for admission to that school costs much
money; and the picked pupils of our best schools
are alone calculated to compete for such a prize. Is
it not, therefore, all-important that the public
should feel assured that when such excellent mate-
rials have been collected for their service a good
use will be made of them, and that the parents who
have reared their sons fer their country's service
should not be allowed to see their hopes wantonly
blighted and their children ruined through the in-
difference or the incompetence of the officials into
whose hands they have been consigned by the War-
ofLe for further training P—l am sir, your obedient
servant ? A FATHER.

P.S.—Allow me to subjoin a precis of a day's
work at Woolwich Academy, reminding those who
examine it that it is not drawn up with the view of
" cramming" and forcing dunces, but that it is the
scheme of education deliberately enforced among
young men from 18 to 22 years of age, who have
proved themselves the best pupils of our best
schools :

Rise at 8 o'clock ; breakfast and inspection till 8 50 ; in
study at 9 till 11 30 ; clean and prepare for inspection at
11 45; drill till 12 45; dinner at 1 p.m. ; in study from 2
to 4; parade at 4 15 ; drill till 4 45; in study from 5 till 7 ;
toa at 7 15 ; leisure until 10 in an enclosure 200 yards by 50.
At 10 cadets aro required to answer names at rounds com-
pletely dressed, when lights are immediately extinguished,
and they are left to go to bed in the dark.

THE CAVE IN RATHLIN ISLAND.—Tradition
records that on one occasion the islanders fled for refuge to
the larger of these caves when there was a threatened inva-
sion of Danish pirates, who formerly infested these coasts.
Their hiding-place was however discovered, and an inhu-
man practice, often resorted to in those times, was adopted,
of burning a quantity of straw or fern at the entrance of
the cave, till the smoke with which it was soon filled suffo-
cated the wretched inmates, whose bones are said still to
remain beneath a heap or mound at the furthest end of the
cave, where they had congregated together in the agonies
of death. This story bears a strong resemblance to that told
of the celebrated cave of Eigg, in Skye ; and as both are
founded on tradition, each may have an equal claim to
truth. But it appears from a passage in Coxe's History of
Ireland (vol. i. p. 73), that this was a practice frequently
adopted; for in the reign of Edward 1., A.D. 1274, " the
islanders and Scots made an incursion into Ireland, burning
several towns and villages, killing every one they could
get, and carrying off vast booty: Soon after, Richard de
Burgo and Sir Eustace le Poer entered the islands, and
burnt the cottages, slew all they met, and smoked out those
that hid themselves in caves, after the manner of smoking
a fox out of his earth."—Once a Week.
THE VOLUNTEERS AND THE REGULAR ARMY.—
It is this consideration of the cheapness and extent of the
Volunteer project which has inspired many members of the
regular army with a degree of jealousy, and caused them
to apprehend that as soon as the invasion-panic has
subsided, and questions of taxation assume importance
again, the efficiency of the Volunteers, and the implicitness
of the reliance which may be placed upon them, will
be assigned as a reason for reducing the regular army or
dealing with it less liberally. That, however, would be a
fatal mistake; and greatly as a diminution of the popular
burdens is to be desired, we would by no means purchase
the boon at such a price. The country cannot do with a
regiment less of regulars, or afford to neglect her army
proper in the smallest particular. The volunteers
would be a wall of sand about our isles if they alone, or lost confidence in the nucleus of dis •
cipline and strategy which the regular army constitutes.
To impair the latter to the extent of a single regiment
would be to inflict irreparable injury uponthe former. The
two bodies are in some important senses interdependent, and
in none autagoniotioi—,M4qin Univorsity