The Kenilworth Advertiser. — 1873-04-10 (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England)

THE SCANDAL AT ST. CYR. (Prom the Pall Mail Gosittc)  One of those noisy scandals pretty common in French military schools has just occurred at St. Cyr, and drawn down some sharp criticisms from the Parisian press on the management of that rather over-vaunted, yet very important, institution. A senior cadet, holding sergeant's rank, having fault to find with a junior, reported him in the usual way, and got him Punished. The junior contended, however, that his offence was one whiell'had nothing to do with school discipline. He denied the right of the sergeant to take any cognizance of it, and nig view was endorsed by all the other cadent, who unanimously sent the sergeant to Coventry. Enraged at this, the sergeant, while drillinga squad of juniors next day, showed much greater severity than seems to be usual. He, in fact, bullied his .tquad, and so exasperated one of the number that the latter stepped out of the ranks and Insulted him. The sergeant-cadet declined to make • formal report of this matter, but applied to the governor of the school for leave to fight a duel with his antagonist, offering, if necessary, to resign his stripes in order to be on a footing of equality with him. The governor refused the permission but sommoned a court of in9tdry, who reported diet the sergeant" had behaved in every way as a man of honour," and recommended that his insulter should be severely punished. The ' same evening a number of cadets, headed by the junior, whom the court had censured, went to the sergeant's dormitory, scattered his regimentals, " limbered " hie cot, poured oil over his paper+, and wound up by tossing him in • blanket. Of course, the sergeant reported this, and a new emirt was summoned. It began by expelling the junior who had "termed out of the ranks and then acted as ringleader in the assault on the sergeant, and decreed that if ten of the others who had joined in this assault did not give themselves up by noon the next day, lots would be drawn by the whole school, and four more cadets expelled. On hearing his sentence the junior who was actually expelled rushed to his room and tried to commit suicide by opening a vein of his arm with • razor. The remainder of the school, "in a state of the wildest excitement," say the papers, proceeded to draw lots as to which ten should give themselves up, one cadet alone surrendering himself spontaneously. On the morrow at noon, as had been ordered beforehand, the whole school were paraded opposite two prison vans which were to convey the ten victims to the military prison in the Rue de Cherche-Midi for a month's solitary confinement. The officers of the school were visibly affected. Two or three could not refrain from sobbing. The cadet-sergeant, who was the hero of all the hubbub, staggered weeping up to the governor and implored him to pardon the culprits, but the governor, although himself overcome with emotion, would relent no f nigher than commuting to a fort' ';'s Imprisonment the sentence on the cadet ,no had given himself up of his own accord. Now there are points in this singular business which must concern not Frenchmen alone, but all who take any interest in the French Gamy and its wended regeneration. To begin with, is it not a rather grave matter that among a body of young men, who will shortly become officers, and as each be expected to set a pattern of honour to the whole country, but • single one should have been found to step out manfully and face the consequences of his misoonduct ? What can be the moral condition of the others, who though guilty, shrank from giving themselves up, and are now suffering some probably innocent comrades to undergo a mouth's imprisonment in their stead? %hen, again, it argues a strange want of harmony between the cadets and their officers when conduct which the latter eulogise as in every way honourable should be banned by the former as deserving of Coventry. One could understand such antagonism between schoolboys and their masters; but the St. enigma are gentlemen woo are preparing for some of the most important duties which can be intrusted to a man, and it might fairly be expected that they should entertain relations of a friendly and pleasant character with the officers who are training them. As to the offence of stepping out of the ranks and insulting his sergeant, that might be prised over briefly if it were the Isolated act of one hot-headed young man,-but followed as it was by a raid of 50 other cadets on this one sergeant, it looks as if French youths had learnt nothing by the events of the late war and the frightful catastrophes to which the want of discipline gave rise. fhe governor and his staff appear to have acted with judgment, but, taking the account of their demeanour on parade as we find it in the papers, we must consider their emotion and gobbing to have been particularly ill-timed. It is precisely by this affectation of softheartedness in the award of the most lenient and most richly-deserved punishments that Frenchmen have shaken all respect for authority and encouraged such writers as M. de Girsdin to question the right of society to inflict any punishment at all—the more so as the tears and sobs spring from no deep-seated feeling of humanity. The offioer who . to-day in slightly punishing a grave breach of re would =cis shoot down volutMniste and their wive. tha wore to-morrow without compunction. The two prim, vans which conveyed the misdemeanantreto theeenmsen prison of military detaultere are the only plimsoll feature In this whole bosineis ; and it is to be hoped for their own sakea that the ten young gentlemen who stepped into th me vehicles were too much bewildered by their own emotions to notice that of the general who had sentenced them to this wholesome journey. On the whole' we are not surprised to learn that the suthonties at St. Cyr and the War Office should have been greatly vexed at the circumstanSeeof this affair having been made public, and we can well sympathise with the journals who speak with bitterness and chagrin of so pitiful a scandal. To • Birmarakist German reading of it, the bnainesa must have been but .too welcome; to a Frenchman it can only suggest such reflections as those we find in the Temps, which asks whether cadets had not better pass their probationary stage in the army itself instead of in • costly college maintained by the State, where they clearly fail to learn those simple rudiments of order and obedience which raw recruits are taught in a single month.