NAVAL CADETS.
THE present House of Commons has a fellow-feeling for the stupid boy of the family. It is conscious, perhaps, that if there could be a competitive examination of Parliaments, it would not gain a high place in the class-list. And it must be admitted that the stupid boys have a grievance. They used to have their full share of the good things that were going,— indeed, as regards the Government Service, they had more than their share. It was always recognised that the Law and Medicine required brains, and though the Church was less exacting than either of the other learned professions, still to succeed even in the Church a man must be not quite a fool. The Army and Navy and the Civil Service were natural refuges for boys who were unfit to be either barristers, or doctors, or clergymen. It was not supposed that stupidity would be any serious disadvantage in these callings. Any- body can fight, and almost anybody can copy a letter. This last occupation has long been withdrawn from the list of open careers. In the Civil Service of the Crown the dull boy used to have as good a chance of get- ting on as his clever brother, but partly from the desire of Ministers to divest themselves of a patronage which was only a cause of annoyance, and partly from the desire of the middle-class to get more appointments for their sons than they could expect to get under a system of patronage, the Civil Service has of late years been wholly given over to competition. Nor is there much hope for a dull boy now in the Army. The great Continental wars have shown the need there is of brains in a military career, and though the old patronage system lingers in many corners, it is seldom openly defended. In fact, the country has given too practical a proof of its determination to have its Army officered by the best men it can get, to leave the patronage system much chance. If anybody will do for a soldier, there would have been no need to abolish the Purchase system, or to pay large sums of money in compensation to the interests injured by its abolition. This is a kind of proof which makes an impression on the imaginations, even of the fathers of stupid sons. They see that the Govern- ment will no longer take money for a commission, and they feel that it is of no use to hope that it will do for them out of favour what it has ceased to do as a matter of business. But the Navy stands on a different footing from the Army. There has been nothing to frighten people into a complete re- version of the whole system. Englishmen have not seen one great Naval Power break down under its load of administra- tive corruption, and another great Naval Power take its place, and more than its place, by dint of unremitting attention to the quality and training of the men employed in the Service. Had the overthrow of France and the aggrandisement of Ger- many been accomplished on the sea instead of on land, the public would have insisted on a radical change in the methods of appointing Naval officers. As it is, they have not been startled into anxiety about the failure of the English Fleet, and the old notion of the Navy as a convenient and creditable way of disposing of dunces has not yet completely died out.
It is the existence in the country of a feeling of this kind that gives encouragement to the Government to make such changes as they have lately been making in the training of Naval Cadets. Neither Mr. Ward Hunt nor Mr. Egerton defends stupid cadets, as such. They say a good deal that is true about the evil of cramming, and the harm done to boys by subjecting them to competitive examinations at too early an age. But if there were as strong a feeling about the Navy as there is about the Civil Service, these arguments would go for nothing. The Civil Service is the recognised preserve of fairly clever boys, and all the parents who think well of their sons' abilities, and wish them to go into the Government Service, are on the side of open competition, with all the ad- vantages and disadvantages that are inseparable from it. But
the Navy has, until lately, been the recognised preserve of stupid boys, and when the Admiralty went back in 1875 to the system of test-examinations for Naval Cadets, we suspect that the change was popular with those who had sons whom they wished to send to sea, and that nobody else cared much about it. Mr. Hunt says that he made the change, not because he is opposed to competition in its proper place, but because when he made acquaintance with the cadets on board the Britannia,' he was struck by the want of physical power which they displayed. He then appointed a Committee to ascertain why the cadets looked so puny and weak, and
the conclusion to which the Committee came was that it was the result of working too hard in order to pass the entrance examination. Thereupon Mr. Hunt determined to substitute a test for a competitive examination. Whether the cadets have been stronger and healthier since the adoption of this change was not stated in the debate on Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's resolution, but there can be no doubt that they have been worse educated. Indeed, Mr. Hunt's instructions seem to have been exaggerated in the course of carrying them out, for the first batch of cadets were admitted without even a test- examination, and the next two batches were not examined in mathematics, which has usually been considered a useful study for a Naval officer. This oversight has now been remedied, and all the cadets who are in future appointed will have to pass a test-examination, from which the elements of mathe- matics will not be excluded.
The truth in this matter seems to lie somewhere between Mr. Hunt and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre. We agree with the former that good physical qualifications are of immense importance in the Naval Service, and that a system of admission which weakened the constitutions of the successful candidates would be a system on behalf of which nothing could be said. Indeed, such a system would defeat its own end, inasmuch as a boy who works too hard at twelve will probably injure his mind as well as his body, and be a less capable officer at twenty- four than a boy who has taken things more easily, and post- poned hard work until an age at which• he is physically fit for it. We agree with Mr. Shaw-Lefevre that as between a dull boy and a clever boy, both possessed of the same physical qualifications, the clever boy will make a better officer than the dull boy. Nor do we deny that the tendency of test, as distinguished from competitive, examinations is to give an advantage to dull boys. The standard gets insensibly lowered, from the dislike of the Examiners to reject more boys than they can help. Nor is there any reason to believe that a test- examination is in the least a better preventive of cramming than a competitive examination. Why should not the boy who has to pass an examination in order to keep his appoint- ment be as much crammed as the boy who has to come out first in an examination in order to gain his appointment I Of the two, the former will probably be more crammed, because if he fails to get his cadetship, there is nothing else for him to try for, whereas the latter can try for a hundred other things. The only distinction between the cases is that over-cramming may do the dull boy less physical injury, because he is neither interested nor excited while the process is going on, and forgets all about it as soon as it is over. The question is really one for medical experts, and the scholarships which are competed for at all the great public schools ought to supply a sufficient amount of data on which to found a trustworthy medical opinion. Are boys physically the worse for being made to undergo competitive examination at twelve or thirteen If they are, competitive examination for Naval cadetships must stand condemned, unless the age at which it is undergone can be raised, or unless the nature of the examination can be altered. Whether it is necessary to take boys so early into the Navy is a matter on which it might be well to have further in- formation, before accepting the present system as final ; but if it is necessary, why should not the examination be com-
petitive in a very limited number of subjects If every question asked could be answered by a week's reading, there would be very little room for cramming, and yet the manner in which the different boys answered the questions would be an equally good guide to their natural acuteness and vigour. All that a prolonged examination in many subjects can do is to test the amount of knowledge already attained. A short examination in a very few subjects will be just as useful in testing the power of attaining knowledge in future, and it is this latter power that can alone have any value in the case of a boy of twelve.
Previous page
