OFFICERS' EXPENSES.
[To THE EDITOR OP ,THR " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—May I suggest that "Ex-Officer's Daughter" (Spectator, September 19th) is hardly fair in assuming that by throwing "open the Army to the sons of poor doctors, solicitors, barristers, &c.,". we should thereby be descending to the level of the French officer risen from the ranks, and consequently despised by the peasants' sons who have known him as a private P La it unknown to her that the professional class whom she so depreciates have in the main, equally with the aristocrats and plutocrats to whom she would restrict our choice, the education, the feelings, and the aspirations of gentlemen ? Writing as one of that despised class, I can venture to think that a large infusion of young fellows whose antecedents have prepared them to take a serious and earnest view of life, and to look on work as a not unwelcome necessity, might, to say the least, be no bad thing for the Army; no, not though it should displace an equal number of the gilded youth whose home and school traditions alike have taught them to regard amusement and pleasure as the main objects of existence. Fewer of our young officers, maybe, would then be found, as the "Officers' Education Com. mission" has found them, "unable to write a good letter, or draw up an intelligible Report"; fewer "whose idea is to do as little as they possibly can " ; who are "lamentably wanting in military knowledge and the desire to acquire it," and with whom "the spirit and fashion is not to show keenness" in their profession. That English officers will ever work their brains too much or love sport too little is surely the most chimerical of apprehensions. But, after all, to be worth his salt the officer does need something which the most whole-
hearted devotion to sport can never give, and for which we may most hopefully look to the now practically proscribed class of poorer gentry, who, if they fail to distinguish them- selves in polo and regimental drags, are not likely, at any rate, to value themselves on knowing as little as possible of the science and art of war which they profess.—I am, Sir, 8r,c., SENEX.
[We entirely agree with" Senex "in his view that we want more, not fewer, officers from the poorer professional families. By securing them we shall not, in fact, get men of worse blood than if we confine ourselves to the richer classes.—ED. Spectator.]
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