Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/46

40 whom have never so much as even commanded a company. The thing has reached such a pass that instances occur of officers applying not to get the step of honorary rank on retirement; and it must be apparent to every one that in the present day the rank of major-general is held in little more estimation than the rank of colonel.

This baneful practice was borrowed from that already obtaining in the Navy; but that does not make it the less objectionable. Moreover, the Navy is comparatively such a small service, that the evil does not make itself very apparent. The country is not so overrun with sham admirals as it is with sham generals, because there are so few of them.

Honorary promotion on retirement should, therefore, be at once abolished: the change would give great satisfaction to the army, and would commend itself to every sensible person.

It need hardly be said, after this, that the practice, so profusely extended of late years, of giving combatant rank to non-combatant officers, should also be abolished. Why should a paymaster be called a major instead of a paymaster? It may be pleaded that this renders the Pay Department more popular. If that argument be worth anything, and military titles are to be used to cheapen civil employments, then for economy's sake military titles ought to be given to the War Office clerks, and the senior clerks at the Admiralty might be dubbed post-captains, their pay being docked all round per contra.

We have explained that many of the recent changes are the result, directly or indirectly, of the report of Lord Penzance's Commission. One important recommendation made by it has, however, been entirely set aside. The Commission said –

"It has been stated to us as nearly the universal opinion of those whose evidence we have taken, that of late years promotion by brevet for distinguished service has been much too lavishly bestowed. At the same time it is at present almost the only way of rewarding zeal and efficiency on active service. ... We are not prepared, therefore, to recommend that the practice of brevet promotion for distinguished service should be discontinued, but rather that it should be much more sparingly applied, and under some well-defined rules and conditions, which should be uniformly adhered to, and should practically restrict the number so promoted."

This was written in 1876: since then the bestowal of brevets and decorations has been such as to make what the Commission termed lavishness appear like parsimony, so profusely have they been showered down for the petty wars and skirmishes in which the army has taken part during the past eight years. The honours for Afghanistan were overdone; but the abuse culminated in the Egyptian business of 1882, when men who had been exposed to no hardship, and had scarcely been under fire, came away with four decorations, including the one which we had the ineffable meanness to take from the Khedive for beating his own troops.