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WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS and awkward affair, the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the position of Commander-in-Chief. The appointment was for five years only, but the Duke had treated it as an appointment for life, and had filled it for more than thirty years. Had he been a great soldier it would have mattered less, but in his prime he was no more than a hard-working and conscientious one, and now in his old age an immovable obstacle to a thousand necessary reforms. His experience dated from the time when promotion was entirely by purchase or by favour; he regarded any system of promotion by merit as a direct infringement of his privileges, both official and royal, with the result that the Staff College was deliberately shunned by ambitious officers, because it was known that "the Duke" would never promote any one who had been there. A more serious matter was the truncation and arrest of promotion right through the military hierarchy. "The worst thing the Duke did by the Army was to rob it of Wolseley's best years," was the comment of one who knew both men. A cartoon in Punch expressed this very aptly. It showed a slim, alert Lord Wolseley observing, "I have to relinquish my command in September." To whom a 236