Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

“ As a necessary consequence, the numbers of persons seeking education at the Military College fell off in like manner. And now the junior department exhibits a muster-roll of 180 cadets only, while the strength of the senior department has dwindled to nine individuals. To be sure, other causes than the withdrawal of public support from the institution have operated to produce this latter result. Whatever it might have been forty years ago, the senior department at Sandhurst is certainly no Staff school now. Indeed, the only science effectively taught there seems to be mathematics ”

“ In 1799 he was appointed professor of mathematics in the Royal Military College, High Wycombe, which was subsequently removed to Farnham in Surrey, and is better known as Sandhurst College. This post he held for twenty-one years, resigning it in 1820, when old age and infirmity had overtaken him. ”

“ In January 1801 a parliamentary grant of 30,000l. was voted for the establishment of a ‘royal military college,’ to consist of two departments, a senior at High Wycombe and a junior at Marlow, both of which were subsequently removed to Sandhurst. ”

“ Any boy, however humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass the competitive examination. Europe, particularly Germany, would not approve of this; but we think it the best way. The average graduate of the Point, whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks to the army as his profession. We maintain the Academy for the strict business purpose of teaching young men how to train our army in time of peace and to lead and direct it in time of action.
Our future officers enter West Point when they are two years younger than is the average at Sandhurst ”

“ The corps of professors and teachers at West Point has always deservedly ranked high as instructors, but there is no "royal road" to knowledge, and it cannot be claimed that three or four years at the Military Academy would count for more, as general education, than the same period spent in any other good school. A very few men of high standing in the classes supplemented their education by obtaining appointments as temporary instructors in the academy after graduating, but most of them left their books behind them and began at once the subaltern's life at the distant frontier post. ”

“ Sir Joseph Banks commissioned him to bring out in aquatint (a method of engraving then peculiar to Sandby) forty-eight plates drawn during a tour in Wales. Sandby displayed considerable power as a caricaturist in his attempt to ridicule the opposition of Hogarth to the plan for creating a public academy for the arts. In 1768 he was chosen a foundation-member of the Royal Academy and appointed chief drawing-master to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He held this situation till 1799. Sandby is best remembered, however, by his water-colour paintings. ”

“ A Military Academy was formed, principally with a view to bring forward extraordinary talents and employ them in the civil or military public service. Anyone was admissible. The children of the meanest mechanics and day-labourers, provided they had very extraordinary natural genius, a healthy constitution, and a good character, were educated. It was an establishment designed for the encouragement of genius, and for calling forth into public utility talents which would otherwise remain buried and lost in obscurity. ”

“ Young men from public schools, or from private tutors under whom they had to study proprio motu, and without the spur of discipline, could not be submitted to the same restraints as the mere boys who were cadets in the earlier days of the Academy. Nor does their absence lessen the sense of discipline which is necessary in a military body. The sympathy of numbers is the strongest wall against which a recalcitrant member can 112dash his head, and the result to the head is proverbial. ”

“ To this want of preparatory knowledge, maturity of mind, and taste for mathematical and military studies, do we attribute most of the difficulties of internal administration, and class-room instruction. So long as the cadet is a boy, or if full grown in body, a youth with only boyish tastes, and without scholarly and soldierly aspirations,—so long as not a few are in the Academy, not because they sought its privileges from an inward and irrepressible impulse to a military career, but for the eclat of a military position to be resigned when such position involves sacrifices ”

“ But of the ninety-six, forty are preparing for the Engineers or Artillery, and twenty for the Line. The subjects taught in the military division are the same as at Cheltenham, except fortification; and the head-master (Rev. Dr. Benson) claims, in his evidence before the Commission, that his graduates are as well trained in the same subject as the pupils of Sandhurst or Woolwich. He advises the establishment of exhibitions in the Military School, open to competition to the pupils of all the public schools, and regards the modern side as an essential feature in all public schools. ”

“ The War Academy has for its object the higher scientific and practical education of officers, in every branch of the military profession, on the staff, as also of the higher adjutants. It aims also at the development of all military scientific subjects.
The War Academy has three courses, each lasting nine months, and the intervals are employed in practical exercises.
The number of students in one course must, as a rule, not exceed twelve, and every upper or sub-lieutenant who has served not less than four years with the troops, can attend the academy. ”

“ From his experience in the War of 1812 and service on Indian campaigns, General Andrew Jackson while President of the United States in a message to Congress said:
“I recommend to your fostering care, as one of our safest means of national defense, the Military Academy. This institution has already exercised the happiest influence upon the moral and intellectual character of our Army; and such of the graduates from various causes may not pursue the profession of arms will be scarcely less useful as citizens. ”

“ We are inclined to believe that the usefulness of the Military Academy at West Point,—which has furnished so large a proportion of the best civil engineers, lawyers, physicians, and divines, as well as the soldiers who and who alone have conducted our armies to real glory,—we are inclined to believe that this justly celebrated school owes all its triumphs to its rigid laws and independence of popular clamor.
Discipline is every thing. ”

“ The General Military Academy in Bucharest—usually called the Military Academy—is a four-year university-level school whose graduates receive regular officer commissions and who are expected to serve as career officers. It also offers mid-career command and staff types of courses. An advanced academy, the Military Technical Academy, requires that its applicants have a university degree; they may be military officers, but they are not required to have had military service or military education of any sort. ”

“ Failing health obliged him to return to England; and in 1808, being then a lieutenant, he entered on a distinguished student career in the senior department of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Shortly after he was promoted to the rank of captain. In 1814 he retired on half-pay, and devoted the remainder of his life to scientific research. ”

“ The bravest function of the Prince's visit was in this college, where he presented colours to the cadets and saw them drill. The discipline of these boys on parade is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich or West Point, and their physique is equal to, if not better, than any shown at those places. It is not exactly a military school, though the training is military, for though some of the cadets join Imperial or Canadian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian Militia, practically all the boys join professions or go into commerce after passing through. ”

“ There were Public School and Sandhurst products, like Roy; there were promoted rankers, with permanently squared shoulders and little waxed moustaches; there were professional and business men verging on middle-age, who had long shed their stomachs and acquired a genuine passion for army forms and regimental routine. The last two figures that caught my eye were those of my machine-gun officer, a Mathematical Fellow of an ancient Cambridge college, and Adams, second-in-command of B Company, who in a previous existence had officiated as under gate-porter in the same foundation. ”

“ Secretary Root discovered that one-third of Regular Army officers possessed no formal military education, and he believed that the Military Academy and the schools of application were inadequate to equip officers to handle the new responsibilities attendant to the growing world prominence of the United States. Nevertheless, he valued the Military Academy as the initial training ground for the Army's officers and launched a successful campaign to increase the cadet corps, modernize the academy's curriculum, and improve its physical plant. ”

“ The two thousand cadets who were appointed by patronage and failed to graduate, cost the government, directly and indirectly each year, a much larger sum than it would have taken to have excluded them in advance from the institution by competitive examination, and filling their places by better men; and their exclusion by substituting better material, would have been an incalculable gain to the Academy, facilitating its discipline, increasing the value of its instruction, and giving to the army a larger number of competent officers. ”

“ Although not a graduate, I have always had the greatest respect for the teachings and discipline of the academy. I believe the U. S. Military Academy has turned out the best officers known to the world's history. Schaff says, in "The Spirit of old West Point," that my class was not only the largest, but the most distinguished during that period. Of this class nine became general officers, and nine were killed in battle. ”

“ A better knowledge of the exact sciences has been carried into the colleges; the railroads and canals have been built by engineers ready furnished by the government; and now when half a million of men have been suddenly called to war, they have been largely officered by the graduates of West Point. Here we may briefly allude to the most grave fact which has been urged against the Military Academy. The best officers of the rebel army were educated there. ”

“ I am far from desiring to see this country destitute of a Military Academy; but I would have it a school of practice, and instruction, for officers actually in the service of the United States; not an institution for educating, gratuitously, young gentlemen, who, on the completion of their term, or after a few months’ leave of absence, resign their commissions, and return to the pursuits of civil life. ”

“ Officers who, on the decision of the Examination Commission, have during the three courses of the War Academy displayed zeal, talent, and application, will, on leaving the academy, have their names sent in to the King for especial notice.
Each of the military schools has its own commandant. The Cadet Corps is commanded by a First Lieutenant of Infantry, the War School by a Major of the Quartermaster-General’s Staff, the Artillery and Engineer School by a Major of the Engineer Staff, and the War Academy by a Colonel of the General Staff, to whom an Adjutant is attached. ”

“ The few 728 who now remain have seen more than half a century’s service in useful employments. Perhaps it should be mentioned to the advantage of the Military Academy, as a school of physical education, that at the end of half a century, twenty of its pupils out of eighty-nine, should be yet alive. ”

“ The Military Academy continues to answer all the purposes of its establishment, and not only furnishes well-educated officers to the Army, but serves to diffuse throughout the mass of our citizens individuals possessed of military knowledge and the scientific attainments of civil and military engineering. At present the cadet is bound, with consent of his parents or guardians, to remain in service five years from the period of his enlistment, unless sooner discharged, thus exacting only one year's service in the Army after his education is completed. ”

“ He will have left at a comparatively early age in order that his education may no longer be neglected, and will have betaken himself to the fostering care of one of the numerous establishments which exist to prove that the private coach Codlin is superior to the public school Short. Hence, if his abilities are exceptionally brilliant, he will have passed into Sandhurst. Failing this, however, the Militia is a refuge and a stepping-stone. In any case he will find himself in due time the owner of Her Majesty's Commission and the largest head-dress in the British Army. ”