Rank

“ What a narrow thing, after all, was our modern civilization, with all its forms and conventionalities, with its gradations of rank and its orders! How hopeless for the adventurous spirit to war with the stern discipline of an age that marshalled men in ranks like soldiers, and told that each could only rise by successive steps! ”

“ If I was allowed to give one special piece of advice to a young officer, whether of the army or navy, I would say—Respect scientific men; associate with them; learn from them; find them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant and instructive of companions: but always respect them. Allow them chivalrously, you who have an acknowledged rank, their yet unacknowledged rank; and treat them as all the world will treat them, in a higher and truer state of civilisation. ”

“ If I can hold my rank in the army, I will be a colonel, probably. With wealth and rank, I can again enter the world in a position to gratify my ambitions and desires. If I succeed, all will be well; if I fail, why, that is the end of it. ”

“ Difference of rank is a continual excitement to laudable emulation; but those who consider the being admitted into circles of fashion as the summit of human bliss and elevation, will here find how grievously such frivolous ambition may be disappointed and chastised. ”

“ We speak of rank among hereditary nobility or military officers; of various orders of the priesthood; by accommodation, we may refer in a general way to the higher ranks, the lower orders of any society. Grade implies some regular scale of valuation, and some inherent qualities for which a person or thing is placed higher or lower in the scale; as, the coarser and finer grades of wool; a man of an inferior grade. ”

“ He says, “Rank in the line of the army is conceived to be rank in a military body specially organized for the exertion of physical force, or in other words, for combating an enemy; and an officer in such a body has a direct and paramount command over the troops which compose it. The expressions ‘rank in the line of the army,’ ‘rank in the line,’ ‘lineal rank,’ are generally used in contradistinction to staff appointments.” ”

“ An enlisted man—she rejoiced in that now; of the educated classes, but representing the rank and file as well as the brains and gentle blood of this land; not too poor, yet not rich; in his youth and strength and forthgoing power the visible spirit of a young, strong, eager country. ”

“ We love rank, because we have a lingering suspicion that it somehow symbolizes wealth, or power, or brilliant intellectual gifts, or great public services, that have forced their possessors into the front rank at some time or other, and received282 their due recognition in the shape of titular distinction conferred either recently or in days gone by. ”

“ By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. ”

“ If you take the one, your age will receive you with open arms, you will not find it wanting in honours and decorations: you will form units of an enormous rank and file; and there will be as many people like-minded standing behind you as in front of you. And when the leader gives the word it will be re-echoed from rank to rank. ”

“ So far was this carried, that in the seventeenth century the rank of a person might be immediately known by his appearance; no one presuming to usurp a garb worn by the class immediately above his own. ”

“ It must always be understood, however, that in each dignity those who thus obtain it rank behind those who have earned it by actual service. Otherwise we should have all men [Pg 307] flocking into these quiet posts, if the workers were not preferred to men of leisure [446] .
'Take therefore, by these present codicils, the rank which you deserve, though you have not earned it by your official career.'
11. Formula by which the Rank of an Illustris and the Title of a Comes Domesticorum are Conferred, without Office. ”

“ But among peaceful arts, industries or trades, some have always been held to be of higher and others of lower rank; the higher rank being assigned to those that required larger operations, higher training, or more thoughtful conduct, and yielded ampler returns—the lower rank to those which called for simple manual exercise, especially if such exercise was of a disagreeable or degrading kind. ”

“ Returning to my old profession—to the army—is out of the question, in these leveling days, when any obscure person who can pass an examination may call himself my brother officer, and may one day, perhaps, command me as my superior in rank. ”

“ How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and kindly. It is from your half-and-half sort of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity, the difference between the two being very much what one sees every day in England between the old, out-at-elbows, broken-down county family, and the overbearing, purse-proud people who come and “take the place”. ”

“ THE VARIOUS RANKS IN THE BRITISH ARMY, AND HOW TO DISTINGUISH THEM.
The civilian is often wofully puzzled when trying to make out the rank of a military man in uniform. He sees a venerable, soldier-like man, in scarlet or blue, marching beside a body of men. This personage is crowned with a cocked hat with white plumes, with all the pomp of sword, &c., and is immediately selected as “the General.” ”

“ The rank and file of the people have the surest instinct as to what will benefit or injure the rank and file of the people, and when upon them is placed the responsibility of determining what their government shall be, they are educated for self-government. ”

“ Respect for rank, for experience, for parents and old age, have been already noticed among the features of their character; but the excess to which deference to rank is carried by the political institutions of the country, deserves more particular remark, whether we consider it as illustrative of the nature of the government and the quiet and orderly disposition of the people, or endeavour to trace, in the early periods of their history, the causes which may have contributed to the existing constitution of society among them. ”

“ And Rank for her meant Duty, various,
Yet equal in its worth, done worthily.
Command was service; humblest service done
By willing and discerning souls was glory. ”

“ You see, men of the upper classes are the officers, and men of the lower classes are the soldiers of toil; and thus in society as in the army, not only is the soldier no less noble than the officer, since nobility consists in work and not in wages, in valor and not in rank ”

“ It is also true that an officer holding a brevet below his present grade, and conscious of equal merit with his comrade who holds one above his present rank, will take equal pride in wearing the evidences of its appreciation if he be permitted to do so, especially if he can show that it was won in battle. ”

“ What I have said above applies only to those officers whose parents are not of the lowest class, or who entered so early or so young into the army that they may be said to have been educated there, and as they advanced, have assumed the ‘ton’ of their comrades of the same rank. ”

“ Persons require to possess a title, or some other badge of rank, or of the consideration of people of rank, to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without detriment to their estimation. ”

“ In countless inscriptions this gradation of rank is sharply accentuated. If a man leaves a bequest for an annual feast, with a distribution of money, the rich patron or the decurio will receive perhaps five times the amount which is doled out to the simple plebeian.1191 The distinction of rank, even in punishment for crime, which meets us everywhere in the Theodosian Code, has already appeared. ”

“ The same rule applied to youths and elders irrespectively of rank, and if an official of a class lower than fifth, or a commoner, happened to be riding on horseback when he encountered a superior, he had to dismount and stand aside. ”

“ To the serf, who depended for all things upon the neighbouring noble, to the noble, who held all his dignities on the condition of frequent military service under his sovereign, the idea of secular rank became indissolubly connected with that of supreme greatness. ”

“ Rank and grade are synonymous, and in their military acceptation indicate rights, powers, and duties, determined by laws, creating the different degrees of rank, and specifying fixed forms for passing from grade to grade and when rank in one body shall give command in another body; and also when rank in the army at large shall not be exercised. Rank is a right of which an officer cannot be deprived, except through forms prescribed by law. When an officer is on duty, the rank itself indicates his relative position to other officers of the body in which it is created. ”

“ The disposal of troops in proper order for an engagement, manœuvres, or march, etc.
Rank. Range of subordination, degree of authority. The relative situations which officers hold with respect to each other, or to military things in general. Questions as to the positive or relative rank of officers may often be of the greatest importance at law, in consequence of the rule, that every person who justifies his own acts on the ground of obedience to superior authority must establish, by clear evidence, the sufficiency of the authority on which he so relies. ”

“ The object of every rank is precedency, and every order may display its advantages to their full extent. The sovereign himself owes great part of his authority to the sounding titles and the dazzling equipage which he exhibits in public. The subordinate ranks lay claim to importance by a like exhibition, and for that purpose carry in every instant the ensigns of their birth, or the ornaments of their fortune. ”

“ Rank is a practical necessity for the proper enforcement of authority. Rank makes its appearance as soon as society organizes for its own protection. Rank may be local, limited, changing and temporary as contra-distinguished from general, extensive, hereditary, or permanent, but it is rank just the same. The purest democracies clothe their chosen leaders with temporary rank. ”

“ Such I think is the effect of exemplary behaviour in persons of exalted rank; their course as it is nobly distinguished, so it will be happily influential; others will catch the diffusive rays, and be ambitious to resemble a pattern so commanding. ”

“ This distribution represents properly the Rank or Degree of Persons in the Hierarchy of Personality; the Ego ranking naturally as 'Number One.' Deference or Grace teaches us afterward to defer to the personality of others, and converts our primitive notions of rank into opposites, in a way which is indicated by the honorific use of Thou in addressing the Supreme, etc. ”

“ And in England also, at the present time, when classes are still recognized but very ill-defined, there seems to be much of an uneasy preoccupation about rank, and of the elbowing, snubbing and suspicion that go with it. ”

“ Some differentiation of rank, too, must have been found in the simplest human societies in the contrast between the old and the young, and the closely connected opposition of the rulers and the ruled. But it would be hazardous to reason that, in the early stages of social evolution, much in the way of exchange of fun passed between those who were presumably kept solemnly apart by the sense of their relative station. ”

“ Merchants, tradespeople, professional men, children of wealthy or ambitious families, all attained rank in the army by this unwise means, and the consequence has been that the majority of company, and perhaps even of field officers, was rather fitted to display the magnificent uniforms to which their grades entitle them than to discipline the rank and file when organized in battalions, regiments and divisions. ”

“ Rank′er, one who arranges or disposes in ranks: an officer who has risen from the ranks.—Rank and file, the whole body of common soldiers.—Take rank of, to have the right to take a higher place than; Take rank with, to take the same rank as; The ranks, the order of common soldiers. [O. Fr. renc (Fr. rang) —Old High Ger. hring or hrinc, Eng. ring.]
Rank, rangk, adj. growing high and luxuriantly: coarse from excessive growth: raised to a high degree: excessive: very fertile: strong-scented: strong-tasted: rancid: utter, as rank nonsense: coarse: indecent: (Shak.) ”

“ No honors here are hereditary. All officers and dignities depend on the crown. The 'tsaloë,' or chain, is the badge of nobility, and superiority of rank is signified by the number of cords or divisions. ”

“ The Footman should study the following Tables of Priority of Rank among Persons of distinction,—a knowledge of which will enable him to evince peculiar Tact in his situation, and save his Master or Mistress much trouble in directing him, when waiting at Table. ”

“ Hence, a work absolutely good holds the first rank, a work generically good [that is, judged by its class] , as it were, the middle rank, and a neutral work the lowest rank. Examples of these three are loving God, fasting, and weaving. ”

“ The military hierarchy is determined and consecrated within its sphere of action by grades of rank created by military laws, by other laws regulating the exercise of rank, by military insignia, by military honors, and by the military oath. ”

“ In order to fill up all the posts of honour, dignity, and profit, there was a draught made out of each column of men who were masters of all three qualifications in some degree, and were preferred to stations of the first rank. ”

“ At the end of a week some are transferred up to the first and second sections, and others down; and this continues until every one settles to the rank he merits, or at least to the rank his studies entitle him to. ”

“ Accordingly, when any number of men are collected together, each of whom worships rank in his heart, the whole body will patiently hear—in many cases will cheer and approve—some rather strong speeches against rank. ”

“ People of every grade, nation, and profession jostle each other at these tables. Here all meet on a common level, and rank is not recognized. The only rank here is the guinea-stamp, and that, if the possessor conduct himself in an orderly manner, insures prince and peasant an equal chance at the tables. ”