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Globe, Volume IV, Issue 323, 25 June 1875, Page 4

A correspondent of a contemporary writes from Paris :—A few celebrities have arrived —a Chinese from Pekin, who is said to be the inspector of the Pagodas in that capital, and consequently entitled by Buddha to commit seven sins daily without these being placed to his account in the other world ; Ly-Fo is Ihe mildest of looking men, and doubtless never abuses his privilege. He is travelling on his own account to study western civilization. The death of Sir William Gomm (says the Pall Mall Gazette) leaves the Duke of Cambridge our only field-marshal, and of course raises the old question of who is to be promoted to that rank. The Army and Navy Gazette appears to think it a professional duty to plead the cause of the two veterans who happen to have lived to reach the head of the generals' list, and appears rather indignant that the names of Sir William Codrington and Lord Strathnairn should be mentioned instead, on the ground of the latter having commanded armies in the field. Indeed, the Army and Navy Gazette goes on to give special personal reasons to prove why, in its writer's view, those two distinguished officers have not put themselves in a position to earn the coveted baton. Without following the Army and Navy Gazette here, we are quite agreed as to it's objection. The marshal's baton, if bestowed for the command in a campaign, should obviously be given either after some particularly successful action, or, at the latest, at the close of the operations. If a general be thought worth rewarding with what is professionally his true patent of nobility, the reward ought certainly not to be delayed until somebody else dies an uncertain number of years afterwards. But the counter-recommendation of the professional journal is far more objectionable. There can be no greater waste of the honor, as we have before pointed out, than to make the receiving it a tontine prize for the longest liver. This is, in fact, to say to a veteran general long past all work, " You are only eighty-five years of age, and too young for the rank, as bestowed in our service. But if you live to be the oldest surviving general, you will probably be eighty-nine at the least, or possibly ninety-five, and we may then consider you eligible to be a fieldmarshal." The Army and Navy Gazette, in a sidelong manner, puts in a word for the Prince of Wales himself, as " a general of 1862, who cannot well be passed over in any new creation." On this point we would merely observe that the Heir Apparent may 10 doubt have certain special claims to the nighest grade in any service he attaches himself to; but they are obviously dependent •n his position, and in no sense whatever on the date of his nominal commission of general,