BRITISH OFFICERS OF TO-DAY

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1240, 5 January 1883, Page 2

BRITISH OFFICERS OF TO-DAY

Thb eharaotßT of th® British officer, to whatever branch of the service he may belong, havqfily stands so high that it seldofn needs champions or apologists, Much has been hinted in recent ‘Jears of possible degeneracy. It is ’undoubted that our commissioned are recruited from a much wider class. Officers no longer come almost exclusively from the so-called aristocracy; the increased diffusion of wealth has multiplied the well to do, and we have in the upper strata of society numbers who owe their status to Wealth rather than birth. The latter furnish a large quota of the youths who now seek and obtain commissions. Again, the general adoption of competitions has opened the doors to numerous candidates who years back could not have got nomi nations for commissions. Last of all there is the alleged drawback of higher educational requirements,which it was thought woulif debar many of the old stamp—young men, heirs to good estates, and of independent means, from joining the Army. That these made excellent officers our military history ha sfully proved, and the fear was that the new race would be somewhat inferior. It is a matter of sincere congratulation to find that these prognostications have been altogether falsified. The experience of the campaign which is just concluded in Egypt shows that British officers worthily maintain the old traditions of the service. Their cheerfulness under privation and hardship was conspicuous. Even the “ curled darlings,” the pets of London drawing-rooms, who might have been supposed to succumb, have endured their discomforts —have starved or eaten their peck of dirt, have washed their own snirts—and proved themselves as hardy and self-reliant as in the old Crimean days. Nothing could have been finer than the demeanour of the officers of the Household troops under the most trying circumstances, not only in their hand-to-hand encounters with the enemy, but in their solicitude for the welfare and comfort of their men. In this they have been closely imitated by the officers of all other regiments engaged. Their admirable high-toned conduct has won for them the admiration, no less than the astonishment, of the Egyptians of all classes. It -was a distinct surprise to the fellaheen and subordinate railway officials at one of the stations which fell in our hands after Tel-el-Kebir to find the conquerors prepared to pay honestly for all they had. The buffet was deserted; the incomers were starving and helped themselves. But an officer stood at the door of the emuty refreshment room, and, on behalf of the absent contractor or proprietor, took down names and value of the food consumed opposite each, so that the proper amount might be refunded to the owner of the refreshments. It is not thus that Orientals, in the full blaze of victory, treat the

property of the vanquished. Some honorable conduct may seem to them a trifle weak, but it must impress them nevertheless. Another estimable and strongly marked feature in our officers was made manifest to the Khedive himself when starting for I Cairo. At His Highness’s expressin- | vitation, Colonel Macnaghten, of the Bengal Lancers, who had commanded his escort at Alexandria, was requested to travel in the Khedive’s carriage. Colonel Macnaghten naturally accepted the gracious invitation. But he was mounted, and he had first to dispose of his charger. To have handed it over to a groom w’ould have been an easy matter probably. But | the Colonel had been brought up in a different school, and insisted upon seeing to his horse personally, and with his own hands. He carefully unsaddled the charger, embarked, or to use a new word, “ entrained,” him, and having made him all snug for the ' journey, stowed away the saddle, and last of all came and joined the Khe- 1 dive’s party.