maining unemployed, and not being promoted to a lieutenant-general's rank and command within a certain time, to be retired in due course; and so with regard to the superior ranks.
Still the reduction of the establishment of generals made in 1881 is a valuable reform as far as it goes; but the benefit of it has been in a great measure nullified by the retention, side by side with the active list, of an enormous establishment of non-effective generals. Taking all classes in the British and Indian armies together, – effective, retired, and those holding honorary rank, – there are about sixteen hundred persons of sorts who bear the title of "general." This curious state of things, which is quite of modern growth, is open to grave objection. The public does not distinguish between the different classes, – between the effective and the non-effective lists, between the real and the so-called honorary rank; the apparent state of things is that we have an army in which the strength of the highest ranks is ludicrously out of proportion to the rest of the force – more than enough, indeed, to command all the armies of Europe. That a general officer on retirement should take his rank with him is of course necessary; but the distinction which should attach to that rank is entirely destroyed by its profuse bestowal on all retired colonels.
This practice of giving honorary promotions on retirement, which is applied to all ranks as well as to the colonels, was first introduced in 1854, when retirement was voluntary, in order to encourage retirements, and so stimulate the flow of promotion. The necessity has passed away, now that retirement has been made obligatory under fixed rules; and even if it were not so, the mischievous practice should be discontinued. Military rank in the British army is degraded by being made so cheap; the rank of general officer is so profusely bestowed that it ceases to be worth bearing. Surely the aim and object to be kept in view in regard to military titles should be, instead of cheapening them, to elevate them and make them difficult of attainment. What every one can get no one cares for. We have only to compare the estimation in which the rank of general officer is held in the German or French army with that which it holds with us, to see to what a point this degradation has been carried. There was a time when we used to laugh at the Americans and their cheap military titles, but the laugh is now the other way. In no country has military rank been so degraded as it has been in England during the last few years.
Honorary promotion on retirement is equally objectionable in the lower grades. And what does this honorary rank mean? The officer no longer belongs to the army, – he can exercise no command: it means simply that a man is to be called something different from what he is. The man who served as a captain or major, on retirement is styled what he never was before. The practice is peculiarly objectionable in its application to the Indian army, because in that army a very large number of officers are employed on purely civil duties. It is bad enough that this should be the case with lieutenant-colonels and majors, but since practically no officer in the Indian army retires before he is obliged to do so, which is not until he becomes a colonel, the retired Indian officer is usually an honorary major-general; and the country is swamped with a number of general officers from India, many of
