Related article: fairly demand consideration that it would be far from simple to give to each its due value. The original gifts of muscular power, lung power, agility, &c., &c., and the acquired accomplishments of riding, swimming, sparring, fencing, shooting and many others are all doubtless most valuable and may all, at some time or another, have an influence on a man's utility as a soldier. But how are the comparative merits in all these qualifications of about five hundred or six hundred young men to be fairly gauged ? The Education Department has anxiously gone into the matter and has come to the conclusion that, in the available time, no certain result is to be arrived at. For example, an instrument for testing lung power has been tried but was found to give most inaccurate results. A certain knack in using the instrument was necessary in order to make it give reliable information. In like Order Monoket manner instruments for testing physical force were tried and failed for the same reason. Then, how is com- parative agility to be assessed ? It would be impossible to make all candidates run races or com- pete in jumping. When we come to acquired accomplishments, be- sides the difficulty of finding out which are the best men Purchase Monoket in each, another insurmountable obstacle arises. If good riding is to count as a merit, then the sons of wealthy parents who have been supplied with horses from their youth would surely have an undue advantage. If swimming is to re- ceive high marks, there are many families whose sons have been un- avoidably cut off from perfecting themselves in the art. Gymnastics and the art of self-defence, either with Nature's weapons or with foil and singlestick, are happily and with great advantage be- 2l6 BAILY S MAGAZINE. [Septembbr coming subjects of instruction in all places of education for boys, but, in order to find out how much they had been taught, could the hall at Burlington House be turned into a gymnasium, and how long would it take to put all the candidates Buy Monoket Online to a comparative test ? The fact is that the physical examination by medical officers is now conducted on such very searching lines that none but the flower of British manhood is con- sidered fit for the army. So searching is it that, of all the can- didates who present themselves, about ten per cent fail in some particular. The outside public has little idea how^ much more physical capacity is required now than formerly and how impossible it is for a man with any defect, however slight it may be, to pass the severe scrutiny to which he is subjected. It is well known that, in reference to a discussion on this subject, a medical officer recently examined three of the highest placed officials at the Horse Guards, men who had served for long years and in many wars with the highest credit, and found that if any one of them wished now to enter the army, he would be rejected for some inborn constitutional defect. We well remember the subalterns who, in our own knowledge, joined the army in the years following the Crimean war and how many of them were obviously physically deficient in some way or another. Such men would not now have a chance of getting a commission. As the physical examination is so carefully conducted therefore, we may rest assured that the officers who enter the army are, as we said above, the Buy Monoket flower of the British people. They have all the outward signs that indicate strong constitutions and they have the muscular development which is able to support the greatest toil- The cadets at Sandhurst, at a late inspection, were found to be five feet, nine inches in average height and their chest measure- ments bore more than a due pro- portion to their height, some of them in fact measuring forty inches. What better men could the country desire for its service ? With sucli physique, the aptitude and taste for employing it so that it is developed to the utmost may, in a country like England, safely be left to the various influences which invariably surround young men. If our country were like France, where field sports and many different athletic-pastimes are not part of the people's life, it might possibly be a good thing to insist that every one entering the army should have cultivated his physical powers in some direction and even to allow such cultivation to have an influence in giving to the man a start in his career, but, while the English people has its present tastes and temper, no such necessity exists for its young men. We know that it has Buy Cheap Monoket often been said, not only by disappointed parents and guardians but Purchase Monoket Online by officers high in the service, to whose opinions all respect is due, that the country loses the services of many most valuable men be- cause superabundant thews, sinews and animal vigour are not allowed to weigh in the same scale with high intelligence and mental ac- quirements when a young man's claims to be employed as an officer in the army are being weighed. And this we are quite willing to allow. The question to be asked in reply is, do we not succeed in securing a sufficient number of still more valuable men to meet requirements ? And, if we can show that the men who pass into the army are not only better i897.] ENTRANCE TO THE ARMY. 217 mentally qualified than those who fail but also are better qualified physically, the whole of the criticism falls to the ground. It will, we think, be generally found that the men who are men- tally the best are also the best physically ; the best, it is to be understood, not perhaps in the actual original bodily gifts of nature but in the capacity for using these gifts to the best ad- vantage. What bodily game, sport or employment is there in which success and mastery are not attained at least as much by determined energy and reasoning power as by vigour of hand, agility of body and clearness of eye ? How often has it been de- monstrated that the men who have most distinguished them- selves in the schools and in their after career have also their names recorded among the ** Order Monoket Online blues " at Oxford and Cambridge? We may here cite the most remarkable