ARMY COMMISSIONS

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13342, 6 February 1909, Page 4

ARMY COMMISSIONS

SOME INTELLIGENT CANDIDATES

(from our own coßßEsroNDEirr.) LONDON", December 24. The. "Broad Arrow" gives a painful insight into th© mental calibre of soma of the young gentlemen -who present themselves for commissions in th© British Army. Tho Army Qualifying Board, in, the report on the 326 candidates who presented themselves in £<optember, makes these rudo remarks: —

"The English essays, as a whole, were mediocre. Most of tho candidates , could express themselves with some facility, though many of them were too iond of colloquial phrases; but very few indeed were able to arrange their thoughts in proper sequence, or to rise above tho envious and the commonplace. The work in dictation was very uneven ; some of tho candidates made the most grotesque mistakes, both in orthography and in punctuation; many others lost marks by pure careJessness and inattention. The precis writing was in. most cases unequivocally bad. Its badness was not to be accounted for by the fact—which was generally apparent—that tho writers had little idea of the purposes served by precia writing. Their work was often written in a slovenly manner, deiaced by interlineations and corrections, and by bad spelling, arrangement, and composition.

"But tho vital defects were recklessness in mis-statement, and an apparent inability of the writers to read a simple narration with any degree of caro and intelligence. A considerable number -wilfully imported matter of their own imagination into tho story, apparently with the idea, of improving it. Either the majority of candidates had not ibeen exercised in precis writing or their teaching had been much misdirected.

"Much of the arithmetic work was vet T unsatisfactory, the majority of the candidates being unable to deal with the parts of the subject on which special stress is laid in the syllabus. The results of the examination in geometry were very poor indeed. There is still an unduly large proportion of candidates who know practically nothing of geography. On the whole, the quality ot tJie work in chemistry was distinctly poor. A lamentable ignorance, of sound elementary knowledge of French was Mtown. Of the ten candidates offering German, not one was really good, and some were very bad. Only "a smail proportion of the candidates in I/atiu are safe from making blunders of the most elementary description. . . . A very large number of candidates tvero content to write down sheer nonsense in place of translation, and all but a very few of the pieces of prose Contained bad mistakes of eooidenco and syntax. The one candidate in, Greek sent U P' ■"*« a dozen words of no value " The report states that the work in algebra was generally neat, and in many cases good, and that the work of the candidates in ihistory was, on the whole, rather better than at some previous examinations. Of the 326 candidates presenting themselves for the whole examination 113 passed.