AND WAR SALARIES. 167 



the very basis of incrimination : that the tendency of the 

 existing system, of using military men in technical civilian 

 capacities, is to foster inefficiency, to promote incompetence. 

 Without in the slightest degree wishing to hurt the feelings 

 of any military gentleman now occupying himself in a civilian 

 capacity, as appointed by superior powers, it may be at least 

 assumed, without offence, that military gentlemen, no more 

 than other persons, have the faculty of acquiring technical 

 knowledge in the natural way, like the measles. They must 

 learn it as other people have to learn it, and one may fairly 

 assume that they must devote an equal time to the learning. 

 Of all the aberrations of human intellect, none are more offen- 

 sive, few more dangerous, than the aberration which prompts 

 an individual to believe that he possesses an inborn genius for 

 any given avocation an inspiration, so to speak, beyond the 

 range to be acquired, through education, by any ordinary 

 capacity. When a military man is appointed to a civil chief- 

 tainship, the natural tendency of circumstances will be to im- 

 press him with, this idea. As a man of sense and a man of 

 education a gentleman withal he will, of course, endeavour 

 to master and bring into subjection this tendency. Let it be 

 assumed that he succeeds in wholly conquering the dominance 

 of this tendency ; what follows 1 It follows that the newly- 

 appointed military man must devote, as a newly-appointed 

 civilian would have had to devote, a portion of time, more or 

 less considerable according to capacity and according to cir- 

 cumstances, to the mastery of principles foreign to what the 

 tenor of his previous education had made him familiar with. 

 It results as a consequence, that for a period immediately sub- 

 sequent on each new appointment, either the department made 

 subject to military technical supervision must be inadequately 

 controlled and regulated, or that the control and regulation 

 must be vicariously effected through the military chief, under 

 the actual control of nominal civilian inferiors. 



Believing that military men occupying the positions re- 



