38° 
GOLD MEDAL PRIZE ESSAY, 1899. 
scriptions and various syllabuses of instruction. Now a syllabus 
should be a very good guide but I do not think it is, because it can be 
so easily worded as to lead one to believe that the course of Instruc¬ 
tion to which it refers fulfils conditions, or supplies a demand for know¬ 
ledge which in reality it does not, it gives one little idea of the stan¬ 
dard to which a class is expected to attain. 
To one point I would especially draw attention. In foreign tech¬ 
nical schools it is customary for the students to investigate subjects 
which can be of use to the manufacturers of the country, for example 
supposing that there was any difficulty in obtaining a fast dye of any 
particular colour, then those students who were well versed in chemis¬ 
try would be told off to fihd a remedy and in this way part of the 
money paid to keep up the schools returns in the form of commercial 
successes. The same principle could be applied in the case of a ser¬ 
vice technical school in this country,there are always many subjects 
requiring investigation which by being referred to advanced students 
is such classes as the “ Senior ” would serve to give renewed interest 
in their work and be a saving in expense to the country. 
I have already mentioned Germany as alive to the necessity of edu¬ 
cation, let us see as far as possible what she is doing to instruct her 
officers especially those of the Foot Artillery. In Germany, candi¬ 
dates for commissions first pass an educational test, this would corre¬ 
spond to 1 our entrance examination for Woolwich or Sandhurst. After 
six months service, with a regiment, nearly all officers must pass 
through a War School, the only exception are those who have been 
highly educated either at a University, high class technical school, or 
in the “ Selecta ” class of cadets, this course would correspond to our 
course at Woolwich or Sandhurst, but in addition to the above, Artill¬ 
ery officers, after at least one year and nine month’s service have to 
pass a special course which is of a decidedly technical nature and lasts 
for 9 1 / 2 months, after which four weeks are spent at a school of gun¬ 
nery ; those who pass highest in the course can then be selected, to 
continue their technical education and become fitted for special ap¬ 
pointments. It is this technical instruction which is wanting in our 
service. It may be said that it is combined with the military course 
at the Academy, but the great disadvantage of such a system is, that 
the officer (cadet in this case) can bring no professional knowledge 
to bear on his instruction during the course, while in the German ser¬ 
vice at least one year and nine months is given in which to gain a gen¬ 
eral idea of the requirements of the Artillery service before commenc¬ 
ing the technical course; and further the German system recognizes 
the fact that selection is necessary for those men who are to be highly 
trained, the majority can only be taught up to a certain point, beyond 
that a few must be chosen, and the method adopted seems a good one 
because those officers wishing to be selected will work hard during 
the first part of the course and will therefore be in a fit condition to 
receive further and higher instruction. So far only the regimental 
officer has been mentioned, when we come to certain special classes 
such as correspond to our Ordnance or Senior Class, we find the 
course far more thorough than anything we can shew, three years is 
