Re: Snow Was: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001

Paul S Person wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jun 2025 17:09:42 -0400, William Hyde

[...]

It wasn't only England, though.  Napoleon's family had to dig through
ancient records in Italy to prove noble ancestry before he could be
accepted for officer training in the French Army.

 Nor was it restricted to the Navy.
 Another consideration is that the pay was (in the higher ranks)
insufficient to meet the social obligations. A private income was
necessary.

It's a point often made by C. S. Forester  that Hornblower didn't have the money needed to support his position socially, until he got some decent prize money.
Nelson, on half pay between the US revolution and the French, was also short of money, living cheaply in the countryside on a Captain's half pay.  Prize money began to come his way when he was appointed to a ship of the line in the Med, but IIRC money problems continued.
When there was some talk of his being made a baronet after Cape St Vincent he demurred, saying that he didn't have sufficient money to support hereditary honours.  After the Nile, things were different and he accepted a barony.
In William's "The Praxis", a non-noble warrant officer is promoted to commissioned status and has the same problems.

Nor was it restricted to England. Germany drew its officers mostly
from the aristocracy through WW2. The Waffen-SS, OTOH, did not.
 After WW2, this pretty much died (royal sons [and maybe daughters now]
may still spend some time in a military service, but that is generally
temporary). Militaries became both professionalized and very technical
-- just having a title and and income and a winning smile/pleasant
personality was no longer enough. Actual knowledge of how to use the
various types of units (often determined by their equipment) became
necessary.

Most of the aristocratic types in Nelson's navy were actually quite competent technically and usually inured to battle. Those who were not were weeded out in the early years of war - admittedly at some cost.
A century earlier, at the start of a new war, for example, a couple of admiral Benbow's officers declined to fight -  as the song says:
"Brave Benbow he set sail, for to fight
For to fight
Brave Benbow he set sail, for to fight.
Brave Benbow he set sail,
With a fine and pleasant gale
But his captains they turn'd tail
In a fright, in a fright.
Says Kirby unto Wade, "We will run,
We will run."
Says Kirby unto Wade, "We will run.
For I value no disgrace
Or the losing of my place
But the enemy I won't face
Nor his guns, nor his guns.""
It is perhaps no coincidence that Benbow was not particularly aristocratic in ancestry, that he served for some time in the merchant navy, and that he attained Lieutenant's rank rather late, having served as Master, a rank which was something of a dead end as far as naval commands went. Kirby and Wade may not have thought him to be a real Admiral.  Not one of their crowd.

 Not to mention that the shear size of the militaries (as a proportion
of population) pretty much forced some relaxation of the normal rules.

A good point.
Especially when, in WWI, many upper class British men declined to serve as officers, preferring the ranks.  To be fair, they probably didn't know early in the war how much safer that was.

 

      Education was not evenly distributed then or now.

>
In those days aristocrats could get university degrees merely by showing
up  No exams for them!  Why, they might finish worse than a commoner!

 Besides, it's not as if they would ever have to work for a living.
 I still remember the Monty Python "Upper Class Twit of the Year"
episode I'm sure each of the contestants had a univeristy degree.

I think Bertie Wooster managed to avoid a degree.
William Hyde