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From: Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com>
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Subject: Re: Snow Was: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2025 15:44:36 -0700
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On 6/28/25 12:08, William Hyde wrote:
> 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.

	Ah but Bertram had talent. Playing the piano jazzily.
	Read as many of the Wooster Chronicles as I could find but the TV 
series sticks
in my mind and those two actors will forever haunt my mind. Jeeves forever!

> 
> William Hyde

	bliss