>From: donald_at_...
>It's never been more difficult than today to rise through the ranks. ISTR
>an Emperor who gained the purple after working his way up in the legions.
>By contrast today if you haven't succeeded in getting a place in officer
>training you can't get a commisson. Most of those places are filled with
>those who show academic ability before recruitment.
I can't speak for the UK, but in the US, getting training requires going to a college with a Reserve Officer Training Cadre (ROTC), or other school. Getting into ROTC essentially takes getting into a college. Given that if you enlist before doing so that they'll pay for your education (more than $50,000) it's actually easier to get into college this way than to get in without going for a military education. And many of the schools that have ROTC departments are not what you'd call academically difficult to get into. When I went to the University of Wisconsin, anyone in the state who was in the top half of their class was automatically accepted. 50%. And more got in after that if there weren't enough applicants.
Further, graduation is not a requirement for commission - you just need X number of completed credits. So a commission in the US armed forces is not hard to get. Not remotely.
Further, while there is a "good old boy" club that prefers graduates of places like the West Point military academy, ROTC and other OTC graduates can and do regularly ascend to high office. Yes, there are politics, but they are much like the office politics that go on anywhere. Given that generals have no civilian authority, they are otherwise totally non-political. At worst, the highest appointments are actually commercially, rather than politically, motivated, as they are constantly courted by the military industrial complex looking to make more billions.
I do have some direct experience here, I was in an ROTC program myself, and my father, also a product of ROTC became a general in the reserves (Army National Guard, to be precise). So as it happens, I've talked to a lot of brass. And they're all rather ordinary humans that just belong to a very large organization. Promotion does have some to do with politics, but for the organization's part, there are strong attempts made to make the process meritocratic - lots of testing, point systems based on schools attended, and service performed, etc. In fact, the military's policy of rotating people around a lot is, in part at least, intended to avoid the creation of "good old boy" networks locally.
For Glorantha, I'm betting that there is no such rotation, and that the system is largely "regimental." Meaning that the troops from one unit are all from one place. Including the officers. In times past - and I'm talking, say, before WWII, regimentalism meant that personal politics were in fact expected. That is, the officer corps chose themselves from the ranks of the aristocratic (or what passes for it here in America), and they would perpetuate themselves. But this, itself, was a product of the Euro-Prussian military tradition (let's remember that everything the Americans learned about organization in war was taught to us by a man named Von Steuben - http://www.americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/VONSTUB.HTM) of having the dual officer/non-com rank structure. You can't select enough leaders from the ranks of the nobility to lead at the very low levels of an army created by a nation state and conscription.
Here's where this all breaks down, and we have to go to the Romans. There are no nation-states in Glorantha, or anything like them. And certainly nothing remotely like conscription - the economies aren't developed enough to be able to support such. At best I think they might manage something like feudal levies in places.
What this means is that Gloranthan armies are either feudal, or standing armies. Standing armies are drastically limited in size due to cost. The Romans only managed it by a continuing series of conquests. In any case, what this means is that the entire armies are professionals (as opposed to feudal armies where they are untrained peasant levies, or conscript armies which are trained non-professionals AKA Privates). Which means, yes, like in the Roman structure, men can rise in rank to he point where the duties become politically important. At which point the nobility takes over.
There's your main difference. The standing armies of a state like the Lunar empire are going to be regimental in that they are lead at the top by local nobility, but under this they will be professional soldiers that come from whatever other class. There is no need for nobles to lead at any lowere levels, because they can trust the professionals at that level to handle things correctly (in theory). As opposed to the larger national armies where you need to appoint officers to lower levels to watch the conscripts.
Mike
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