Recruitment in the British Army from families with a military tradition. (This contrasted with the Navy, whose officers were more often from a middle-class background.) The second son of King George III, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, did much to improve the standard of officer recruitment from his position as Commander in Chief of the Army (from 1795 to 1809, then from 1811 to 1827). The sale of commissions, finally abolished in the Cardwell reforms in 1868–1874, and the further Childers Reforms. In spite of its abolition, the status of an officer being from a privileged background and that of another rank being
History of the British Army across the Empire. It was unfortunate that certain of the officers who rose to high rank and positions of influence within the army during the 1930s were comparatively backward-looking. This meant that trials such as the Experimental Mechanized Force of 1927–28 did not go as far as they might have. One of the first post-war campaigns that the Army took part in was the Allied intervention in Russia in 1919 to assist the "White Army" against the Communist Bolsheviks during their Civil War. The British Army was also maintaining occupation forces in the defeated powers of World War I. In