[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 73, February 13, 1855]

London, February 10. Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of dogmatics and the Duns Scotus of finances, has furnished a new proof of the old tenet that faith justifies all things. Gladstone has raised the dead by faith and increased the English Crimean army from 11,000 to 30,000 men by faith. He demands the same faith from Parliament. Unfortunately, just at this moment the report of Dr. Hall, the head of the medical department in the camp before Sevastopol, arrives. Not only that, according to this report, the 63rd Regiment has entirely disappeared and of the 46th, which England left 1,000 strong last November, only 30 men are fit for duty, but Dr. Hall declares that half of the troops still doing service belong in hospital and that at most 5,000-6,000 really fit men are present in the camp. Anyone who knows the tricks of pious apologists will not doubt that Gladstone, like Falstaff, will turn the 6,000 buckram men into 30,000. Did he not already explain to us in the last Thursday sitting that the two estimates proceeded from different standpoints; for example, the detractors of the Crimean army did not count the cavalry as he does, as if any noteworthy cavalry had even existed since the Battle of Balaclava? Gladstone finds it simple to include the “non-existent”. Inimitable was the unction with which, in the last Thursday sitting, he concluded his “budget” of the army strength—where every debit figures as credit and every deficit as surplus—with the words: “He forgives the opponents of the government their exaggerations.” Inimitable was the tone and attitude with which he admonished the members of Parliament not to let themselves be overwhelmed by “feelings”. To bear the sufferings of others with humility and equanimity, thus runs the motto of the orthodox Gladstone.