The entire British public, starting from the recent vehement 
leaders of The London Times,* seems to be in a state of great 
anxiety and excitement respecting the condition of the forces in 
the Crimea. Indeed, it is impossible longer to deny or palliate the 
fact that, through unparalleled mismanagement in every branch of 
the service, the British army is rapidly approaching a state of 
dissolution. Exposed to the hardships of a winter campaign, 
suffering cold and wet, with the most harassing and uninterrupted 
field duty without clothing, food, tents, or housing, the veterans 
who braved the burning sun of India and the furious charges of 
the Beloodshis and Afghan, die away by hundreds daily, and as 
fast as reenforcements arrive, they are eaten up by the ravages of 
disease. To the question who is to blame for this state of things the 
reply just now most popular in England is that it is Lord Raglan, 
but this is not just. We are no admirers of his Lordship’s mili- 
tary conduct, and have criticised his blunders with freedom,” but 
truth requires us to say that-the terrible evils amid which the 
soldiers in the Crimea are perishing are not his fault, but that 
of the system on which the British war establishment is adminis- 
tered. . 

The British Army has a Commander-in-Chief, a personage 
dispensed with in almost all other civilized armies. But it would be 
a mistake to suppose that this commander-in-chief really com- 

* The Times, No. 21941, January 3, 1855, leader.— Ed. 

mands anything. If he has some control over the infantry and 
cavalry, the artillery, engineers, sappers and miners are entirely 
beyond his sphere. If he has any authority over trowsers, coatees, 
and socks, all great-coats are exempt from his influence. If he 
can make every foot-soldier carry two cartridge-pouches, he 
cannot find him a single musket. If he can have all his men 
tried by court-martial and well flogged, he cannot make them 
stir a single inch. Marching is beyond his competency, and as to 
feeding his troops, that is a thing which does not concern him 
at all. 

Then there is the Master-General of the Ordnance. This person, 
a lamentable relic of the times when science was considered 
unsoldierlike, and when all scientific corps, artillery and engineers, 
were not soldiers, but a sort of nondescript body, half savants, half 
handicraftsmen, and united in a separate guild or corporation, 
under the command of such a Master-General. This Master- 
General of the Ordnance, beside artillery and engineers, has 
under him all the great-coats and small-arms of the army. To any 
military operation, of whatever nature, he must, therefore, be a 
party. 

Next comes the Secretary at War. If the two preceding 
characters were already of comparative nullity, he is beyond 
nullity. The Secretary at War can give no order to any part of the 
army, but he can prevent any portion of the army from doing 
anything. As he is the chief of the military finances, and as every 
military act costs money, his refusal to grant funds is equivalent to 
an absolute veto upon all operations. But, willing as he may be to 
grant the funds, he is still a nullity, for he cannot feed the army; 
that is beyond his sphere. In addition to all this, the Commissariat, 
which really feeds the army, and, in case of any movement, is 
supposed to find it means of transport, is placed under the control 
of the Treasury. Thus, the Prime Minister, the first lord of the 
Treasury, has a direct hand in the getting up of every military 
operation, and can at his pleasure either push it, retard it, or stop 
it. Everybody knows that the Commissariat is almost a more 
important portion of the army than the soldiers themselves; and 
for this very reason, the collective wisdom of Great Britain has 
thought proper to make it quite independent of the army, and to 
place it under the control of an essentially different Department. 
Finally, the army, formerly put in motion by the Colonial 
Secretary, is now subject to the orders of the new War-Minister. * 

He dislocates the troops, from England to China, and from India 
to Canada. But, as we have seen, his authority, taken singly, is as 
ineffectual as that of any of the four preceding military powers; 
the cooperation of all the five being required, in order to bring 
about the least movement. 

It was under the auspices of this wonderful system that the 
present war began. The British troops, well fed and well cared for 
at home, in consequence of a forty years’ peace, went out in high 
condition, persuaded that whatever the enemy might do, England 
would not let her gallant lads want for anything. But scarcely had 
they landed at their first stage, at Gallipoli, when the comparison 
with the French army showed the ludicrous inferiority of all 
British arrangements, and the pitiable helplessness of every British 
official. Although it was here comparatively easy to provide for 
everything, although sufficient notice had been given, and a very 
small body of troops only was sent out, everything went wrong. 
Everybody made himself very busy, and yet nobody would 
perform duties that had not fallen to his lot at home in time of 
peace, so that not a man was to be found to do that business which 
was created by the very war itself. Thus shiploads of stores were 
left to rot on the shore where they were first landed, and troops 
had to be sent on to Scutari for want of room. Chaotic disorder 
announced itself in unmistakable signs, but as it was the beginning 
of the war, an improvement was expected from growing experi- 
ence. 

The troops went to Varna. Their distance from home increased, 
their number increased, the disorder in the administration 
increased. The independent working of the five departments 
composing that administration, each of them responsible to a 
different Minister at home, here first resulted in open and 
unmistakable clashing. Want reigned in the camp, while the 
garrison of Varna had the best of comforts. The Commissariat, 
lazily indeed, got together some means of transport from the 
country; but as the General-in-Chief* did not appoint any escort 
wagons, the Bulgarian drivers disappeared again as fast as they 
had been brought together. A central dépot was formed at 
Constantinople —a sort of first base of operations; but it served no 
purpose except to create a fresh center of difficulties, delays, 
questions of competency, quarrels between the army, the 
Ordnance, the paying staff, the Commissariat, and the War Office. 

Wherever anything was to be done, everybody tried to shove it off 
his own shoulders upon those of somebody else. The avoiding of 
all responsibility was the general aim. The consequence was that 
everything went wrong, and that nothing whatever was done. 
Disgust at these proceedings, and the certainty of seeing his army 
rot in inactivity, may have had some influence in determining 
Lord Raglan to risk the expedition to the Crimea. 

This expedition crowned the success of John Bull’s military 
organization. There, in the Crimea, came the “decided hit.” So 
long as the army was, in point of fact, in a state of peace, as at 
Gallipoh, Scutari and Varna, the magnitude of the disorder, the 
complicity of the confusion, could hardly be expected fully to 
develop itself. But now, in the face of the enemy, during the 
course of an actual siege, the case was different. The resistance of 
the Russians gave full scope to the British officials for the exercise 
of their business-like habits. And it must be confessed, never was 
the business of destroying an army done more effectually than by 
these gentlemen. Of more than 60,000 men sent to the East since 
February last, not more than 17,000 are now fit for duty; and of 
these, some 60 or 80 die daily, and about 200 or 250 are every day 
disabled by sickness, while of those that fall sick, hardly any 
recover. And out of the 43,000 dead or sick, not 7,000 have been 
disabled by the direct action of the enemy! 

When it first was reported in England that the army in the 
Crimea wanted food, clothing, housing, everything; that neither 
medical nor surgical stores were on the spot; that the sick and 
wounded had either to lie on the cold, wet ground, exposed to the 
weather, or to be crowded on board ships moored in an open 
roadstead, without attendance, or the simplest requisites for 
medical treatment; when it was reported that hundreds were 
dying for want of the first necessaries; everybody believed that the 
Government had neglected to send proper supplies to the scene of 
action. But soon enough, it became known, that if this had been 
partially the case in the beginning, it was not so now. Everything 
had been sent there even in profusion; but, unfortunately, nothing 
ever happened to be where it was wanted. The medical stores 
were at Varna, while the sick and wounded were either in the 
Crimea or at Scutari; the clothing and provisions arrived in sight 
of the Crimea, but there was nobody to land them. Whatever by 
chance got landed, was left to rot on the beach. The necessary 
cooperation of the naval force brought a fresh element of 
dissension to bear upon the already distracted councils of the 
Departments whose conflicts were to insure triumph to the British 

army. Incapacity, sheltered by regulations made for peace, reigned 
supreme; in one of the richest countries of Europe, on the 
sheltered coast of which hundreds of transports laden with stores 
lay at anchor, the British army lived upon _ half-rations; sur- 
rounded by numberless herds of cattle, they had to suffer from 
scurvy, in consequence of being restricted to salt meat; with plenty 
of wood and coal on board ship, they had so little of it on shore 
that they had to eat their meat raw, and could never dry the 
clothes which the rain had drenched. Think of serving out the 
coffee, not only unground, but even unroasted. There were stores 
of food, of drink, of clothing, of tents, of ammunition, by tuns 
and hundreds of tuns, stowed away on board the ships, whose 
masts almost touched the tops of the cliffs, where the camp was 
placed; and yet, Tantalus-like, the British troops could not get at 
them. Everybody felt the evil, everybody ran about, cursing and 
blaming everybody else for neglect of duty, but nobody knew, to 
use the vernacular expression, “which was which;” for everybody 
had his own set of regulations carefully drawn up, sanctioned by 
the competent authority, and showing that the very thing wanted 
was no part of his duty, and that he, for one, had no power to set 
the matter right. 

Now, add to this state of things the increasing inclemency of the 
season, the heavy rains setting in and transforming the whole 
Heracleatic Chersonese into one uninterrupted pool of mud and 
slush, knee-deep if not more; imagine the soldiers, two nights at 
least out of four in the trenches, the other two sleeping, drenched 
and dirty, in the slush, without boards under them, and with 
hardly any tents over them; the constant alarms completing the 
impossibility of anything like proper rest and adequate sleep; the 
cramps, diarrhea and other maladies arising from constant wet 
and cold; the dispersion of the medical staff, weak though it was 
from the beginning, over the camp; the hospital-tents, with 3,000 
sick almost in the open air and lying on the wet earth, and it will 
be easily believed that the British army in the Crimea is in a 
state of complete disorganization—reduced to ‘‘a mob of brave 
men,” as The London Times says,* and that the soldiers may well 
welcome the Russian bullet which frees them from all their 
miseries. 

But what is to be done? Why, unless you prefer waiting till half 
a dozen acts of Parliament are, after due consideration by the 

* The Times, No. 21941, January 3, 1855, leader.— Ed. 

Crown lawyers, discussed, amended, voted on and enacted—till, 
by this means, the whole business connected with the army is 
concentrated in the hands of a real War Minister—till this new 
Minister—supposing him to be the right man—has organized the 
service of his office, and issued fresh regulations—in other words, 
unless you wait till the last vestige of the Crimean army has 
disappeared, there is only one remedy. This is the assumption by 
the General-in-Chief of the expedition* upon his own authority, 
and his own responsibility, of that dictatorship over all the 
conflicting and contending departments of the military administra- 
tion which every other General-in-Chief possesses, and without 
which he cannot bring the enterprise to any end but ruin. That 
would soon make matters smooth; but where is the British General 
who would be prepared to act in this Roman manner, and on his 
trial defend himself, like the Roman, with the words, “Yes, I plead 
guilty to having saved my country?” 

Finally, we must inquire who is the founder and preserver of 
this beautiful system of administration? Nobody but the old Duke 
of Wellington. He stuck to every detail of it as if he was personally 
interested in making it as difficult as possible to his successors to 
rival him in warlike glory. Wellington, a man of eminent common 
sense, but of no genius whatever, was the more sensible of his own 
deficiencies in this respect, from being the cotemporary and 
opponent of the eminent genius of Napoleon. Wellington, 
therefore, was full of envy for the success of others. His meanness 
in disparaging the merits of his auxiliaries and allies is well known; 
he never forgave Blucher for saving him at Waterloo. Wellington 

knew full well that had not his brother* been Minister during the 
Spanish war, he never could have brought it to a successful close. 
Was Wellington afraid that future exploits would place him in the 
shade, and did he therefore preserve to its full extent this 
machinery so well adapted to fetter generals and to ruin armies?