From the Neue Oder-Zeitung.

Nr. 265, 11 June 1855.
Mittagblatt

London, 8 June. (On the Critique of the Events in the Crimea.) The arrival of three French reserve divisions in addition to the two Sardinian divisions made it impossible for the Allies to remain any longer cooped up within the narrow confines of the Heracleatic Chersonese. On 24 May, shortly after General Pélissier took over the command, they accordingly sent 20–25,000 men to the Chernaya, occupied the line of that river and drove the Russian outposts from their positions on the heights overlooking the right bank of the river. It will be remembered that we pointed out more than a month ago that this most advanced defensive line of the Russians was not their true battlefield and that they would therefore, instead of holding this ground and accepting battle on this line, probably abandon it at the first serious attack, in order to concentrate all their forces on the strong line between Inkerman and the chain of hills to the east of that place. This has now happened. By this advance the Allies have almost doubled the extent of the area occupied by them and opened up a gateway to the rich valley of Baidar, which may become very useful in the sequel. However, the advantage gained has so far not been pursued swiftly and vigorously. After the initial move came an immediate standstill. Lack of means of transport may have compelled this. Disunity among the allied commanders is cited as one cause. The bombardment of Sevastopol, reopened on 6 June, Bombardment No. 3, arouses the suspicion that the intention is, after an episode, to return to the old slovenly routine. Yet the bombardment may also be combined with field operations. One necessary measure (cf. No. 241 of the N.O.Z.) has at last been resorted to—the transport of some 20,000 Turks under Omer Pasha’s personal command from Eupatoria to the Chersonese. The allied army has thus swollen to a full 200,000 men.

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With such a strength active operations can safely be commenced as soon as the organisation of supplies and means of transport permits taking the field. But here great difficulties seem to have to be overcome.

The second affair to be mentioned in the history of the main army is the struggle between Quarantine Bay and the Central Bastion (No. 4 of the Russians). It was stubborn and bloody. The Russians, as we now see from General Pélissier’s report, held the entire ground from the head of Quarantine Bay to the cemetery and from there to the Central Bastion by means of detached works and rifle pits, although the official British Admiralty plan of the siege works fantasises French fortification works over this whole important area. As soon as the Flagstaff and Central Bastions were seriously threatened and the outworks protecting them were taken by the French, the Russians turned this extensive stretch into a single great work. In a few nights long lines were connected with one another, breastworks thrown up which enclosed the whole ground, thus intended to form a spacious place d’armes, i.e. a protected place where troops could be concentrated in security in order to act on the flanks of any French attack or also to undertake strong sorties against the flanks of the advanced French works. Pélissier, so as not to give the Russians time to carry out their plan, resolved to fall upon them at once, while their earthworks were still unfinished. On the evening of 22 May an attack was made in two columns. The left column established itself in the Russian trenches at the head of Quarantine Bay and effected a lodgement there; the right column likewise seized the advanced trenches, but had to withdraw again at daybreak before the enemy’s fierce fire. On the following evening the attempt was repeated with stronger columns and with complete success. The whole work was carried and turned against the Russians by moving the gabions from one side of the trench to the opposite side. In this action the French seem once more to have fought with the well-known furia francese, although it must be admitted that the way in which Pélissier depicts the difficulties to be overcome is not without a touch of charlatanry.

The expedition to the Sea of Azov, as is well known, has been crowned with the most complete success. A flotilla, consisting mainly of the light steam warships of both fleets, manned by 15,000 British, French and Turkish troops, took possession of Kerch, Yeni-Kale and the strait leading into the Sea of Azov without encountering resistance. Penetrating into this inland sea, the

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steamships appeared before Berdyansk, Genichesk and Arabat and destroyed, or forced the Russians to destroy, great stocks of grain and munitions, a number of steamers and nearly 200 transport vessels. They succeeded in intercepting Gorchakov’s letters to the commandant of the place at Kerch. The Russian commander-in-chief complains of a shortage of provisions in Sevastopol and urges the swift dispatch of fresh supplies. It now appears that the Sea of Azov was throughout this whole campaign the main channel by which the Russians in the Crimea received their supplies, and that 500 sailing vessels were used for their transport. Since the Allies have so far found and destroyed only 200 sailing vessels, the remaining 300 must be higher up, at Taganrog or Azov. A squadron of steamers has therefore been sent out after them. The success of the Allies is all the more important as it compels the Russians to send all supplies by slower and less secure land transport across Perekop, or across the interior of the Putrid Sea, and to form their main depots at Kherson or Berislav on the Dnieper, in positions far more exposed than those at the head of the Sea of Azov. The almost unresisting success of this expedition is the greatest reproach for the conduct of the war by the Allies. If such results can be achieved now in 4 days, why was the expedition not dispatched in September or October of last year, at a time when similar disruptions of the Russian line of communication could have brought about the retreat of their army from the Crimea and the surrender of Sevastopol?

The land troops accompanying this expedition are destined to protect the steamers in case of need, to provide the captured places with garrisons and to act against the Russian communications. Their main body seems destined to operate in the field as a mere flying corps, sallying forth whenever there is an opportunity to strike a rapid blow, retiring into their entrenchments, under the protection of the ships’ cannon, and even re-embarking, in the worst case, if threatened by a far superior enemy force. If this is its purpose, it can render important services and 15,000 men are not too many for such a service. If, on the other hand, it is intended to act as an independent corps with its own operational base, to undertake a serious flank movement against the Russians and to attempt seriously to threaten the interior of the Crimea, then 15,000 men, weakened by detachments, are far too few for such an operation and run the great risk of being cut off, surrounded by superior

forces and annihilated. At present we only know that they have landed at Kerch and are busy putting it in a state of defence on the landward

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side. After the Russians voluntarily evacuated Sudzhuk-Kale, Anapa remains the only fortress in their hands on the Circassian coast. It is by nature a very strong place and now, moreover, well fortified. We doubt whether the Allies will undertake an attack on it at the present moment. Should they do so, they would commit a grave error, unless certain of swift success. They would scatter troops that require the utmost concentration, and squander forces on new objects of attack before the old ones are secured.

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The Great Parliamentary Debate

From the Neue Oder-Zeitung.
Nr. 267, 12 June 1855.
Mittagblatt

London, 9 June. (The Great Parliamentary Debate) has ended, or rather has died—of logorrhoea. Baring’s motion passed without opposition “amid the general laughter of the House”. The motion, insipid as it is, concludes with a war address to the Crown. Did the House declare the war “une guerre pour rire”? Or did it declare itself “un parlement pour rire”? In any case, the real conclusion of the fortnight’s debate lay not in the adoption of Baring’s motion—a mere formality—but in the general laughter, the spontaneous, unregulated muscular spasm, the indiscreet cry of nature, in which the “honourable House” buried motions and counter-motions, amendments and sub-amendments, Ministry and Opposition, speeches, replies, sermons, deductions, piercing sarcasm and pathetic adjuration, prayer for peace and cry for war, tactics and tactlessness, itself and its vote. The House rescued itself from the ridiculous situation by laughing at itself. Thus it confessed that in its parliamentary medium world-historical seriousness first twists itself into conventional seriousness, until the artificial seriousness turns into natural jest.

Every attempt to drive Palmerston to a formulation of ministerial policy, to a statement on the object, tendency, purpose of the war, failed completely. He declared outright: “It is impossible to ask a minister, indeed any casual acquaintance, about the object of the war.” What served him above all were the peace men. You want to know why we are waging war? There is Richard Cobden, who wants peace at any price. Do you not prefer war without any price to peace at any price? Hit out at Richard Cobden! Thus he constantly thrust between himself and his antagonists Cobden or Bright, or Graham, or Gladstone.

The heroes of cotton served him not only as padding with which he wadded his tunic. Still more. He manufactured powder out of the

cotton.

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It also became apparent during the debate that Palmerston now possesses in Russell, as formerly in Aberdeen, a lightning conductor, a lightning conductor belonging to the Cabinet itself, for his sacrosanct person. For this purpose he had sent Russell to Vienna, for the purpose of transforming him into his lightning conductor. And just as Layard & Co. formerly declared Aberdeen responsible, so now Roebuck declares Russell responsible for the “shortcomings” of the heroic Palmerston. As he was then hampered by the Peelites, so now he is hampered by the Russellites in the “wing-beat” of his “free soul”. He has these weights hanging on him, not like Black Forest clocks, to go, but to be able to strike falsely.

All the cliques of the House of Commons have emerged damaged from the conventional sham fight. The Peelites have at last admitted that they were hitherto officers without armies. They have given up the claim to form a separate fraction, and have openly attached themselves to the Manchester School. They, who were entrusted with the direction of the armies and the navy during the first year of the war, have, by professing their faith in eternal peace, absurdly denounced themselves as the traitors within the coalition, to the gleeful astonishment of Palmerston-Russell. They have made themselves impossible.

The Manchester School wants peace, in truth, in order to be able to wage industrial war, abroad and at home. It wants the dominion of the English bourgeoisie on the world market, where the fight is to be conducted solely with its own weapons, cotton bales, and in England itself, where the aristocrat, as superfluous to modern production, is to be eliminated, and the proletarian, as the mere instrument of this production, is to be subjugated, while it itself, as the director of production, is to direct the state as well and appropriate the dignities of state. And now Cobden denounces a parson, Dr. Griffiths, because he declared the House of Lords superfluous at a public meeting. And Bright weeps over the fate of the royal children, whom the ruin attendant upon the war will compel to wash their own shirts. Both denounce popular agitation. Are these the heroes of the Anti-Corn Law League who, borne aloft on the waves of popular agitation, denounced the “barbaric splendour of the crown,” lords, landed aristocracy, etc., as “false costs of production”? Their whole point consisted in the struggle against the aristocracy, the peace homily not excepted. And now they denounce the mass to the aristocracy! Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas. In this debate, the Manchester School has renounced the basis of its existence.

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The Tories, for their part, have uncovered a peace party within their own bosom and proved that they have preserved the tradition of being representatives of English rationalism as little as they have their hatred of the “Bonapartes.”

And the ministerialists, finally? Nothing characterises them better than the convulsive clinging to a motion which Palmerston himself had had to reject a week before, which the mover had wanted to drop, which Walpole on behalf of the Tories, Gladstone on behalf of the peace men, and the House on behalf of “general hilarity” adopted.

The Morning Herald has received the following despatch from the Gulf of Finland: “Sixteen miles from Kronstadt, 28 May. The Orion has made a reconnaissance. She reports that the Russian squadron at Kronstadt consists of 6 seaworthy ships of the line, an equal number of ships of the line almost dismantled, 13 ships of the line which, judging by their appearance, have been converted into floating batteries, 8 large steamers, and a great number of gunboats—it was not possible to count them. On a visit to Bomarsund, we found everything there in the state in which we had left it; the Russians have done nothing to rebuild the fortifications. Not an inhabitant showed himself. The punishments inflicted on those who traded with the allied squadrons last year have made the population very cautious.”

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