The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-18 00:00:00

1 INIOrW IMIPPMP !EM • • • a~ mrr = 0 //, , q//) . ot I\ iH rtl;s I • 4 No. 81.—VoL. 11. LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18,1854. hope that its own shameful misdeeds may be forgotten in the general panic. Even in the smaller matters in which a Ministry of freemen, with an .ifusion of smart managing clerks might have 'ueen expected to be successful, the Administt ation is now shown to have been as helpless as in the general con duct of the war. It might be too much to expect that a general should find himself sup plied with cavalry, or an admiral with gun boats, but the private might have looked to men of business to provide him with a coat, with a ration, and with a surgeon. And the maladministration of t4atters, individually small and apparently insignificant, has had its full share in produc in g the general and disastrous result. The soldier, left to sleep, unsheltered, upon the Crimean mud (while his fellow-soldiers of France are comfortably lodged) lost his energy, and was rendered an easy prey to disease, which an ill-managed commissariat, afforded him less means of resisting, than a well and regularly fed man would have possessed. And ,hen — when sickness or a wound had prostrated him, where were the ambulance, the hospital, the medical attendant? The devastation in our ranks is not all due to the Russian bullet, to the unhealthiness of the climate, to the ordi nary result of fatigue and change of living. A fearful amount of the decimation now so piteously pleaded, may be credited to the ignorance, incompetence, and inaction of those whose duty it wqs to attend, not to the war, but to the warrior; and pages of declama tion against Russia will not make England forget how that duty was neglected. At last we suppose we may be permitted to allude to the condition and prospects of the British army in the Past, and to the probabi• lities of the war, without being accused of "croaking." Now that the ABERDEEN organ has divulged far more of the misdeeds of its employers than we deemed it prudent to urge upon public attention, while a chance of amendment was left, we may be allowed to remark that the state of things now admitted, in all the unreasoning haste of terror, has been what we originally i.redicted would arise, and what we have, week oy week, indicated as the certain result of the system—if it deserve the name—adopted by our Government. And as we have never been deterred by clamour from placing on record our conviction of the errors and misconduct of the Government, we shall not be induced, even by its once ample and almost reckless confessions, to exaggerate the peril into which we have been brought, That the Government has every reason for feeling the fear and the shame whit,h it has been incessantly avowing, through Lord ABER DEEN'S organ, during the last 1.-tv days. there can be no doubt. But its abjectness of humi liation is no reason for a kindred feeling on the part of the nation, or even for more depression than is warranted by the hideous and unnecessary slaughter detailed in every new telegraphic despatch. But for Lord ABERDEEN we should have had no war, but for Lord ABERDEEN our war would have been conducted in another way ; but not even Lord ABERDEEN'S pitiable prostration, and his cries for aid, ought to dispirit Englishmen. Let the reinforcements be sent, and let the nation make itself heard. Government, in its craven terror of meeting the representatives of the people, has, at last, succeeded in avoid ing an early session, and this very week a nominal reprieve until the middle of De- irbtt vttss. LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1834. AT length—and only in the presence of mis fortunes which would have made further trifling with the subject actually dangerous in the present state of national feeling—Lord ABERDEEN has flung himself upon the mercy of the country, has admitted that the Crimean expedition was undertaken, not only without adequate preparation, but in utter ignorance of the difficulties to be encountered, and, avowing that the whole affair was a " leap in the dark," has called, in accents of unmis takeable terror, for the reinforcements which alone can save our noble army from destruc tion, and our Premier, from an account which even his political adversaries would tremble to see demanded. Now, and now only, with the soil of the Crimea piled with our dead. and with sickness devastating the ranks of the sur vivors, we are apprised that but 16,700 men were left when the last accounts were made up, and that from this amount a fearful deduc tion has to be made for ten days of a tremen• dous siege, and for the results of two or more bloody battles. Knowing what these last simple and fatal words imply, the process of arithmetic which they demand makes one shudder. Given, ten days of siege and sick ness and two days of battle, and deduct the most moderate estimate of the loss from the numbers of soldiers with which the Earl of ABERDEEN considers that the war can be carried on—as be was 'not ashamed to say at the Mansion-house —vigorously. Now, indeed, truths are coming out with the profusion habitual to the offender who has but one chance, the " making a clean " breast of it." We are told by Lord ABER DEEN'S organ that our army is being rapidly and fearfully reduced, that reinforcements must be sent out. not in driblets, but on a scale and with a despatch "totally different " from anything that has been done or thought " of." We are told that no one is to imagine that the sufferings of our overtasked army are anything out of course. or against which no provision could be made, but that they are 1 • the natural and necessary results of our in " sufficient strength." We are told that it is doubtful whether the besieging force at Sebas. topol could muster above half the number of men required by the ordinary rules of war. Aud, finally, we are told—the words will not be forgotten by those who are waiting in agony for tidings of each successive day of slaughter — that the invasion of the Crimea was a " leap "in the dark." Such is the in unhesitating avowal of those who have been juggling with the lives of the noblest and best whom our islands could send forth, such is the confes sion of the Ministry, which, while it was dragging us into war, shrank from adequate preparations. lest Coalition bungling should be prematurely exposed, and which, now that its insincerity and incapacity can no longer be concealed, raises a wild cry of terror in the PRICE SIXPENCE. cember implies a meeting at tho usual time. But the towns and counties can speak out, even though Westminster is silent, and it is not improbable that they will do so. The Ministry is, no doubt, in tolerable earn est now, in desiring to furnish aid to our gallant army in the Crimea, but, unless the national will be heard, it is not in the nature of a Coalition to do its work yeomanly and well. Our noble soldiery will maintain the honour of England even against the cruel odds to which they have been exposed by the Aberdeen Government, but it is now for the country to see that its heroes are cared for — that, in the words of Lord ABERDEEN'S organ, assistance is sent on a scale and with a despatch never before thought of by a Minis try of managing clerks, and that all which human energy can effect, be put into practice to avert further disasters from Lord ABERDEEN'S " leap in the dark." CONDUCT OF THE WAR. Tux late events in the Crimea enable us at length to form a clear conception of the tac tics of Prince MENSCHIKOFF. Reinforced by the divisions of LIPRANDI and Lunsas from Bessarabia, he found himself strong enough on the 25th of last month to assume the offen• sive. Balaklava was the point selected for attack, and the result of that memorable day, gloriously though it sustained the reputation of England, has been claimed, we fear with some degree of truth, as a Russian triumph. Ten days later followed that tremendous attack upon the British camp before Sebastopol the details of which we still await with trembling anxiety. We only know as yet, on the authority of Lord RAGLAN, that the Russian army then opposed to us was, to use his own term, "immense," and that it far surpassed in numbers that which fought at the Alma. Later still we have a rumour of a second struggle, on an equally grand scale, upon the 11th of the pre sent month; and, considering the masses of troops which the Russian General must now have at his disposal, animated as they are by the presence of two suns of the Czar, the in telligence is by no means improbable. It is obviously, e the plan of the enemy to harass th besieging army b y incessant attacks, and, in a word, to overwhelm them if possible by superior numbers before they c in make up by reinforcements from home the terrible losses to which this deadly game must necessarily subject them. What then, we ask, has been or can be done to reinforce our gallant countrymen in the present crisis ? The peril is imminent — are we prepared to meet it? He must be strangely blind to passing events who can confidently reply in the affirmative. Before the great battle of the sth we know that our heroic army had been reduced to one-half the strength which it possessed six weeks before. It numbered only between fifteen and sixteen thousand effective men. The result of this rapid diminution is thus described in the leading Ministerial organ of yesterday : Every man in the army is overworked. Officers of the highest rank are dying, not only by the usual casualties at war, and by exposure to cold, but by sheer hard work. .one of the proper proportions are maintained. The be sieging army is not in the proper proportion to the be- Aeged ; the number of artillerymen is not in proper pm.