The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-03-01 00:00:00

ur odon aorrtsponbtnt.
(We deem it right to state that we do not at all times
,kentify ourselTes with onr Correspondent's opinions.]

Her Majesty the Queen has always taken a deep in-

„
tereat in everything which affects the success of the
naval and military services. Those of us who can
carry our recollections back to the Russian war of a

quarter of a century ago, can recall many An_incident

in which the Sovereign- eiood forth prominently as the
representative of the patriotism and determination of

a united people. At one time the,Queen was review-
ing a magnificent fleet at Spithead, preparatory to its
departure for the Baltic; at another she was en-
couraging works of love for the relief of the
wounded. Writing on the 6th December, 1854,
to Mr. Sidney Herbert, who then held the office
of Secretary-at-War, her Majesty said :—" Would
you tell Mrs. Herbert that I begged she would
let me see frequently the accounts she.received from
Miss Nightingale or Miss Bracebridge, as I have
no details of the wounded, though I see so many from
officers, &c., about the battlefield; and naturally the
former must interest me more than any one. Let
Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish Miss Nightingale
and the ladies would tell these poor noble wounded
and sick men that NO ON takes a warmer interest, or
feels more for their sufferings, or admires their courage
and heroism MOBS than their Queen. Day and night
she thinks a her beloved troops. So does the Prince.
Beg Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words
to these ladies, as I know that any sympathy is much
valued by these noble feIIows.—VICTORIA."
Nearly a quarter of a century has rolled away since
these words were written; and although Queen
Victoria is still upon the throne, the recipient of the
letter and the Prince who was mentioned in it have
long ago been gathered to their fathers. Indeed, they
both died in the same year-1861—within four months
of each other, and thus have disappeared from mortal
ken nearly eighteen years. Five-and-twenty years
have been added to her Majesty's age, but this lapse
of time has done nothing towards cooling her
aspirations for the care of her troops. We all
remember ho r, in the early days of December last,
before the beloved Princess Alice had been attacked
by the insidious disease which carried her off on the
14th of that month, the Queen presented at Windsor
Castle new colours to the gallant King's Own Regi-
ment, then under orders for the Cape of Good Hope,
and, in a brief address to the 'millers, reminded them.
of the illustrious traditions associated with the battle
scroll-of that regiment. Again, last week, upon the
despatch of reinforcements to aid the undaunted band
of the &leaders of our §Otitli African possessions, her
Majesty received the generals in audience, and in a
few inspiriting words bade them go sad sustain the
glory of the British arms in that far distant colony
The principal streets of our ports of embarkation have
been enlivened wir.h scenes which seem like pages torn
out of a volume that history had long sines closed.
The air has been filled with the strains of martial
music ; stately troopships, crowded with soldiers,
have slowly moved away from the quays, followed
with dim and filmy eyes by crowds of spectators, who
reflect, as the steamers are gradually lost to sight, that
a large proportion of the human freight on board may
never be seen again. The columns of the papers are
scanned for war news with the eagerness which so
many of us well remember in days gone by, when

"The air grew thick with murmurs
That increased at every breath,
Of sounds that told of battle,
Of victory, and of death."
Seldom has a more busy clang of preparations been
heard in our dockyards and arsenals than in the few
days between the receipt of the intelligence of the
disaster at Rorke's Drift and the despatch of the first
of the reinforcements. In fact, little more than a week
elapsed, and surprisingly smart work it waist° get the
60th Rifles off frem Gravesend, and the 91st ttighlanders
from Southampton so soon. The croakers who go
about the town assuring us that our authorities
act upon the principle of how- not to do it
would have 113 believe that in order to be
ever ready to avenge a military disaster, our
cavalry and infantry regiments should be always
awake and fully accoutred and provisioned, and that
our transports should constantly have steam up so as
to be off at a minute's notice. Practical men, how-
ever, know that the government of a country must
be conducted according to the rules of common sense,
and that it is impossible for all our great mAitary and
naval establishments to stand at " attention " for a
catastrophe which may never happen. For instance,
we have not had one like that at Rorke's Drift for
nearly forty years, and that was in Afghanistan.
When the news of a reverse does come, the only thing
is to make the best of the resources we have in the least
possible time, and that appears to have been
.done on
the present occas on.
The possession of such tenacious fighting qualities
by the dusky warriors of Zululand has taken many of
us by surprise. We have been accustomed to suppose
that, just as fanaticism, with its long train of gloomy
terrors, flees at the approach of freedom, so the sable
savage flees at the sight of an Englishman. Ris true
that our march in Afghanistan this time has been
against an invisible foe, to the great annoyance of
enterprising special correspondents, who were sent out
there at enormous expense by the London news-
papers. Could some of them have been spirited away
somewhere in
.the vic;nity of Rorke's Drift on the
22ad January, and from a safe coign of vantage have
described the incidents of that sanguinary fight, the
papers would have p kid any money for the news.
But a score of able men have been standing idle, not
in the market places, but amid the mountain passes
of Afghanistan, where no fighting cauld•ba got, while
a struggle of a most desperate nature was going on
upon the adjoining continent, with no one near to
chronicle its thrilling incidents. Cetewayo is clearly
II man of skill and enterprise; and while the accounts
yet to hand tell of the steady -valour of our troops,
they also- bear witness to the unflinching spirit
of the Zulus. They are no contemptible foes; and
although we need not fear the result, there can be
no question that Lord Chelmsford's reinforcements
are not a man too man 7, nor have they been despatched a
slay too Boon.
Great is the contrast between the interest shown
in rarliamentary proceedings twelve months ago, and
the langour manifested now. Then, night after
night, se,e knew not whether we should be involved
in war; awl the statements of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer were listened to with the deepest interest.
Public meetings held in favour of neutrality were
broken up by easrited crowds, shouting war songs;
and multitudinous gatherings in the parks on Sun.
days testified to the state of tension of the public
mind. The proceedings in Parliament at the present
time scarcely command that importance which should
surround thd deliberations of the great Council of the
Nation. Some of this result is no doubt attributable
to the subject-matter before the House Of Commons.
That assembly, for many nights, has been engaged
in discussing the propriety of altering some of its
own rules, with a view to the more expeditious trans-
action of public business, and Manifestly this is a mat-
ter with which the outside public has little or no

concern. They do not eare so much how the House
ei,,es its work, so far as forms and standing orders are
affected, as they do fsr the legislation which is the
product of the labour. But the measureA which are
to come before Parliament this session are not of a
character to produce violent commotion in town or
country. Bankruptcy and County Courts reform, the
management of highways, and the assessment of
valuations, are useful and practisal pieces of legislation,
fitted for the closing months of an expiring Parla-
ment. Representative assemblies, like isolated
mortals, find it impossible to do the heroic and the
animated in the shadow of an impending dissolution.
•It is worth while to note the changes whieh have of
late years been made amongst the personnel of the British
ambassadol:s in European courts. Lord Odo Russell
replaced Lord Augustus Loftus at Berlin,who in his turn
has been succeeded at St. Petersburg by Lord Dufferin.
Two years ago Sir Henry Elliot went to Vienna from
Constantinople, where Sir Henry Layard took his
place; and now the latter is coming home, at all events
for a time. The Ambassador who has longest held his
post at any European Court is Lord Lon s at Paris,
and he Lae occupied the embassy hi the French capital
under several successive Governments. An ambassador
-13 not so much the representative of the admiuis-
ration in power as the sovereign; and although his
instructions come from the Foreign office, and are
drawn up by the Secretary of State with the concur-
rence of the Cabinet, the ambassador is simply the
mouthpiece of his official superiors, and cannot—or at all
events is not supposed to—initiate a policy of his own.
The late Emperor Nicholas once refused to receive a
very eminent man as the English ambassador at the
Court of St. Petersburg on the ground that the aelecs
tion which had been made was personally objection-
able to himself; but the British Government refused
to admit this plea, and for some time this country
was unrepresented in Russia, the Czar ultimately
giving way. Of the British embassies abroad, the
most important and valuable is that at Paris, where
the ambassador receives a salary of £1.0,000 a year, or
twice the allowance made to an English Prime

Minister.
It has not been uncommon to hear of riots in the
streets of Alexandria, and of an outcry amongst the
mixed population of that city; but a military riot
in
Cairo is quite another matter, and that is why the
recent rising in the Egyptian capital has com-
manded so much attention. The Governments
of England* and. France have, in response to a call
from the ruler of Egypt, sent out commissioners
to his capital to Itriiighter' the tangled skein of
;Egyptian finance; and the governments of the two

iOot!'"