The Press.
London, England, 1855-05-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

SATURDAY,

of the war, and would have afforded all the advantages the Allies had
a right to expect. His Lordship generally defended the conduct of
Russia, but met with support only from Lord LYTELLTON, and that of
a qualified kind. Lord DERBY, in a noble speech, declared his con-
viction that honourable peace to be now obtained must be conquered.
The feeling of the House was so decidedly adverse to the motion that
Lord GREY, not venturing on a dig ision, withdrew it.

The immense accumulation of force now on the heights before
Sebastopol may fairly lead us to hope that the day for active field
operations has at length arrived, for the allies at this moment must
muster nearly 200,000 men, the ma,xitnum which has been fixed as
the number requisite to insure the capture of the fortress. We may
now daily expect to hear of the advance of the allied troops without
their impregnable lines. Still the difficulties of a campaign in the
Crimea are not to be lightly estimated ; our means of transport and
land carriage are very deficient, and the self-sustaining power of the
army, inadequately supplied as it is with light cavalry, if separated from
its fleet, would be put to a severe test. But we have no reason to
believe that anything like a campaign over the arid steppes of the
Crimea will be attempted. The allied generals will probably content
themselves with so far enlarging their sphere of operations as will
permit them to invest Sebastopol more completely, and at least pre-
vent supplies being afforded the fortress, while a covering army will
hold in check the Russians, or perhaps, in conjunction with Ontkut
l'AenA, advance to Simferopol. But even these operations, simple
though they seem, will not be successfully carried out without some
desperate fighting. Every road is scarped and fortified as the Rus-
sians know how to fortify, and every inch of ground will be severely con-
tested. OMER PACHA had arrived at head-quarters, and General DE LA
MARMORA with 3,000 men, the advanced guard of the Sardinian Contin-
gent, had reached and encamped outside Balaklava. Seven thousand
more of the Contingent were daily expected. Among other arrivals at Ba-
laklava we must not omit to notice those of Miss NIGHTINGALE and M.
SOYER upon a tour of inspection through the hospitals and their
kitchens in the camp.

The secession of General CANROBERT and the advent of General
PELISSIER to the supreme command seems, in some measure, to have
restored tha tone of the French army, which was becoming demo-
ralised to a great extent, and which the unhappy termination of the
Kertch expedition would have seriously affected had not an imme-
diate change taken place in the command. With regard to the expe-
dition to Kertch, it seems a moot point whether General CANROBERT
was justified, by the despatches which he received, in recalling the
expedition at the moment he did, when, at all hazards, it should have
been allowed to attempt what it had undertaken. In the first instance,
the instructions which he had received from Paris were stated to con-
tain directions for the concentration of the army for some great stroke,
and the sailing of the reserve from Constantinople, under sealed
orders, lent a certain colour to the statement ; but the arrival of the
reserve at Kamiesch, and the inactivity of the army since their arrival,
contradict this view, and compel us to lay the blame more upon the ha-
bitual indecision of the French General, than upon any intructions
which he had received.

AUSTRIA still continues, if we may trust the telegraph, to coque
with a Conference. One is to be held to-day, at which the Russian
Plenipotentiaries will not be present, and a second on Monday, at
which those distinguished diplomatists will take their seats. We are
not yet assured whether Lord WESTMORLAND attends. Lord PALMERS-
TON, in answer to questions from Mr. Rosnuex and Mr. MILNER Giasox
last night, stated that although Lord WESTMORLAND possessed the
power to attend any renewal of the Conferences, yet his exercise of
that power would depend upon the instructions which he received
from home. Considering that the instructions can be delivered in a
few hours, Lord PALMERSTON'S 'reply, which of course raised a laugh,
is about as vague as his most ardent admirers could wish.
Lord JOHN is certainly not a reticent man ; he can neither contain
his temper nor his secrets under extraordinary circumstances. For
the last five months we have been soothed with an Austrian sop,
which we are told was to heal our differences, or•, failing that, to aid
us sincerely in the cure of them. For this we have sacrificed time,
honour, position, interest, everything which we could offer to entice
the wily Austrian out of his neutral hole. Treaties were signed and
sealed, the Principalities were handed over to the tender mercies
of a Coronini, the Russian Danubian army was freed for a
march to Inkermann. And now Lord JOHN gravely tells us that
" Vienna is not Paris or London," and that he was not prepared to
expect " that Austria should take immediate part in the war against
" Russia, for should a battle on the frontier be lost, there was nothing
"to prevent a Russian army from marching direct to Vienna." This
naive confession of topographical knowledge was the total result of
the late Vienna Conferences, and was made not only in " justice to
" Austria," but because the late Plenipotentiary " did not wish to
" hold out hopes which might not be verified." This fits but poorly
with all which we have hitherto been led to expect as the issue of this
Austrian alliance.

Mr. JACOB BELL, one of the " right men" in a " wrong place"—
a square pestle, to use a homely simile, in a round mortar—lately ob-
served at an Administrative Reform meeting. that " he attributed a
" good deal of the present incompetency to the fondness of consti-
" tuencies (and some of them large ones) for returning Lords to Par-
" liament." Bearing in mind the result of a late election, we are half
inclined to ask for " an ounce of civet, good apothecary."