The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

THE CRIMEAN INQUIRY.

Tv there be one thing clearer than another in
regard to the late war, it is that the Govern-
ment to whom our fortunes were intrusted, at
the time it broke out, never performed that
most necessary operation of looking before
they leaped. A prey to alternate fits of
the blindest credulity and the most reckless
precipitation, they so long refused to believe
that war was the inevitable consequence of
their own diplomacy that, when it did break
out, deliberate preparation was impossible.
Yet they did not hesitate to undertake a dis-
tant expedition against a most powerful foe,
in an unhealthy climate, with troops, though
brave as lions, utterly uninured to physical
hardships, and to which WELLINGTON, with his
army of Peninsular veterans, would have been
no more than competent. To the mingled
credulity and rashness of the Coalition Cabi-
net we owe the loss of 20,000 British soldiers,
the flower of our costly army.
Yet what punishment has been inflicted on
the prime authors of this mischief at all com-
parable to that with which Lord LUCAS is now
menaced—or, indeed, may even now be said
to be undergoing ? The loss of professional
reputation is the soldier's death ; hut merely
to question it is to inflict a severe wound.
This would be true of all strictly professional
men, but it is not so with politicians.
A man may be a bungling diplomatist,
but he may understand the education ques-
tion. He may be unable to victual an army,
but he may have a talent for public debate.
Something frequently turns up by which a

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disgraced statesman may readily regain his
popularity and his power.
When a practical emergency arose, the
" heterogeneous energies of the Coalition
Cabinet were completely at fault. The Peelite
members were supposed to be inspired admi-
nistrators, and, from a feeling of honour, their
Whig colleagues stood aloof from the manage-
ment of details. They were willing to let
them have all the credit of success; though
they have not, be it remembered, borne all the
odium of failure. Whether, however, the
Peelites had ever been inspired or not,
Fortune deserted them on this occasion ; and
they wove round themselves such a labyrinth
of blunders that we may go round and round,
from commission to commission, from depart-
ment to department, for years, without finding
our way out of it.
But there is worse behind. To a War Mi-
nister (who knew not war, we have to add a
Prime Minister who hated it—who hoped that
every step he took in the matter might be the
last—and acted as he hoped ; who sent troops
to Malta, and hoped they would go no further;
who sent them on to the Crimea, and hoped
they would not fight ; who, when the battle of
Alma was won, hoped that the war would be
over; who, when the allies sat down before
Sebastopol, hoped they would be afraid to
stay there. These hopes, which so marvel-
lously resembled other people's fears, seriously
damaged the whole expedition ; and of course
nothinglwasi ready when it was wanted, be-
cause Lord ABERDEEN had chosen to hope it
would not be wanted.

The consequence of all that was, that neither
officers nor men could see a single step in ad-
vance. Lord LIICAN had not ascertained, even
so lute as Christmas, what was to be the ulti-
mate destination of his cavalry. Such faults
of detail as arise from simple inexperience the
Noble Earl does not disavow. He was unac-
quainted with the best method of erecting
that kind of stabling. But surely, after a forty
years' peace, there is nothing extraordinary
in that. However, let his faults be what they
may, it is totally impossible for Englishmen to
forget that the administrative machinery came
to a dead lock at home ; that there was
neither food for men nor forage for horses ;
and that the blame attributable to officers in
the field must be altogether subordinate to
that due to the political authors of the greatest
disasters since the American war.