The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-16 00:00:00

been

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1 !Ei k

continnona attempt to patch

up past omirssions and past blunders; sea those who,
unhappily for England, have now the management of
her military affairs appear to be framing all their
measures on the spur of the moment, without settled
plan, and chiefly with a view to self-exculpation and
parliamentary defence. From all that we have seen
hitherto, the sequence that we are to anticipate is
this :—l. Intelligence from the East., some dire dis-
aster that ought to have been provided against at
home, and by common foresight might have been.
2. A hysterical shriek from their craven panio-striokett
organ. 3. The grief, the anxiety, the surmisings of
a patient public—a public prepared to make any
sacrifice, but already beginning to growl with
clenched teeth that it will not be cajoled. 4. Bust-
ling exertions to meet a bygone exigency. 5. swag
gering self-vindication. Thou again, du cupo, another
disaster, and the whole sequence repeated.
It was once said of au ancestor of our present
Secretary-of-War, who want pottering on through
his daily business, always in a hurry but always
behindhand, that he seemed to have lost half au
hour in the morning, and to be trying all day to re-
' cover it. Such, in the conduct of the present war, is
the system of our Ministers, as propounded by their
own exponent, Mr. S. lierbert.-1 am, sir, your eon•
start, always gratified, and ever grateful reader,
As OLD PENINISULAR.
December 13th, 1834.

CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
TO TILE EDITOR Of " THR PRESS."
Sir,—The Ministry must by this time be pretty well
aware of the unsuitableness of half measures to great
emergencies. Their desire to preserve peace was in
itself a laudable one, but peace was not. to be pre-
served by sending to the war, when actually declared,
a force sufficient for a mere demonstration rather

than for active operations, and then to leave it to
sustain, in disheartened inaction, the ravages of the
cholera; to be at length sent on, sickly and unre.
enticed, when the powerful and vigilant enemy had
been allowed due time for his preparations fur de
fence, to the plane where the real blow was to be
struck. It angers us to think how the war has been
protracted, and the lives of our noble countrymen
wasted, by the paltry and undignified proceedings of
our rulers. The Uoverittlient needed not to take the
initiative—there was no lack of pressure from with-
out. The war was a popular one, and had prepara-
tions been made on a scale and with a promptitude
that would have found a hearty response in the ap-
proval of the ccuntry, Russia, so far as man's fore-
sight can divine, would long ere this have succumbed,
and many of those whom we now proudly lament
would have been living to prove, if need were, on a
future emergency, that Englishmen, gentle and
simple, had no need to look to bygone ages for ex-
amples of gallantry and devotion.
But it is not only inasmuch as we are ourselves
concerned that the conduct of this war is likely to tell
disadvantageously. Russia is a giant child among
the European nations, and the dread of her already
overweening power has led the two moot famous
countries in the world for deeds of anus to combine
for her present chastisement and the prevention of
her future aggression. Now, we know that it is not
the way to reduce to order au unruly subject to let
r him feel that his power in comparison with our own .;
Is much greater than we imagined; but this is just to
what we have done. ,fs
' We may at length take Sebastopol and occupy the Ed
Crimea, but now the Russian nation will only re-
member the difficulty we had in doing so, and the
long-balanced contest which she whom we proudly
term barbarian so long alone maintained with the
emnbined armies of the most redoubtable of Euro-
trnations ; and the first juncture which again
igs the armies of Russia on the theatre of European
warfare will bring them with a prouder moral confi-
dence than they have ever yet possessed, and with a
practical experience, taught by ourselves, which will
tend to further, far more than their present losses to
prevent, the attainment of those ends for which they
have always struggled. In the opinion of one of our
leading political writers the enemies of Russia have
no *vest so much to fear as a war in which she
takes, though unsuccessfully, a principal part. The
muscles which we are so tenderly exercising we may
at last perfect in strength ; and though it may not be
our fate to live to see Europe shaken by its blows,
history will not deny to our present policy the
doubtful honour of having greatly nerved that
powerful arm. A heavy blow, and promptly struck,
would have laid the Bear at our feet, and we should
have had no reason to apprehend that our tender
enmity might prove more serviceable to him even
than our friendship; but what Whig Ministry ever
dea.t promptly a heavy blow on any enemy of
England ? The country has been and is ready to do
it ; and the blood so freely shed in the Crimea seems
to mock the shameful temporising policy that has
wasted it, and to cry out for military measures worthy
of the spirit of the English army and the English
people—not of the present Ministry of England.