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

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 producing 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 by 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.