The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-23 00:00:00

HMI WATIM AT LONDON DRIDOL

This --Ati;eiboos, 4i. 80..
To-Ilotaow—Moraig, M. sat.. ..Aftemoca, 6i, 24m„

LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 23.

Hovrevea much it may shock the martinets of
the Horse Guards to hear it, there is no doubt
that the annual Volunteer Review is the best ex-
ponent of modern military science which the ser-
vice in this country furnishes. NAPOLEON used to
place the ideal standard of troops in the power of
marching twenty-five miles in one day and fighting
a battle in the evening. The most extraordinary
march chronicled in our own military history is
probably that of the Light Brigade on the day of
Talavera, when in full marching order they covered
sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours, leaving only
sixty-seven stragglers behind them. Butnow wesend
a Volunteer Division a journey of eighty miles, they
fight a battle, and come home to supper at night.
True, it is not done by marching, and no doubt
even a twenty-five miles march would knock up
a third of those who without training should
attempt such an effort. But the triumph con-
sists in the use of modern appliances so as
to give men out of condition an efficiency four
times as great as that of NkroLeoe's or Weureo-
TON'S veterans. We do not dispute that the
veterans, with the help of these appliances, woald
be much superior to our Volunteers. But we do
say that to take advantage of the gifts of science,
so as thus enormously to enhance the natural
powers of a force, is a truer illustration of scien-1
tific warfare than any number of Horse Guards'
inspections or Aldershott field-days. Magenta And
Bull's Run were both won by the use of railways
for the transport of troops at the critical moment,
and wherever a field of operations includes even a
single railway, the general who knows how to em-
ploy it will practically double or quadruple the re-
lative strength of the troops he commands.
This striking spectacle of 20,000 men conveyed
in hall a dozen hours without fatigue, and in full
readiness for combat, to a point sixty or eighty
miles distant from their place of concentration has
in it a double lesson—one for the regular and
another for the Volunteer service. To the
former we may fairly put the question why it
does not do likewise. The tritest maxim of
military science is that rapidity of movement is
the prime element of success, and rapidity of
movement means now-a-days adoption, wherever
practicable, of railway transport. But, like every
other species of novel method, it needs some exer-
cise, some experience, to allow its advantages to
be fully developed. Our Volunteers have grown
tolerably expert in the matter, but the stricter
discipline and more exact punctuality of regular
troops might be expected to give them the advan-
tage, if they had only some practice to familiarise
officers and men with the details of arrangement.
But the authorities of the regular service ignore
the existence of railways as much as if we were
still manwuvring under MaaLsoitouox. To them
this new and most wonderful addition to our
military power is unknown, in any application
beyond the modest service of carrying the Com-
mander-in-Chief down to Aldershott of a morning,
or bringing up some dozens of officers for an
afternoon lounge in the club windows of St.
James's or an indecorous saunter in the Burlington
Arcade. Yet that without some practice of it, as
a method of moving troops, its full benefits cannot
be realised, is most certain. No general could un-
dertake to transport 10,000 men, with a fair pro-
portion of horses and a few field pieces, by rail-
way without the risk of considerable blunders,
involving much delay, being made on the first
attempt. But it is very desirable that all
our generals on the active list should
be able to direct such an operation with-
out blundering at all. And though in peace
it might be of no advantage beyond that of prac-
tice, we might reflect with some satisfaction on
the moral influence it would have. No fortifica-
tions on our coasts, no entrenched camps inland,
would have half so much effect on foreign minds
as the recognition of the fact that within four
hours of the first touch of the telegraph index an
army of ton thousand men, complete in every
arm, could be drawn up in line on the heights of
Dover, of Beachy Head, or of Portsmouth, while
the carrying resources of the railways were such as
would bring up reinforcements of regulars,
militia, and volunteers at the same rate all
through the following night and day. A review
of such a force, so transported, once or twice a
year would not only be the most beneficial con-
ceivable lesson to our own officers and men, but
would be a military spectacle calculated to pro-
duce the strongest impression on our neighbours.