The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-19 00:00:00

THE SADDLD ON THE RIGHT HORSE.

(Prom the Examiner.)
Mr. Sidney Herbert deals in riddles. He assures big
Wiltshire constituents that our army in the Crimea is
one of the finest and noblest that ever left the shores of
England, yet, presently afterwards, we are informed
that this same army had been so used and distributed
that it was not likely at the commencement of the war
that it would be perfect for all the purposes of warfare.
So that the army, which is one of the finest and noblest
that ever left our shores, has this one fault of lacking
perfection for all the-purposes of war—that is to say, in
one word, that, fine as it is, it is not fit for its business.
But this is not all, nor the worst. The fine and noble
army is in the next breath pronounced no army. "In
time of peace," declares Mr. S. Herbert, " we have had
no such thing as an English army." So the boast of the
fiaest'and noblest army that ever left our shores was all
fudge, and there was no army whatever in the proper
sense of the word. "We have," explains Mr. Herbert,
"no army but a collection of regiments." And, carry.
ing on the same distinction, it may be ■aid that we have
no regiments but collections of companies, and again, no
companies but collections of men. The meaning, how-
ever, at which Mr. Herbert is driving through these
paradoxical assertions is, that our forces have been dis-
tributed in small parts, and that there is no practice in
acting in large masses or handling them. This is true
undeniably, but it is not a troth which will account for
the extent of the miscarriage which we have new to
deplore.

"In every other conntry in the world," said Mr. S.
Herbert, "an army is a collection of regiments, and
other countries know how to move, to feed, and to or-
ganise large masses of men. In England, on the other
hand, this is never the case till the time of actual war-
fare arrives, and then you expect men to learn their
duty and to execute it at one and the same time."
And, notwithstanding all difficulties, we have seen
how this task has been performed, where circumstances
make it most arduous, in cur Indian wars, where the
movement of a given number of men requires the very
largest machinery and appliances for the conveyance of
stores, baggage, &c. This was the first lesson of the
Duke of Wellington, who referred much of his subse-
quent
success to such salutary schooling, and he learnt
and executed the duty at the same time. But we are
not to expect/the genius of Wellington in every com-
mander. That our system is defective is admitted on
all hands, and, indeed, if it were less radically faulty, it
could not be passed from peace to the exigencies of
war without considerable disadvantage and rnisworking ;
but, granting all this to the fullest, it is yet certain that
the very worst has been made of an imperfect piece of I
mechanism. Indeed nothing that has been imagined in
illustration of human folly by the wit of Rabelais or
Swift approaches to the extremities of fatuity whi h

constitute the history of the Crimean expedition and its
disasters. We challenge a single example of common
sense, of common resource, of contrivance, of the !post
simple of means to an end.
Moliere's ridicule of medicine in his day seems to us
now an extravagance, but not a whit less preposterous,
and ten thousandfold more destructive, is the military
pedantry with which we have now to do, and we have
our Thomas Diaforus, and M. Pourceaunac's apothe-
caries in red coats and cocked hats, instead of black
coats and perukes.

How often, inieed, have the examples in the Crimea
reminded us of the argument of MoUre's physician, that
it is better for ?eople to die according to rule than to
survive by the reach of rule, as rules are incompa-
rably more precious than the lives of individuals.
Here is an official who will not receive a cargo of
sheepskin coats, while the army is perishing of
cold, without the formality of a letter. Here is an-
other who will net furnish stoves to prevent the spread
of cholera in an hospital ship insufficiently warmed, with-
out a requisition July signed and countersigned. In vain
the surgeon pleads that death will have the start of the
forms, and that, vhile a requisition is going through its
course of routine, the cold will fasten on his patients
with the torture: of cholera, and spread the disease
through the hospital. I❑ vain he implores the supply cf
stoves on his own responsibility, paying for them if dis-
allowed. No ; tbo man in office is inflexible. What
were disease and ceath by the worst torments compared
with the observance of rule ?

A cargo of ortex- arrives in time of the sorest need :
it is every one's want, but it is no one's business to take
charge of it ; it is sent back to England. A supply of
potatoes arrives when the troops were suffering front the
want of vegetables, and in danger of that most terrible
foe, scurvy. There is some informality, the potatoes re-
main on beard till they sprout, and are then made a
scramble of on the beach, or flung into the sea, the ship-
master having In vain implored to be relieved of them
for their purpose, to supply the wants of the army.
Sebastopol is not the enemy. The true Sebastopol is
the pedantic system of routine, the breach and storming
of which was the one thing desirab!e. Our army has
indeed been between two enenne.. Sebastopol, en the
one hand, and on the other Balakiava held sternly
against them by the officials, with within it in abundance
all that they have wanted, and have been perishing for
lack of.

Obedience to order has been carried to such a pitch
of obedience t• disorder as the world has never be-
fore witnessed. In the charge of the Light Divi-
sion at Balaklava was seen the marvellous hero-
ism with which English soldiers would rush upon
certain death at the word of command, but there is
a counterpart to this magnificent devotion, and that
is to be seen in the phlegmatic composure—nay,
cexcombioal complacency with which your men of offi-
cial routine will devote hundreds and thousands to
suffering and death rather than deviate a hair's breadth
from prescribed forms. There can be no pardon for this
when it is considered that common humanity would have
broken through all trammels and succoured the griev-
ously distressed troops.
We should begin to have hopes of the army if we
could hear but of one man, in any station of authority,
who had broken through rule to do a sensible and ser-
viceable thing. It ia proverbially said that hunger will
break through stone walls, but we have seen that it
cannot break through military formalities, and we
have had an army perishing for want of all necessaries
lying in abundance within reach of its hand. Oh, we
shall be told, the land is not leagues long, and London
itself would be starved if all its supplies were to be
drawn from stores os Wimbledon-common; but, waiving
the question why the first care and first business were
not to secure the transit from the port to the camp, we
have cited examples of misconduct admitting of ne plea
of difficulty of conveyance, such as the refusal of the
stoves to the eurgeea in charge of the hospital ship, and
half-a-hundred similar instances we could quote.
Another instance of cruel and obstinate indifference to
the wants of the troops is the long-continued supply of
green coffee—if furnishing a thing so useful can be
termed a supply. As well, or, indeed, rather better,
might corn have been served out instead of bread or
biscuit, and the men left to their contrivance to grind
the grain into men'., and convert the meal to dough,
and bake it into something eatable. After a time Lord
Raglan and the c'uief commissary complained of this
cruel practice, this mockery of the men's wants, but
their complaints did not avail to roast or grind the
coffee ; and doubtless it is held nature's fault, and not
the fault of any official man, that the berry is net borne
by the plant ready roasted by the sun, and fit for imme-
diate use.

This and 100 other instances of a like kind are not
traceable to defects of system, but to sheer doltishness
or worse, and the systera comes in only fairly for the
blame, inasmuch as it allows of such doltishness or worse
in its administrators. If an account could be given of
the causes by which our brave fellows have perished in
the Crimea, the number of victims to official neglect or
mismanagement would probably be found fourfold those
who have fallen by the sword or bullet of the enemy.
The blame is, of course, thrown on the climate, but
whether or not a man is able to resist the influence of
climate will depend on a number of circumstances in bis
diet, clothing, and lodging. He wants all available ap-
pliances to sustain him, and ff the help of them is re-
fused him through neglect or any other avoidable cause,
his succumbing is not to be placed to the account of
climate, but to omissions which are heinously criminal.