The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-10 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals.

(From, the Tii;; es of this day.)
Nothing has conic out more clearly in the course
of this war than the high military and scientific
character of the Russian officers. Through a trial
of unexampled severity they have shown them-
selves in every way worthy of the confidence of
their master, and of the reputation of a great
military monarchy. Ardent in attack, undaunted
in retreat, full of skill, energy, and resource under
all circumstances, masters of the three languages of
the three belligerent Powers, it makes one shudder
to reflect what such a band of officers might accom-
plish if supported by troops worthy of such leaders.
The Russian army, like our own, is officered by
gentlemen, but by gentlemen who have not merely
the rank and the courage of theirclass, but its educa-
tion and itsacquirements. While poor Gen. Simple*
cannot even attempt a single word of French, a vast
number of the officers of the Russian army speak
our language as well as ourselves. Their scientific
defence was a silent satire on our rude attack, and
the superiority in skill of the champions of bar-
barism over those of civilisation is written in our
best blood.

This superiority would exist, we believe, to a
very groat extent, even if our army were com-
manded by men of the ordinary age and experience
to which our different grades of officers attain. As
long as we are pleased to make the profession of
arms a mere dillettanti affair, to be takeu up or put
down at will, under regulations which insure to the
retiring officer the price that he has paid for his
commission—so long as we take aristocratic con-
nexion instead of knowledge, and hard cash in lieu
of all military qualifications—so lung as we are con-
tent to encounter men who make arms their profes-
sion with men who look upon their commission as
an investment, we must expect to see and feel this
mortifying inferiority. We, who supply an engineer
for every railroad and every steam-vessel—we who
may fairly claim to be at the head of the mechanical
ingenuity and contrivance of the world, must, so
long as we will continue this system, submit to be
out-generalled and out-manceuvered by men whose
very names we cannot pronounce, and whose lan-
guage is to us a barbarous jargon, without a name
and without a literature.
But it were well for us if it were so—if it
were only the average degree of inexperience
to which the trained and disciplined Russian
officer is opposed. Unhappily we are at this
moment intrusting the honour of the country
and the fortunes of the war to officers not only
appointed and promoted on principles radically
vicious, but to the youngest and least experienced
of our officers. The English army may be divided
into two parts, the smaller of which is before Se-
bastopol, the larger scattered over North America,
the West Indies, the Cape, the Mauritius, China,
and Australia. The smaller part mainly consists
of boys recently recruited and of officers who have
but a short time obtained their commissions. The
army has borne the brunt of two campaigns and a
dreadful winter, and, though the same in name, its
substance has been almost completely renewed.
But how renewed ? Not by replacing the regi-
ments that have been destroyed in the service by
others able in their turn to bear the fatigues and
losses of war, but by filling up their shattered ranks
with raw recruits, so raw that we recorded an in-
stance only yesterday of a soldier who landed in
the Crimea without having learnt to discharge his
musket. The same system is adopted with regard
to the officers. In place of those men of age
and experience who were slain at Alma and Inker-
man, and in the innumerable rencontres of the
siege, we have enrolled a number of gallant lads,
full, indeed, of that courage which makes an Eton
boy square at a gigantic bargeman, or leads an Ox-
ford undergraduate into the first ranks of a town-
and-gown row, but utterly without the professional
training, the habit of command, the knowledge,
the calmness, the personal influence, the resource,
and the foresight which are necessary for the man
or boy to whom the lives and safety of his fellow
men are intrusted. We are engaged in a great war
against a formidable enemy ; we have one army
consisting of thoroughly trained soldiers and officers
who at least have age and experience in their calling,
and another army consisting mainly of raw lads,
commanded by other lads as thoughtless and inex-
perienced as themselves. The one of these forces we
place in the most complete inactivity—the other we
expose to all the perils of a desperate war, on which
the eyes of the world are fixed, and from the exploits
of which we must henceforth derive that military
character which is so large a part of the strength
of a nation. Therefore we fight with our raw lads
and do our garrison duty with our veteran troops,
perhaps the finest in the world.
If it be asked what frightful exigency drives :uk;
to this extraordinary course, we answer that we
are driven to it by no other exigency than our
regimental system—a system generally allowed to
be perfect, and one of whose fundamental maxims
is, that one regiment is as good as another, and
every regiment at any time equal to itself at
any other time. The regiments that were de-
stroyed at Alma and at Inkerman, and filled up
with raw lads, are, according to this theory, as
good now as they were then, and, therefore, by a
necessary inference, having been before those
actions equal to any regiment in the service, they
are so still. Except upon such a supposition as
this we are utterly unable to conceive how the
War-office can justify keeping our veteran legions
to fight with Caffres and New Zealanders, with
Moplahs or Rohillas, to die of yellow fever in the
West or liver complaint in the East, and matching
against the Russians ploughboys and apprentices,
marshalled by officers drawn from the second forms
of our public schools. What makes the matter
still worse is, that even such officers as have been
spared by the sword, the cholera, or the frost, we
seem utterly unable to retain at their duty. Every
man as soon as he has bought his commission seems
to acquire, together with that investment, a certain
number of what are called " urgent private affairs."
When matters begin to look dull—when the nights
are long and the days are short—private affairs as-
sume an urgency exactly in proportion to the un-
pleasantness of the service, and valour sheaths its
sword to grasp the pen, and avoid the wearisome-
ness of campaigning in the far more agreeable pur-
suit of" urgent private affairs." In this respect
we cannot complain of the juniors when we see the
example set them by their chiefs. How many ge-
nerals and colonels have been seized with the
mania for " urgent private affairs," and hurried
home to flaunt their glories before the eyes of an
admiring country ! It is invidious to ge back to
to the past, but just at this moment " urgent
private affairs" compels Sir R. Airey and Sir H.
Bentinck, the latter for the second time, to absent
themselves from their commands. For their loss
we might possibly be able to console ourselves,
but it is with unfeigned regret we learn that the
" private affairs" of Sir Colin Campbell have also
become urgent. Sir Colin will be an irreparable
loss to the army. His gallant conduct in action,
his vigilance, his carelessness of fatigue and ex-
posure, were an example we can ill afford to miss,
especially in so young and, we fear we must say,
so indifferently organised an army. Nor have
these eminent qualities passed unrewarded. In
the course of eighteen months Sir Cohn Campbell
has risen from the rank of Brigadier to that of
Lieutenant-General ; but Sir Colin Campbell is
senior to General Codrington, and, in the true
spirit of a service which is not a duty but a property,
he will not serve under him. There is but one man
who can fill the office of Commander-in-Chief ; the
office cannot be given by seniority, and yet every
General senior to the person selected immediately
sheaths his sword. Far different was the feeling of
the noble Canrobert, who, when not merely super-
seded, but displaced, claimed and obtained the
honour of serving under his more fortunate rival.
Far other would be the feelings of Englishmen in
any other joint undertaking where the common
good required a personal sacrifice ; and this we do
in the face of an enemy who would raise a follower
of the camp to supreme command, and send the
Commander-in-Chief to sweep the streets of Mos-
cow, if he believed that such a change would in
the least conduce to the success of his arms 1