The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-05 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LEEDS MERCURY.

My dear Sir,—l beg to invite your attention and that
of the public to some considerations of grave moment
relative to the state of our army, as connected with the
policy of the present war.
The people of England can never have been aware of
the state in which oar army has been left, from the first
moment of its landing in the Crimea, owing to the insuf-
ficient number and defective quality of its reinforce-
ments. Had the people been, as they ought to have
been, frankly and honestly dealt by in this respect, they
would in their own persons—if the war has been as
popular as has been alleged—have long ago supplied
the deficiency. lam bound also to assume that that
large portion of the newspaper press of this country
which has advocated the landing of our forces in
Russia must have been equally uninformed of this vital
defalcation ; otherwise, whilst vaunting of the unani-
mous support which the people were tendering to the
Government, it would not have concealed from them the
greatest and most urgent of all wants—men—and thus
have prepared for us the ignominious dilemma to which
boastful professions and abortive perforMances have, I
fear, consigned us. For the Government alone no plea
of ignorance can be put forth : they have known all, and
the fact of their holding office invests them with entire
and exclusive responsibility.
What are the facts, so far as we have been allowed to
glean them, up to the close of the inquiry before Mr.
Roebuck's Committee The following statistics I have
derived from the valuable appendix to their report :
It appears that the number of British troops, officers,
and men of all arms who landed in the Crimea before
the battle of the Alma was 26,800. At that engage-
ment the English outnumbered their French allies. On
the death of Marshal St. Arnaud, and after the flank
move-merit'upon 0194
senior commander, and, in apportioning the ground for
siege operations, took upon himself the same extent of
work as was assigned to General Canrobert's army.
From this moment, accordinr, to the evidence of the
highest military authorities before the committee, our
army began to sink under the effects of overwork. Then
came the battle of Inkerman (brought upon us by our
exposed situation, owing to the smallness of the force
in proportion to our extended lines), which was followed
by the still more desdly trench work, exposure, and I ri-
rations of the winter ; and the following is the horrible
result of the monthly report of the sick and wounded of
all arms in Lord Raglan's army :-
1854, October, 11,988 sick and wounded.
„ November, 16,846 )1
„ December, 19,479 I)
1855, January, 23,076 fl
(January is the last month for which we have a complete
return.)
Notwithstanding the reinforcements which bad arrived
from home, and from our garrisons and colonies abroad,
our army was reduced at one time to less than twelve
thousand effective bayonets.
That much of the sickness, and its attendant morta-
lity, arose from the insufficient number of men sent to
reinforce our army, is conclusively proved in the evi-
dence before the Sebastopol Committee. General Evans
and the Duke of Cambridge speak most emphatically to
this effect. According to the evidence of the latter "it
does not admit of a doubt" that if 8,000 or 10,000 men
had been sent in the course of a few weeks, instead of
the " driblets" which arrived, a great portion of the
sickness arising from overwork might have been pre-
vented. And the Duke of Newcastle, whilst confessing
his inabilty to find men, stated that " the overwork
arose from the extent ofgthe lines which had been origi-
nally undertaken by the English army being too great
for the reduced numbers." Now it was only from the
ranks of the people at home that the vast chasms created
by death and disease in our army could be filled up ; and
I wish to call your particular attention at the rate at
which, at this very time, enlistment was going on. The
I following is the number of recruits finally approved for
cavalry, infantry, and artillery.

Total in each month.
1354, October 2,091
„ November 5,374
December 6,000
1855, January
„ February 4,073
„ March
(These are our latest official returns.)
It will be seen by a comparison, that whilst our sick
and wounded, exclusive of killed, averaged for the four
months, October, November, December, and January,
nearly 18,000 a month, the recruiting wag going on at
the rate of only 5,100 a month. It wai admitted by

Lord John Russell in the house, last December, that
the recruits fell short by 20,000 of the number voted by
Parliament. And in the session of the present year an
independent member of Parliament asserted, in the

presence of Ministers, without. contradiction, that ths
deficiency amounted to 40,000. And during all this
time, -when our army was wasting aNay from want of

,hat succour which. the Government could not send,
'owing"—to quote the evidence of the Duke of New-

castle—" to the unwillingness of men to enlist to the ex-
tent to which the House of Commons had increased the

English army"—during all this time (I say it only as a
warning for the future)—our war journals and orators
were assuring us that the people were fir more eager for
the war than the Government or Parliament.
I have said that the reinforcements sent to the Crimea
were defective in quality, as well as insufficient in num-
ber—and upon this subject the testimony of the Com-
mander-in-Chief before the Sebastopol Committee, which
I shall give without any comments of my own, is quite
conclusive. Lord Hardinge says :
" We made our men pretty perfect in drill in the
course of sixty days, and when we had to send them out
instead of being composed of bone and muscle, they were
almost gristle ;in fact, they were too young." . •
" But when we came to send in October, November,
and December, to pass the winter in the Crimea, our'
raw recruits—and we had no others—it was impossible
to expect that they could stand the inclemency of the
climate, and the hard work in the trenches, in the same
manner as a similar number of soldiers would have done
in 1808."
• • • • •
" Give us a good stout man, and let us have himf or
60 days to train him, and he will be as good a soldier as
you can have." .
" They are thoughtless boys who come in, and not men
of 25 ; they are generally boys of 18 to 20 ; the num-
bers of that ago are very large, in proportion to those
who are past 21 and 22," . . . • • •
" The thoughtless boy enlists ; the grown-up man of
25 will not, or seldom."

I could give extracts from the evidence of Sir De Lacy
Evans, the Duke of Cambridge, and other officers from
the Crimea, confirmatory of Lord Hardinge's statement.
And once for all let it be observed that their testimony
disposes of the plea for a larger standing army during
forty years of peace. " Give us," says the Commander-
in-Chief, "a good stout man, and let us have him for 60
days to train him, and he will be as good a soldier as you
can have." But it is the bone and muscle of men, and
not the " gristle" of boys, that he wanted for this pur-
pose. In the same spirit was the reply of General
Evans, who, when asked by a member of the commit-
tee to explain the word " inefficient," which be applied
to the reinforcements sent to him in the Crimea, and
whether he meant that they were " untrained," answered
—" nearly untrained, but that did not signify ; they
were too young." These boy-recruits, on their arrival
in the winter season in the Crimea, served scarcely any
other purpose than to encumber the hospitals. They
added so little to the strength of our army that at length,
after enduring unparalleled hardships and sufferings, in
the vain attempt to maintain an equality with our allies,
we surrendered to them a part of our ground (that part
which has been the site of the final triumph), and from
that time to the present our force has been gradually as-
suming the character of a contingent to the French army.
The evidence before the Sebastopol committee brings
us down to May only ; but unfortunately we are not
without ocular proofs that the quality of our recruits
has not since changed for the better. Anyone who walks
the streets of the metropolis, and casts an eye at the
sentries standing guard at our publicbuildings, or glances
at a batch of recruits at drill, or who observes the group
of youths with which the recruiting sergeant is busy in
our villages, will need no further evidence that it is still
the "gristle," and not the bone and muscle of the coun-
try, which is passing into the ranks of our army. And
unhappily recent events in the Crimea have startled
us into a conviction of the dangers of (to borrow from
the brilliant pen of the Times' correspondent) "trust-
ing the honour, reputation, and glory of Great
Britain to undisciplined lads from the plough
or the lanes of our towns and villages." For it
is well known, and ought, in justice to the offi-
cers, to be publicly acknowledged, that in the late un-
successful attack on the Redan the men became massed
in inextricable confusion, not from any lack of individual
courage, but owing to an absence of the coolness, nerve,
and self-possession which age, and age alone, can give.
And how is it, I would respectfully inquire, that the
purport of what I have narrated should be better known
and appreciated everywhere than in England ; and that
whilst, to quote the words of the Times—the truth of
which I can con em from recent personal experience, on
a restricted field of observation—" in every cafe and
promenade in Barope the conversation has been of the
sorry figure which England has made in the present war,"
not one word of warning has been addressed to the
country, or a single appeal made to the people, for a
supply of efficient men to fill the vacant ranks of the
army, which the people, and the people alone, could fill ?
How is it, on the contrary, that whilst the most unmea-
sured censures have been heaped on the Parliament, Go-
vernment, aristocracy, and military commanders, our
press, platform, and even pulpits, have, during all this
time, teemed with more fulsome laudation of the people
of England than was ever before lavished on a commu-
nity in the same space of time ? I will not be tempted
at present to pursue this inquiry ; it would lead me aside
r
from the practical question to which I beg to invite yet%
attention, and that of other leading advocates of the
continuance of tne war.
Howisitlparompotsseldd
isto
thrsais,,btt
raise men
l e (
that
which
whichaims
kindred
at
nothing less than universal empire ?" If this,
and
phrases which have rung in our ears for the last two
years mean anything but bound and fury, EDgithlullela
"battle Europeantboys)
civili-
sation fight
and liberty against a despotism