The Sun.
London, England, 1854-12-30 00:00:00

DEPLORABLE STATE OF

0 UE,AII‘I)T.

(From the Times.)

Are we, or are we not, to publish the letters that pour
in from the Crimea? The question no longer concerns
the graphic narratives of " Our Own Correspondent,'
for in this respect, just now, thanks to some amisble
eccentricity of the post, we are rather behindhanni. The
question now concerns letters long and many, some ori-
ginal, from sergeants and privates, some copied by fair
and anxious hands, from officers of all ranks in tie
army, from old colonels to youthful lieutenants—fron
everybody, i❑ fact, excepting only the members of that
faithful cordon that surrounds each general. Tw3
months ago we could not have seen the letter of m
officer containing some trifling reflections on the inei-
table mishaps of an army on the march or in the fieli
without being laid under the most solemn obligations
not to publish it, or at least to disguise the source of
our information. Now the whole army rushes into print.
Parents, wives, brothers, the whole family circle, as if they
no longer cared for promotion, and had forgotten the
Horse Guards, urge us to publish, and tell the whole truth.
It is life that is now uppermost in their thoughts—life, ex-
cepting only that a still sadder alternative than even death

will occasionally obtrude itself. It is possible to purchase
life by disgrace, but there is not a soldier's wife or parent
in this country who would not rather hear of his death,
even by famine, by cholera, or at his post in the trenches,
than that the honour of England had been compromised,
and this vast human sacrifice wholly thrown away.
While such, however, are the thoughts that distract half
the noble and gentle households of this country, no
wonder that reserve and the fear of official anger are
cast aside, and we are entreated to publish each miser-
able narrative scrawled in the camp before Sebastopol.
If we do so, it is the necessity of our position to let our
comments follow the course of our intelligence, and not
to cling to old hopes or idle conventionalities when we
are confronted by the stern realities of the ease, as re-
lated in our own columns. We can take no other basis
than authentic intelligence, and hundreds of letters tell,
in uniform language, the almost total disorganisation of
our army in the Crimea, and its awful jeopardy, not
from the Russians, but from an enemy nearer home
—its own utter mismanagement. If we closed
our columns and refused to publish a single let-
ter from the Crimea, it would only be to give
greater weight to the letters that fill the columns of
our contemporaries, and which they are obliged to pub-
lish, even though in the very same page a silly leader,
written with the flippancy of an ill-conditioned school-
boy, affects to snake light of our "exaggerations."
It can no longer be doubted, or even denied, that the
expedition to the Crimea is in a state of entire disorgani-
sation. All attempts to deny it only end in admitting
the fact, and all excuses only throw the blame from one
department to another. There is net a single thing re-
quisite to the efficiency of an army, excepting only the
personal courage of officers and men, that is not gone
almost beyond the reach of remedy. At the last date
the army was on half rations ; some regiments were two
days without food ; the soldiers, and even most of the
officers, were miserably ill-clad and ill-shod ; still without
any sufficient protection from the rain overhead and the
pool underfoot; they lived in perpetual water and damp ;
there was no drainage, and the whole camp was a sea of
mud and filth, the hospital marquees being surrounded by
the worst nuisances. There was still no road from the port
at Balaklava. Three or four thousand horses had pe-
rished from hunger, exposure, and overwork, and the
remaining few were reduced to mere skeletons ; several
regiments had been draughted off to do the duty of beasts
of burden, in carrying food and other supplies from the
port to the camp ; the winter clothing that had arrived
at Balaklava could nct be distributed, t.imply because
there were not the means of conveying it to the camp ;
the mortality was certainly not less than GO a-day, while
the number daily sent to tke hospitals and not expected
to resume service during the winter was very much
greater ; there was a want of guns, of mortars, of shot,
of shells, of fuel, of materials to make huts—of every-
thing whatever necessary not merely tq offensive or de-
fensive operations, but to mere existence ; and the army
was disappearing or only sustained by daily reinforce-
ments, not because it was in the face of an enemy,
but simply, as it would be in the heart of a desert,
for want of all things by which life is supported.
We cannot glance over the letters before us with-
out discovering more and more deficiencies. As
for the soldiers, poor fellows 1 they know their
own wants, and that is all they can tell. The officers
either look for death in the face, and resolve to-ntay
on, or escape home on some pretence or other, sick-
-e- Ira, pray io the greatest

courage and skill. The medical officer;, no ill judges,
were predicting that two•thirds of the army would
perish before March. Everybody of any energy or
sense was sinking, not into apathy or inertness, but
into despair. Meanwhile, Lord Raglan had scarcely
been seen since the Battle of Inkerman. There was
a general belief that he did not know the state of
things, that he felt himself wholly unequal to amend
it, and that he accordingly kept out of sight of the
ills he could n't remove.

Unfortunately for the credit of those in command, but
fortunately for truth and the eventual interests of this
country, there existed the means of ascertaining how far
this frightful disorder was inseparable from the design of
the expedition, the situation of the army, and the cli-
mate, and how far it was the result of mismanagement.
There was the French army, nearly twice in number,
hard by. Here all was different. The men were still
well fed and well looking, not the skeletons and scare-
crows to which our own countrymen have dwindled ;
they were well clothed, sad retained even some smart-
ness of uniform, while our soldiers were creeping about
with haybands round their feet, and in greatcoats that
scarce held together ; their huts were generally up and
weather-tight ; they had plenty of food, with the com-
mand even of luxuries; they had a sufficiency of waggons
and ambulances, with great abundance of mules in good
condition ; they could lend mea to make a road for us,
having completed a hard road from their own harbour
before the bad weather sets in. The contrast pre-
vailed throughout every department, and was
brought home to the British soldier in the most
painful manner. Thus it was with something be-
tween admiration and disgust that the British
army, which had not seen anything more than the
anatomy of a horse for many a day, and which was
obliged to harness 40 to drag up one gun, saw the am-
bulance mules lent us by the French for the conveyance
of the sick as well fed and strong as the day they were
landed at Gallipoli. Wherever the British come across
the French it is to witness the same mortifying con-
trast, and it is, impossible not to draw the conclu-
sion that the French are an army, and the British are
not. In all domestic and civil affairs we pride ourselves
on our organisation, order, neatness, comfort, and abun-
dance of all the materials of health and strength. Is
the scale of war we are found utterly wanting in these
things. It is impossible to check the process of reason-
ing which refers to the fault of system a difference so
marked and so disgraceful. The British soldier can-
not but perceive that the Frenchman is commanded by
officers who understand their profession, and, what is
more, feel a paramount interest in the condition of the
common soldiet ; whereas this cannot be the case in his

own army.
But what is to be done 2 Tho answer, of course, in
some quarters is " Nothing." There are indeed people,
and they not without patriotism, who would rather the
expedition were wholly unsuccessful, and that the Bri-
tish Isles sank under the ocean, than that one iota of
the official system of patronage, of seniority, and of all
that semblance of order that has kept up the illusion of
military strength through a profound peace of forty
years, should be rudely swept away or reformed. There
are people who would think it a less unhappy consum
mation of affairs that the Commander-in-Chief and his
staff should survive alone on the heights of Sebastopol,
decorated, ennobled, duly named in despatch after de-
spatch, and ready to return home to enjoy pensions and
honours, amid the bones of fifty thousand British sol-
diers, than that the equanimity of office and the good
humour of society should be disturbed by a single recall,
or a new appointment over the heads of those now in
command. These people, of course, assume that success
is no test of energy and skill, or that energy and skill
are of no importance in the conduct of an army, which
in war, as in pima, is only a Government organ for tlie
advancement of the aristocracy and the support of tie
Ministry for the time being. Wo protest most solemrly
against this view of our army, or any other view, excspt
the simplest possible one,—that an army is an organ 'or
the defence of a• country against its enemies, and iho
maintenance of its interests and honour, and should, at
every reasonable cost of money and of feeling, be made
as effective as possible. We will not admit that that
which has been mist continue to be, or that the present
working of the army in its higher ranks has at all justi-
fied its management for the last 40 years, even though
the name of the Great Duke be cited in favour of it. No.
If the wreck of the army, if the honour of our country, if
the gi.eat cause at stake, if the position of the British
empire, are to be saved, it must be by throwing over-
board, without a day's delay, all scruples of personal
friendship, of official punctilio, of aristocratic feeling and
A courtly subservience, and immediately putting experi•