New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1856-04-08

=,. al all events, more useful ct Efrersum tAaa
90. of on;, 10000 in Mingrelia. There wss ~
disscult.. Ia tie way Of that operation; the rssds
being extremely bad, . considerable force with II
artillery and ammunition could hardly reach Enc
roum in lees than three month"; and thus The c.isis
might have been over long before the army could
arrive on the scene of action. If, on tho Other
hand, . small force were sent it might succeed II
resstabishing the communication between Ere
roum and Kars, but would be insufficient 10 guard
Erzeroum if Kars had fallen. 1t 10 clear, then,
that the Turks had hit on the best plan fos the
relief of Ksrs but that the Allies, By locking up
in the Crimes the only Turkish army capable Of
carrying it out, prevented its execution.
Let us now come to the objections raised BY tie
British Government. Lord Clarendon commences
his attack not upon the weak points, but on tie
strstegically correct points Of tho Turkish plan.
He thinks il wiser for an army to strengthen its
defensive basis in its own rear than to undertake
offensive operations in the rear Of the enemy. We
will leave him to settle this point with old Nsps
leon or Jomini, while We can quito understand his
anxiety for q safe retreat He thinks it better for
an army to march through a friendly country
than through hostile one, if march it must. In
his first dispatch he says that if the Turkish army
could not maintain its position at Ksrs 1t should
fall back on Erzeroum. Did he not know kars WAS
the kew of Erxeroum and that but for the prolonged
defense Of Kars, Erzeroum in its then state OF
defense would have fallen in the same yearf
But as his Lordsbip entertains peculiar
views as to the offensive and the march
ing of armies, so he holds opinions Of his
own with regard to defensive warfare. A defeat Of
the Russians he says, would be the more decisive,
the nearer it took place to the gates OF Constantine
ple In his telegraphic dispatch Of July H. he goes
a step further and coolly recommends the Porte to
withdraw its army not only from Kars, but also
from ErzerOum, falling back on Trebizond.
"where it could easily be reinforced" He would
have the Turkish army come to its reinforce
ments, if the reenforcements would not come to it.
Not choosing to recollect before the fall Of Kars,
the importance of Erzeroum as the center not only
of the commercial but also of the military resources
of Anatoa. he discovers, after the fall Of Kars
when writing to Lord Cowley in December.
1852 that that alone was sufficient "to bring
about the worst consequences, If prompt and
decisive measures are nOt taken. Masters OF
that strong fortress, threatening Erzeroum, and
"comn anding all the mountain passes the Russians
"micht be able to force the whole Of Kurdistan and
the Armenian population to assist them against
the Sultan; and the Allies might in few months
learn that far greater dangers threatened the Otto
oman Empire on the side of Asia than On that Of
" Europe" From the ssme telegraphic dispatch
Oath July we also see that the Turkish contingent
was formed for no other purpose than to remove
from the control of the Porte the only reinforce
ments of its armies.
This much would seem 10 result from the dis
patches of Clarendon, namely that it was settled
point with the British Government as early
as July, 1855 that Kars and Erzeroum should
| fall into the hands of the Russians. This
strange and indeed almost impossible view of
the case is further confirmed by the dispatch
of Lord Panmure to General Vivian. Nothing
could be more curious than the distinction drawn
by this English Minister between bis own Crimean
expedition and the Mingrclian expedition intended
by the Porte. Because the civilized Governments
of the West had ventured upon headlong coup de
main against SeyastOpol the barbarians of tho
East must not undertake deliberate" exped-
ton against Georgia. The forces enumerated in
the Turkish plan he scatters to the winds, and
laughs at the notion that Turkey possessed any
army fit for operations, except the one pent up in
the Crimea. What, then, after all, was the mean
Dgo the hectorng and bullying instructions as to
reanforcements with which the British Government
worried the poor Porte! Was it to read we'll in a
Blue Book on 1.-The fall of Kars :"