Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1861-08-07
a Scottish Journalist on the Position
of our National nHairs.


We extract the following from the Glas-
gov North British Daily Mol, one of the
ablest conducted papers in Scotland:
We do not consider that the right way
to succeed in any undertaking is to appoint
people unacquHinted with the work in
hand to carry forward or superintend its
execution. knowledge is better than ig-
norance, use and habit are preferred to in-
experience and strangeness; but, nOtwith-
standing this, a@good dea! of the worlds
best work has been accomplished by men
who have been called upon, by the neceS-
sities of the moment, to enter upon labors
altogether new to them. Everything else
being equal, the professional man is the
fttest 10 deal with the duties and dif-
ficulties of his special profession, but
this may be carried too far, and, MS Il
theory 1t is carried too far when it is OBJ
jected that civilians are in every way
unfit for the performance of military du-
ties. President Lincoln is so circunstan-
ced, and tue same may be said of Jefferson
Davis; men of experience ia war are not
at their disposal for all necessary mill
tary commands, and therefore all sorts of
officers will have to be improvised, and if
this was not done, before long the businesS,
connected with the present struggle would
have to stand still. We do not believe,
with the Saturday ReUielr, that Mr.. Lincoln
F" "consults the wishes of his countrymen
in distributing his military commissions
amongst well-known civilians, NOR is he, rs
it is alleged, in the least like Charles |. and
his Tory Parliament, whose choice, III Civ
ing similar commands, leant unduly to
peers and country gentlemen OF influence.
President Lincoln is acting under the pres
sure of an almost overwhelming necessity.
His predecessors in the presidential chair
were, for the most part, SoutheFners, and
those who held the chief posts in the civil
and military services were men of the
SOuth. Many of these deserted and went
over to the Secessionist cause; others who
would have remained, tflatthcy might make
their treason profitable to their party had
to be removed, SO that in every branch of
the public service so many new men have
to be found, that persons unused to the du-
ties they have to discharge will have to be
called into every department.
Whatever injustice the New York press
may do 10 US in interpreting our conduct
in an unfriendly spirit, We have no busi-
ness to retaliate on them in like spirit
1t would be wrong to do so at any time; it
is doubly wrong now that tue public mind
in that country is excited and suspicious,
and to Il certain extent incapable OF taking
dispassionate view of the conduct and
policy the American press undertakes to
critieise. Besides, we have no business to
sneer at what they are doing till we see
that it is likely to end in such results as
are predicted. When We entered the Cri-
mean war, it is known that all our officers,
nearly in every branch fthe public ser
vice, civil as well as military, biundered
Just as if they had been amateurs, until
their apologists had nothing to urge in
their defence except the very simple state
meme that we always blnndered at the be-
ginning of our war, as if such nn excuse
was in the least calculated to cover the
mistakes of professional men.
Besides, we must remember that this
war in America bears no resemblance in
its leading characteristics TO our ordinary
European wars That which it can he
most appropriately compared to, is the
Civil War of the 18th century, when our