The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-20
. ENGLAND MILITARY POWER.
She No Longer Has the Stuff of Which
 Victorious Armies Are Made.

She NO Longer Has the olulL ol WiilSAi
 Victorious Armies Are Made.
 There is no question that whatever the English may have been in the feudal days, they have ceased to be fighting people. The records of the nationalities of the troops composing the armies that fought under Wellington in Spain in the early years of the century dis close the fact that 75 per cent of the soldiery whose valor shed luster on the British flag were Irish and Scotch pea sants. Whole districts of Scotland now tenanted only by deer, and where the smoke from 8 heartl is unknown, we're in these days still covered with shielings from which thousands of sturdy peas- ant lads were drafted to fight in the interest of the very classes who have since turred their fields and home into wilderness for sports. The hillsides of the west and north of Ireland have thousands of impetuous Celts, whose deeds made famous the names and numbers of more than one of the most renowned regiments of the British
 
 hsh landlord law and foreign com petition those hillsides are depopulated, and of the once proud regiments, only the shadowy name survives. The Brit ish army statistics for 1895 gave IF per cent Irish, s per cent Scotch, the rest English. The golden period of the Eng fish army was undoubtedly the time oi the war in Spain against Napoleon and his generals, and England and her army have been living ever since on the reputation then gained. In the Sikh wars In India during the 40's in the Punjaub, the fanatical valor of the Khalsas pushed the better armed and handled English regiments hard. More than one battle was a drawn fight, and more than one English regiment earned reputation for discretion that was not effaced for long years after. The deterioration continued and though the first army sent out to the Crimea in 1854 sustained the reputation and exhibited the traditional qualities of the British soldier, the subsequent levies that were made to fill the gaps caused by battle and disease, the latter mostly due to incompetence and pe- dantry in the command and admins tration, fell far behind the old stand ard Notwithstanding the appeals to their patriotism and large bounties, the population did not respond, and the government of the day with Benjamin Disraeli as chancellor of the exchequer, was reduced to the humiliation of com ing before Parliament with bill to provide for the enlistment of foreigners to send against the Russians.
 The history of the German, Swiss an Italian legions raised under that act has never been written, for the good reason that they did nothing worth re- cording From the time of their or ganiZation to the day of their disband- ment they were a source of continual trouble. Whether 1t was the Swiss at Shorncliffe, the Italians at Malta, oI the Germans at Scutari on the Bosp- horus, the nearest point to the enemy any of them ever reached, there were intermittent scenes of insubordination verging frequently on downright mutiny; and at Malta and Scutari on more than one occasion, line of battle ships were moored close to their camps with guns shotted and run out ready tc open five on England's foreign levies Composed for the most part of the riffraff Of Europe more likely to TUT from the enemy than to face 1t, and having contributed neither morally noi ] materially to England's prestige. these legions, whose formation had been ad- vocated with all the florid pomposity o1 language in which Disraeli was wont tC indulge, disappeared from history. The Emperor Napoleon III. having attained | his immediate object in joining in the war against Russia, made peace over 1 the head os his ally, and England un- able single-handed to carry the wal | into the Caucasus, as was meditated 1 acquiesced, and peace was made. Tn, | allied army evacuated Russian terri | tory, the last English soldier being brought off by a Russian patrol tha l had found him drunk in one of the nu i merous traktirs, or drink shops, tha 1 sprang up in every direction immedi i ately after the declaration of peace.
 | It was a fortunate for England tha | the troops in India at the outbreak O. | the mutiny in 1857 were of better meta | than those failed to follow the lead O | their officers at the final attack on thu
 Redan before Sebastopol in 1855. The. were the last of the old army of trained and disciplined men who made up thei valor for the defects of their leaders | Subsequent wars have only demons i trated the steady decline in the qualit! i of the material of which the Englisl army is composd The tragedy of Isand
 ula in Zuluand and on the Helmund il l A Afgha mist ar, 11rt, t1,.n entire raoi