Year: 1878

oA1.&A.8 M a-n8 hH6AA AEHlIIs


1t Is reported positively from London
that IL the British government sends an
expeditionary force to the East the COM
mand will be given TO Lord Napier of
Magdala, who will have for his chief Of
staff Sir Garnet Wolseley, of Ashantee.-


Both Of these men may be first rate sol
diers, Notwithstanding the circumstance
that the most conspicuous element In the
career of each is kind of service whose
experiences it would be his first duty to
unlearn in war against real military
Power. Lord Napier successfully over
came the natural obstacles to march in
Abyssinia and gained his laurels in con-
fiict in which the enemy was the fact of
least account. With British troops op-
posed to such a foe rs the Abyssinians
the only difficulty, Of course, is to get at
the foe, and this difficulty Napier over
came. Wolseley had equal success with
the so-called warlike Ashantees. But
the error of supposing that experience
gained in victories over naked savages
armed with bows and spears and some


few firearms of the most primitive pat
tern Is valuable against troops as good as


ones own has been strikingly exempl-


fled in its consequences in the recent his


tory of EArope. No more terrible blum
der has been made than was fallen into,
by the French administration when it


assumed that its Algerian conflicts con-
stltuted q school of war fitted to train its
officers to fight the Germans.


1t Is a pity that the government had
not been inspired to Keep Sir Garnet
Wolseley home and make him Secretary
Of War. From the points which the
cable sends of his article in the Nineteenth
Century on England's military power he
seems to see precisely by what steps and
methods England can put good army
in the field, and that is above all Others
the kind of man they want in the admin
istrative department that Is to put an
army on foot if the occasion actually
comes. By comparison with the impor-
| tance of such a man in such a place it
| may be said that it is of comparatively
little Importance who commands the
army, or even who commands the COM
mander.


In fact, they might almost intrust the
| army to the commander-in-chief himself,
| for anybody can handle it we'll enough If
/ IL is once put in the field. But to send
| away the man who seems to see how it


can be put in the field is madness. 1t is
| true that if Sir Garnet had the RESPONSE
| bility of the administration ON his shoul-
ders he might not reach the same conclu-
sions with his arithmetic as he does in
| the pages of a magazine but he would
| not vary more than half, and as in the


magazine he promises four hundred
| thousand soldiers he might, as Secretary,


supply two hundred thousand, which
would be just one hundred thousand
| more than any other man can get. He
makes, it will be observed, q very great
| difference between the troops that are to


be put sin line" and the troops that are
to be put at the seat of war. He is to
have four hundred thousand men "in
line," but to fight the Russians he is TO


have two army corps OF thirty thousand
men each.


There is, consequently, an important
reduction of four hundred thousand when
ths need is that the troops shall be put
where the trouble is. He can supply
four hundred thousand "immediately p
not, however, for war, but only to "fall
in line" at home. 1t Is somewhat like


the man engaged to take part in the cho-


rus because he could sing at sight, but
who subsequently confessed that it was


"not at first sight" Sir Garnets four
hundred thousand Immediately means


half that many by and by. But with the
| Russians at San Stefano, and with two OF
three hundred thousand of them between
the Turkish capital and Adrianople, how


long would it be after British eXpedi
tionary corps was on the sea before the


Russians would occupy Constantinople
And what could sixty thousand do tow
ard getting them out And could the
next sixty thousand arrive before these
were used up? 1t will not do for the


English to keep In their heads the figures
that were good in the Ashantee war
nor yet the figures with which they used


to count when they appeared on the Con


tinent with powerful continental al
| lies,