Crimean texts
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 amiable eccentricity of the post, we are rather behindhand. The question now concerns letters long and many, some original, from sergeants and privates, some copied by fair and anxious hands, from officers of all ranks in the army, from old colonels to youthful lieutenants, — from everybody, in fact, excepting only the members of that faithful cordon that surrounds each General. Two months ago we could not have seen the letter of an officer containing some trifling reflections on the inevitable mishaps of an army on the march or in the field without being laid under the most solemn obligation 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, excepting 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 has 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 miserable 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 case, as related in our own columns. We can take no other basis than authentic intelligence, and hundreds of letters tell, in uniform language, the almost total disorganization 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 letter 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 publish, even though in the very same page a silly leader, written with the flippancy of an ill-conditioned schoolboy, affects to make 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 disorganization. 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 not a single thing requisite 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 under foot; 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 perished 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 not be distributed, simply because there were not the means of conveying it to the camp; the mortality was certainly not less than 60 a-day, while the number daily sent to the 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 everything whatever necessary not merely to offensive or defensive operations, but to mere existence; and the army was disappearing or only sustained by daily reinforcements, not because it was in the face of an enemy, but simply, as it would in the heart of a desert, for want of all things by which life is supported. We cannot glance over the letters before us without discovering more and more deficiencies. As for the soldiers, poor fellows! They know their own wants, and that is all they can tell. The officers either look death in the face, and resolve to stay on, or escape home on some pretence or other, sickened of a service which refuses fair play to the greatest courage and skill. The medical officers, no ill judges, were predicting that two-thirds of the army would perish before March. Everybody of any energy and sense was sinking, not into apathy or inertness, but into despair. Meanwhile, Lord RAGLAN had scarcely been seen since the battle of Inkermann. 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 the ills he could not 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 climate, and how far it was the result of mismanagement. There was the French army, nearly twice the number, hard by. Here all was different. The men were still well fed, and well-looking, not the skeletons and scarecrows to which our own countrymen have dwindled; they were well clothed and retained even some smartness 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 command even of luxuries; they had a sufficiency of waggons and ambulances, with great abundance of mules in good condition; they could lend men to make a road for us, having completed a hard road from their own harbour before the bad weather set in. The contrast prevailed throughout every department, and was brought home to the British soldier in the most painful manner. Thus it was with something between 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 forty to drag up one gun, saw the ambulance mules lent us by the French for the conveyance of our own 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 contrast, and it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that the French are an army, and the British are not. In all domestic and civil affairs we pride ourselves on our organization, order, neatness, comfort, and abundance of all the materials of health and strength. In the state of war we are found utterly wanting in all these things. It is impossible to check the process of reasoning which refers to the fault of system a difference so marked and so disgraceful. The British soldier cannot 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 soldier; whereas this cannot be the case in his own army.
But what is to be done? The 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 British 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 consummation 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 despatch, and ready to return home to enjoy pensions and honours, amid the bones of fifty thousand British soldiers, 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 peace, is only a Government organ for the advancement of aristocracy and the support of the Ministry for the time being. We protest most solemnly against this view of our army, or any other view, except the simplest possible one, — that an army is an organ for the defence of a country against its enemies, and the 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 must continue to be, or that the present working of the army in its higher ranks has at all justified its management for the last forty 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 great cause at stake, if the position of the British empire, are to be saved, it must be by throwing overboard, without a day’s delay, all scruples of personal friendship, of official punctilio, of aristocratic feeling and courtly subservience, and immediately putting experience, ability, energy, and merit, even in their roughest and most unpalatable forms, in the conduct, and even at the head of affairs. There can be no interest greater than that of the whole common weal, for with its downfall every other must sink to a common destruction. So no reason can be given, and no excuse will be admitted, against immediately superseding in their commands those who have proved themselves to be incapable of performing the duties to which favour, seniority, or mistake has advanced them. After all, it is no disgrace to a man that he does not possess the genius of a WELLINGTON or even of a HILL. But it is a crime in a War Minister to permit an officer to remain for a single day in the nominal discharge of duties the neglect of which has brought a great and victorious army to the verge of ruin.