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    Mat 2,1857-1 .THHI.EAPBB. 421

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    A STRONG GOVERNMENT AT SEA. If we are to...

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    Army Education. It May Well Be Doubted W...

    Whatever course may be pursued with respect to appointments to commissions is unimportant in comparison . General Shaw Kennedy very clearly states the reason why the selection of the staff should be made on the soundest principles . " All who have ever seen war , says this venerable survivor of the ditch at Badajoz , " will admit that the qualities required by a eeneral officer commanding in the field are very rarely met with , and , consequently , it

    must frequently happen from the yery nature of man , that important commands fall into the hands of incompetent commanders . This if ; is utterly impossible to avoid , for many men do not even know themselves before being tried on such commands . The very great importance of abating or overcoming this most serious evil , is that of having a highly instructed and efficient staff . " And in another

    place he speaks of " the necessity of the rule being absolute , " that none but officers , carefully educated and well trained , should be on the staff . The experiment which the Government is about to try is , whether a carefully educated and well-trained staff can be obtained by means of a hybrid system of nomination and a test examination , for the strictness of which we have no guarantee . The experiment will fail . We must have a Staff School

    on the principle of competition . If there is one thing more distinctly enforced than another in the Report of the Army Commissioners , which we briefly summarized some weeks ago , it is that the system of severe competition , so beneficial in France and Austria , might be applied to staff appointments in the British army without being open to those objections which do apply to the general adoption of such a system for the disposal of commissions and other appointments . Fighting , officers are indispensable , and they are not always the most scientific ; but scientific officers are indispensable also ; they are the providence of armies .

    What we most want is , a gradual reform of the army , so managed as to retain the fighting officer , to secure a large proportion of officers who spring from the gentlemen of England , to remove all obstructions that impede the rise of genius , either of a fighting or a scientific order from the ranks , and to provide an ample supply of officers having the most extensive knowledge of the art of war in all its branches , from whom to select the staff by a process which shall pick out the best from the best . In order to accomplish this we must raise the general standard of military education in officers of all ranks and all arms . We do not want to create a class

    of soldier-pedants by the aid of soldier-pedagogues . We do not require a strictly professional army , because that would tend to disturb the relations which subsist between a British army and British institutions . If wo were bent on aggressive warfare , on extensive schemes of conquest like Russia ; if our empire in Europe were analogous to that of Austria , where the army is the cement that binds together alien provinces ; if our Government were despotic like that of France , and exposed like France to the permanont chances of

    invasion , then it avouIci bo our duty to raiso a large army , and to supply it with officers , every one of whom should bo the most perfect machine attainable . But we do not require an army divorced from the nation , and master of its political destinies . On the contrary , it is essential that our army should be completely subservient to the civil power , and in no way injurious to tho liberties of tho nation . Yet this should not provent us from having tho most complete and powerful army which ia consistent with tho maintenance of our rights and privileges ; it should not prevent us from stimulating and rewarding merit

    wherever found ; nor should it lead us to tolerate any system which admits of gross favouritism , or converts a regiment into a pleasant club for wealthy , vicious , and emptyheaded idlers . What steps it will be necessary to take to secure a competent staff , and raise the general standard of professional education in the army , we shall have ample opportunities for discussing .

    Mat 2,1857-1 .Thhi.Eapbb. 421

    Mat 2 , 1857-1 . THHI . EAPBB . 421

    A Strong Government At Sea. If We Are To...

    A STRONG GOVERNMENT AT SEA . If we are to exchange the encumbrances of political freedom for the paternal advantages of an administrative monarchy , let us at least be decently administered . If we are to sacrifice all party feeling , all parliamentary tradition , every liberal watchword , to the substantial blessings of a strong

    Government , let us at least understand in what the strength of our Government consists . The Aberdeen Ministry , of which Lord Palmebston was a consenting and conspicuous member , was roundly accused of insincerity and incompetence , because it found some difficulty in adjusting a rusty peace establishment to the sudden exigencies of a distant war . When Lord Aberdeen

    had exhausted and appeased public obloquy by his secession from power , and the Duke of Newcastle had fallen a victim to undiscerning public clamour , Lord PaIiMEBston was summoned t-o the helm , to steer the State through summer weather to assured success . Ever since , he has been regarded by a judicious public as the incarnation of a strong

    Government . Now here we are with another war upon our hands , and not a little war . Let us see how the strong Government sets to work . Three or four regiments are drafted for China : it is important that not a day should be lost in shipping them for their destination , and it is equally important they should be landed with all despatch , and in serviceable condition .

    Whatever may have been the shortcomings of Lord Aberdeen ' s Government , certain it is that it despatched with unprecedented celerity , and without a casualty , some ten thousand men to the seat of war . Lord Aberdeen was a man of peace , and it was not as a war minister that he had served the Crown . Well , we have now a war minister pa ) ' excellence at the helm , the chief of a strong Government , as the Ministerial journals are perpetually

    reminding . us . Let us note the energy , vigour , and mastery with which it organises an expedition of five thousand men . The first thing it does is to select , for the transport of a regiment to tho scene of operations , a notorious tub , miscalled the Transit ( probably to signify the ominously transitory life of those who embark in her ) , distinguished only , for never having gone out of harbour without a break down—for never having made a safe or successful passage—for being utterly

    unseaworthy and universally condemned . As if to make assurance doubly sure , our strong Government despatching troops to China , pitches on a ship made infamous to all the world at the great Review last year by breaking clown in Southampton Water with a living cargo of Peers Spiritual and Temporal on her deck , like patience on a monument , smiling at griof . Everybody

    who had an acquaintance in tho 90 th was aghast at the report that they wore to go out in the Transit . A letter to the Times , signed " Hand in Transitu , " culled the attention of tho Admiralty to the fitnoss of the Transit for the transport service ; tho Times backed up the doubters ; all to no avail . Questions were put in tho late House of Commons to Sir Ouables Wood , who , with all tho confidence of a civil First Lord oahoro , and with the

    blandest official complacency , affected a sort of indignant surprise at any doubt of the Transit ' s staunchness and virtue . After much delay , the Transit is off , and before she is well out of sight of the Admiral she is all but ashore in a fog under the Wight , somewhere between Yarmouth and the Needles , and knocking a hole through her bottom with her own anchor when she swings with the tide ; an accident a collier would be ashamed of . Back she comes to Portsmouth soaking and sinking , discharges men , stores , and ammunition , and goes into dock to be stopped . Letter after letter appears in the Times , warning after warning is addressed to the Admiralty , who are as deaf and dumb as a well-regulated department is bound to be . Out of dock comes the Transit once more , stopped and patched ; reships men , munitions , and stores , goes to Spithead and off to China again . The next we hear of her is from a letter placed in the hands of the active- and able correspondent of the Times at Portsmouth . She has " put into Corunna in deep distress . " Here is the letter " from an intelligent and respectable person on board the Transit , and authenticated by name , rank , and every other essential establishing the credit of the writer : "" Her Majesty ' s ship Transit , Corunna , April 19 . " Here we are ! done up ! Two days' ' Bay' weather sent us in here to be fresh-rigged ; you never saw a worse sea-boat in your life—crank , top-heavy , and everything that ' s bad ! We have everything we could wish in the way of provisions—only two days' salt since we came on board ; bnt such an old tub you never saw ; the rigging never set up , or anything secured we had hard work to keep the masts from going over the side ; if she had pitched instead of rolling I am sure the foremast must have gone over the bows . We had to get tackles across the decks from side to side to brace the rigging in to save the spars ; in fact , a greater tub to roll I never knew . She is top-heavy . I am certain she will never weather the Cape , or she will deceive all on board , both soldiers and blue-jackets . She is a disgrace to the British Government , and more so to the dockyard authorities . If she is lost , I only hope my diary will be found to condemn those who sent her to sea . You may think what she must be when I tell you for a truth that there are not one dozen men ( troops ) on board with a dry hammock , every seam in her deck letting in water . They had to give , or at least did give , extra grog . ?>

    How eloquent is the naked truth of this letter compared with the statements of the First Lord in the House ! Imagine a British steam transport " done up" after two days * roughish weather in the Bay . Imagine a regiment sent to China in a leaky kettle of a craft combining the qualities of " crank , topheavy , and everything that is bad . " Imagine this coffin being sent to sea , after one false start , with the r igging never set up or anything

    secured . Imagine the " undergoing stomachs of our brave and gallant fellow-countrymen of the 90 th ; not a dozen of them with dry hammocks ! Now , it was known to all the world that tho Transit was so rotten a carcaso that " the very rats instinctively had quitted her : " and now we discover that not even the common precaution of a trial cruise to set up her rigging had been attended to . Forty-eight hours at the back of the Wight would have sufficed for that .

    Now is not this a disgrace to England , to the Government that perpetrates , and to the nation that permits it ? Perhaps our easygoing rulers who stay at homo at ease may say with Falstaff , " Tut , tut ; good enough to toss : food for powder—food for powder ; mortal men—mortal men ; " but will tho friends and relatives , will the fellowcountrymen of tho gallant 90 th be silont and see them cheated of their lives by tho

    reckless indifference and debonair pedantry of a strong Government ? Wo know how British soldiers can face death at aoa wJien death is inevitable ; but thoy would fain die n dry death in tho enemy ' s front . When Monsieur Oandide viaifced Portsmouth , ho was

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 2, 1857, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02051857/page/13/