Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846

EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed. SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCLXX. AUGUST, 1846. Vol. LX.
When we glance back at the bright page of British military history, so thickly strewn with triumphs, so rarely checkered by a reverse, it seems paradoxical to assert that the English are not a military nation. Such, nevertheless, is the case. Our victories have been the result of no especial fitness for the profession of arms, but of dauntless spirit and cool stubborn courage, characterising the inhabitants of the narrow island that breeds very valiant children. Mere bravery, however heroic, does not of itself constitute an aptitude for the soldier's trade. Other qualities are needful—qualities conspicuous in many European nations, but less manifest in the Englishman. Naturally military nations are those of France, the Highlands of Scotland, Poland, and Switzerland—every one of them affording good specimens of the stuff peculiarly fitted for the manufacture of soldiers. They all possess a martial bent, a taste for the military career, submitting willingly to its hardships and privations, and are endowed with a faculty of acquiring the management of offensive weapons, with which for the most part they become acquainted early in life. A system of national conscription, like that established in many continental countries, is the readiest and surest means of giving a military tone to the character of a people, and of increasing the civil importance and respectability of an army. But without proceeding to so extreme a measure, other ways may be devised of producing, as far as is desirable, similar results.
We do not fear to be accused of advocating change for its own sake, or what is vulgarly nicknamed Reform, in any of the institutions of this country, whether civil or military. But we rejoice at the appearance of books calculated to direct attention, we will not say to the abuses of the army, but to its possible improvement. And we know no class of men better qualified to write such books than army surgeons, whose occupations, when attached to regiments, bring them of necessity into more frequent contact with a greater variety of men, and to a more intimate acquaintance with the soldier's real character and feelings, than the duties of field or company officers in our service either exact or permit.