A winter campaign under the most favorable circumstances is rife with suffering and death; but much can be done to mitigate these evils by a system of thorough discipline on the part of those in command.
Every arrival, however, from the Crimea, brings tales of woe and misery coupled with additional confirmation of the gross mismanagement which has characterized the conduct of the British army since its first arrival in the East. In battle, British officers and soldiers have proved themselves heroes, yet in the organization of the different departments, in everything which contributes to the comfort and health both of officers and men, as well as in the commissariat, they have proved themselves lamentably deficient.
In contrast with the admirable organization of the French army under similar circumstances, it would seem difficult to account for the comparative comfort in the one case, and the miserable lack of it in the other; but upon a careful analysis of the two systems, the cause becomes at once apparent. The French army is essentially a democratic institution, in which promotion depends entirely upon individual merit. Vigilance, activity, and energy is the price of position, and with a possibility of attaining a higher rank, the common soldier as well as the officer, has an incentive for extra exertion, and something to hope for in the future.
But with the British it is quite the reverse. Once in the ranks the soldier hopes for no higher position, because it is unattainable. Their officers are selected, not on the ground of merit, but because by chance born a “Somerset” or in the shadow of a title. By education well fitted to shine at court, or amid the butterflies of fashion, practical knowledge and business capacity are things of which they have never dreamed, and which so savors of the plebeian that they are led to believe themselves degraded by giving attention to details, or in the exhibition of that energy which is the secret of success in every calling.
While the execution of these minor details renders the French comparatively comfortable on the heights of Sebastopol, the British, for lack of them, are undergoing the horrors of the campaign of Moscow.
With a superabundance of everything on board ship; with cargoes of furs and warm clothing at Balaklava, the soldiers on half rations are suffering famine, and in summer garments are shivering and dying in the cold blasts of a Crimean winter. By the humanity of their allies, some have been protected from freezing by donations of the well known Algerine caban (heavy cloaks with hoods), from the French; and the British army presents the strange and humiliating spectacle of appearing in French habiliments and sacrificing its identity. If the present disasters in the Crimea shall have the effect to cause a breaking down of that Feudal system in England, which recognises one man as entitled to all privileges, and his neighbor to none; which, regardless of capacity, places names rather than men in command of armies, and in cabinets: if this change shall be effected, then will more good have been accomplished than would result from the subjugation of Russia and downfall of Sebastopol.
NICHOLAS, LATE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.