Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

Then hurrah for the life of a soldier!”

Firm and clean and straight as of yore, under all his load of greatcoat, furs, and boots, struts the soldier of the 47th, mindful of De Lacy Evans, “little Inkerman,” and of the greater in which it was eclipsed. Will he be as trim and neat, I wonder, if they take away his white facings? Of the old “fours”—the second brigade of the division which with the light divided the “general” fighting—the 41st and 47th, though perhaps no better, always looked better than the 49th, because of their facings.

The influence of facings, indeed, goes much further than that in general society. The hotel in which I live (a very attentive host is doing his best to complete the resemblance by extensive dilapidations) is as like a barracks as can be. The “St. Lawrence Hall” is in a military occupation. The obstacles in way of “alterations” are bestridden by Guardsmen, Riflemen, and Engineers, on their way to breakfast and dinner, as if they were getting through breaches. In the hall abundance of soldiers, anxious orderlies with the quaint quartoes full of orders, and military idlers smoking as much as you like, but, I am glad to say, not chewing—nor, as a New York paper calls the Republican Senators, “tobacco-expectorant.” To appreciate this boon properly, pray be prepared to limit the suffrage immensely. In the passages more orderlies and soldier-servants, who now and then do a little of what is called flirting with the passing demoiselles de service; tubs outside in the passage; doors of rooms open à la caserne; military chests and charts on the table.

It would have given those who admit that war is necessary sometimes, as the sole means of redressing national grievances, considerable satisfaction to have seen the difference presented by the regular troops of Great Britain in Canada and the vast masses of volunteers assembled on the Potomac by the United States. It is not that the British are one whit finer men: taking even the Guards, there are some few regiments there which in height and every constituent of physique, except gross weight, cannot be excelled.

As a whole, perhaps, the average of intelligence, taken there to mean reading and writing, may be higher among the United States volunteers than among the British regulars;—not much, however. The Sanitary Commission of New York, a very patriotic and thoroughly American body, did not attempt to claim more than three-fifths of the United States armies as of American birth. The immediate descendants of Irish and German parents are thus included among native-born Americans, though they are in all respects except birth Irish and Germans still. Very probably they have not partaken to the full, or to any great extent, of the advantages of public education.

But, taking the statement of the Commissioners—which, by-the-bye, is a very serious reflection on the patriotism of the Northern populations—it may be doubted whether in reading, writing, and arithmetic there is any great superiority on the part of the United States troops over the British. I admit that in some regiments of the New England States there is a higher average of such knowledge as may enable a man to argue on the orders of his officers, and of such intelligence as may induce him to believe he is competent to criticise the conduct of a campaign.

There is an immense amount of newspaper reading and letter-writing, the former taste predominating; but our own mailbags are ample enough to satisfy any one that the same preponderance which is maintained by London over New York in correspondence is to be found in the English army over the American. Many Irish and Germans here have no inducements to write letters, but there are few who are unable to read their newspapers.

What is it, then, one may reasonably ask, which would satisfy the grumbler, who finds fault with the expenditure of standing armies, that he has got value for his money when he contrasts the British troops here with the battalions on the Potomac? It is the efficiency produced by obedience, which is the very life of discipline: the latter is obedience incorporated, and, in motion or at rest, acting by fixed rules, with something approaching to certainty in its results.

The small army in Canada could be massed together, with its artillery and transport, in a very short time, and directed with precision to any one point, though it is a series of detachments on garrison duty rather than a corps d’armée, and it has neither cavalry nor baggage animals. With all the liberal (if not occasionally extravagant) outlay, and the cost of transporting it, the force in a few weeks would be far less expensive than an American corps of the same strength; and it is no disparagement to the latter to say they would be less efficient than the British. I do not speak of actual fighting; for our battle-fields in Canada tell how desperate may be the encounters between the armies. Our force would be under the orders of experienced officers. The staff would consist of men who have seen service in the Russian war, in Asia, in India, and in China, and who have witnessed the operations of great European armies. The United States is laboriously seeking to acquire experience, at a cost which may be ruinous to its national finances, and a delay which may be fatal to its cause; but it cannot galvanise the inert mass with the fire of military efficiency, though it burns, we are told, with hidden volcanic energies, and is pregnant with patriotic life. The use of an army in war is to fight, to be able to move to and after its enemy, to beat and to pursue him.

It is not greatly to be wondered at if the work, which Great Britain has only partially accomplished, notwithstanding the greatness of its progress, should be only begun in the United States. The aptitude of a large mass of the inhabitants for arms, whether they be foreign or native-born, is marred by many things. There is the principle of equality intruding itself in military duty, confounding civil rights with the relations between superior and inferior—between officer and rank-and-file. There is the difficulty of getting men to follow officers who have no special fitness for their post. A soldier may be made in a year; a company officer cannot be made in three years. There are many officers in the American army of great theoretical and some practical knowledge; there are many in the British army lazy and indifferent;—but no one would think for a moment of comparing the acquirements, in a military sense, of the officers of the two nations.