THE RETURN OF THE GUARDS.
(To TIIE EDITOR OP THE " SPECI'ATOR.1 Sul,—May I be allowed to enter a protest against the imputation (in your article on "The Return of the Guards" in the Spectator of October 25th) of "want of generalship" and "military incompetency" on the part of the generals in the Crimea ? If the writer of that article would estimate at their true value the still surviving traditions originated by the slanders of the contemporary Press, and listen rather to the painstaking historian Kinglake, who—whatever may be said of his conclusions and conjectures—has never been proved to be wrong in any material statement of fact, he would surely learn that the ultimate success of that campaign, such as it was, under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty, was due quite as much to admirable generalship as to the unsurpassed quality of the British rank-and-file. Time expedition to the Crimea, pressed upon Lord Raglan in spite of his declared opinion of its extreme hazardousness, and in deference to the clamour of the public and the Press, was waged in complete ignorance of the magnitude of the difficulties to be en- countered. So little did the British Government realise the conditions that—as the Secretary for War, the Duke of New- castle, afterwards admitted to the Sebastopol Committee— they counted upon the British Fleet being able to command the Isthmus of Perekop with its guns, and thus prevent reinforcements from reaching the Crimea. That the sea was only two or three feet deep for miles from the isthmus was a fact unknown to the War Office ! Thus the Russian force to be encountered was estimated by the Duke at forty thousand only, as though there were not, as the event proved, hundreds of thousands to be poured in. It was due simply to the inadequacy of the British force that so terrible a strain was put upon it, and that it suffered so much. At Inkerman the disparity of numbers was about three or four to one,—con- sidering the courage and tenacity of the Russian soldiers, surely a pretty good proof of good generalship on our side. When has any British army possessed better generals of divisions than Sir George Brown, Sir Cohn Campbell, .Sir William Codrington, not to mention Cathcart, Pennefather, and others ? Yet so completely was Lord Raglan's over- whelming superiority in military capacity assented to by them, and so completely had he won the admiration of, and established his ascendency over, three French Commanders- in-Chief in succession, that when he died the loss was irre- parable; the blank could not be filled up. No successor could be found in any way comparable to him, even among the officers who had served under him with such marked distinction. Surely no soldier of his century—save only the great Duke—has done more for his country, or has met with so little gratitude from his countrymen.—I
Sir, &c.,
JOHN MARTINEAU. Park Corner, Heckfield, Winckfield.
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