NO MORE LOST .- ARMIES 1 . * THE purpose with which Miss
Martineau has written about Eng- land and her soldiers is purely practical, and equally so is the manner in which she has treated her subject. There is not in her whole volume one line of invective against individuals or classes. If she recites the history of terrible calamities, it is not that she may heap odium on the Government, or the aristocracy, or the military authorities, but that she may do what in her lies towards preventing the repetition of known errors, the recurrence of avoid- able disasters. Surely this is no superfluous effort, nor can any candid reader deny that it has been made opportunely, ably, and discreetly. Miss Martineau rapidly reviews our self-inflicted hoses in the Waleheren expedition, the Peninsular, and the two &mien wars, and shows how unavailing was the experience pined in each of them, how blindly we plodded on in our old ways, nntil at last we broke away from them in an agony of national horror to rescue the perishing remnant of our army in the Crimea. Then she takes up the melancholy story of the war with Russia, drawing her materials from a great mass of authentic records, and presenting them in an orderly digest with her usual clear- ness and force. Bat, it may be objected, the facts related by Miss Martineau are not new ; why repeat a dismal old tale of which we had already heard too much for our comfort? The answer is that the moral of the tale has not yet been worked out, and until that is done it is needful that its woful incidents be kept fresh in public memory. We cannot tamely contemplate the possible renewal of the Crimean horrors, even on a miti- gated. Beale, and three years of peace have left us still with- out any apparent security against it. Partial reforms have been. effected ; but there has been no reform of "the system" which- we have seen break down so lamentably, and on which all parties, apologists as well as accusers, agree in laying the blame at. all the needless sufferings endured -by. our soldiers at Varna and, in the Crimea. The impediment, and the force that must overcome it, are both known. "We now- see,' says Miss Mar- * England and her Soldiers. By Harriet Martineau.. With Three Mustrative Diagrams. Published by Smith, Elder, and Co. tineau, "how we may maintain an adequate military force at a much smaller cost in every way; and to do this all that is neces- sary is such a vigorous expression of the national will as may overcome the obscure resistance in official quarters which always impedes reform in any department of the State. If this will is exerted in time, our national destinies are secure. If not, we shall slide back into the mismanagement, helplessness, and doomed condition from which the bitter experience of the Crimean war should. have roused us beyond_ relapse." Our readers are aware how urgently the creation of a department of mili- tary hygiene is demanded for India by medical writers of the highest authority. There is nothing on which Miss Martineau more strongly insists than the necessity of such an institution for the prevention of that enormous waste by sickness and mortality, not inevitable, which our military strength sustains in every quarter of the globe ; but as yet there is no sign to show that any project of such an institution has been entertained by those to whom the nation must look for its establishment. Some thanks are due to General Peel and the Horse Guards for inr- provements in the Army Medical Department; but the duty of the members of this department is to cure sickness, not to pre- vent it; their organization does not afford them the means of per- forming the latter service ; that is a thing which must be specially provided for. Now here, says Miss Martineau, is a consideration sufficiently obvious— "We are declared to be not a military nation, by taste or destiny,—not able except by our wealth, to compete in national strength with continental states, which, baying a. wider area, and a. large population, can supply larger armies, and support a severer drain. There is no occasion to discuss the points of taste and destiny here. The practical consideration is, how far the preservation of our soldiers is equivalent to a larger power of supply. If we were to go on losing, by disease, sixty-four soldiers to every hundred effective ones, while other nations were suffering in the same way .in their armies, war would become difficult to us within a period easily assignable; but, if we can keep up the excellence of vigour attained by us in the Crimea, before the close of the war, and have to manage only five sick to every hun- dred of effective soldiers, while other armies, behind us in hygienic science and skill, are sinking in pestilence," dying like flies,' going through, in short, what we have endured, we shall hold a very seoure position in regard to military power and consideration. We none of us doubt, probably, that England's arm can keep her head ; but it will mark a new period in our honour and welfare, when we can prove that the military profession is, with us, little, if at all more perilous than various civil occupations. The positive increase to our strength and prestige could not but be great, from the moment the fact was established ; and upon this would follow an im- provement in the prime material of our military force. The reoruits in a doomed or suffering army will, for the most part, be men who can do no better for themselves—incapable or reckless. Substitute safety from de- grading discomfort and disease for the life and death of a dog in a ditch, and our actual army will be in future what the poet has dreamed that it was, and the patriot demands, and the statesman resolves th*at it shall be.
"It is no longer necessary to argue by analogy or contrast from the con- sequences of a bad administration to the anticipated consequences of a good one. The result has been actually worked out. After an army had sunk to the lowest degree of misery and helplessness ever known, short of extinc- tion, it was lifted up into a condition of high health and efficiency, with the lowest rate of mortality on record. The experiment was complete, well defined in all its stages, and recorded for future guidance. As a conse- quence, we are now in possession of a thorough analysis of the experiment and its conditions; and also of a new means of perfecting our experience. We are already lodging, feeding, clothing, occupying, and amusing our soldiers better. We have a camp full of healthy troops at Aldershott,.in spite of some unfavourable conditions which would have done deadly mis- chief among them ten years ago. Thus, it is not being visionary or pre- sumptuous to reckon on a better future for our military strength generally, and a longer and happier life for our soldiers in particular. Nor IS it pride to regard our military position among the nations as raised, to a greater de- gree than it has been lowered within the last ten years. No country could stand the drain of soldiers to which our unreformed methods would have condemned us. Any free country can hold its own, for any length of time, while to the idomitable pluck and endurance of the British soldier is added the self-respect and the comfortable plight of the English citizen."
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