THE SOLDIER: HIS CLOTHES.
THE British soldier is in much the same position with regard to his clothing as to his food; but there is a difference —people not only have an object in stinting him, there is also a di- rect object to render him uncomfortable. As he stands at drill, almost every article of clothing that he wears is constructed not for the object that such articles are generally intended to serve, but for some other purpose. He is clothed in under-garments that are with one exception little useful in preserving the warmth of the body, although they are cumbersome in hot weather ; his coat does not keep out the weather, but pinions his shoulders; his trousers fetter his legs, but do not protect them ; his stock chafes his neck in cold weather, and produces apoplexy in hot weather by the pressure upon the veins of the neck; his hat does not pro- tect him from the sun and rain, but presses his head, and is in some cases difficult to keep on ; his socks, of which he has not enough pairs, are worn and comfortless ; his shoes are heavy, ill- contrived, and do not keep out the wet ; the belts to support his knapsack are so constructed that they press with much precision on a vein in the shoulder, and benumb his arms so as to render his hands unfit for the management of his weapons ; it is uncom- fortable for him to stand, fatiguing for him to march, and the garments which should protect and sustain are troublesome encumbrances of very partial utility.. We might cite no end of evidence for these statements • the difficulty in reproducing the language of the officers is the tedious similarity of it all. Major- General Sir Richard Air' ey, K.C.B. (not a subversive demagogue, is is asked whether he thinks the Army ' iy well-clothed and equipped? —"No, I do not think that our clothing is at all good." He par- ticularly objects to the coats and to the cloth trousers. "All our cloth is bad." He is asked whether the cloth is very much im- proved of late ? "The last issues were improved; but it is a hard and unpleasant cloth for a man to wear ; it chafes him, and it does not wear well either ; and it is full of size and stiffening." "The stock," says Sir Richard, "is not so good as a handkerehief," which "looks untidy but is more comfortable to the soldier." Sergeant Fenton says, "I hear the men complain of it (the stock) coming off guard ; it makes the neck quite sore." The head- covering receives the same general condemnation in all its various forms. Major-General Lawrence says, "Military men have never as yet agreed upon the one head-dress proper to the foot-soldier " ; and "it is still a desideratum for the Army." The great object formerly was that the head-dress should protect the soldier's head against the enemy's sword or lance • and though this, with the long range of modern rifles, has become quite a secondary con- sideration, the heavy shako or bearskin is still continued, when the chief object of the head-dress ought to be to protect its wearer against sun or rain. There is little doubt that at present more men are killed by the heavy bearskins than protected by them against a fatal shot. The boots enjoy no better reputation than the head-dress. "They are," says Sergeant Henry Russell, " very bad indeed. The boots of this year are the worst we have had for a long time; • I never saw them so bad." The same wit- ness adds, that "last year they were made by a man at Windsor, and they were exceedingly good boots." This ill-contrived wardrobe is procured partly by the Govern- ment and partly by the soldier, who has to pay for many articles out of his 13d. a day. Every soldier in the Infantry receives an- nually one tunic, a pair of cloth trousers, and a pair of boots ; if in the regiments of the Line a shako every two years' and if in the Guards a bearskin every six years. Besides this, the recruit receives gratis some under-clothing, called " necessaries,"— namely, a pair of fatigue trousers, three pairs of worsted socks, two flannel or three cotton shirts, and a few sundries, such as brushes, towels, &c. All of these things the soldier must buy as soon as the first supply is gone. Almost all these articles of clothing are supplied by Government, and are made by contract- ors. According to the evidence, these contractors are changed ovary year, but the wares which they supply are of a more than questionable description. Undoubtedly there have been improve- ments, but there have been changes which have been considered, the reverse of improvement. It is generally agreed that there is some improvement in the cloth, but it is still bad; the material is inferior, and thefit—there is no such thing as a fit. All the wit- nesses, from the commander of the regiment down to the noncom-
missioned officer, agree on these points. It is not the House of Commons that is to blame. The Representative Chamber cannot be charged with stinginess, nor can the British soldier object that he is clothed worse than a pauper because the National Represent- atives will not allow money enough. According to another re- port besides the one before us,—a blue-book ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15th February 1856,—the list of prices allowed for the clothing of the private soldier was as follows. For the Foot Guards—tunic 11. 15s. 6d., trousers 12s. 3d., boots Si. 6d. ; for the Infantry of the Line—tunic 11., trousers 9s. 6d.,
boots 88. 6d., caps 78. 6d.; and other things in proportion. These are the prices paid under the new system, which among other things changed the tunic for the coathe, (at an increased expense of Si. per piece,) and which came into universal operation on the first of April 1856. Under the old system of clothing, the Colo- nels derived a profit averaging 7501. a year ; and it was arranged when the new system came into operation' that in lieu of these profits they should have a fixed, payment of 5001. per annum. But with "the clothing Colonels" we do no seem to be quit of all the abuses of the system ; and there are several reasons for those abuses.
One of the first reasons lies at the very root of the whole ques- tion of uniforms. In the days of the ancients, the soldier had properly speaking no uniform. Among the Greeks and Romans he was dressed like the rest of the people and the only thing distinguishing him and his class was a mantle of a certain colour and texture. Even during the middle ages there existed no uni-
form dress for soldiers ; and the first time that we hear in history of such a thing as a uniform is among the regiments of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years War, when Yellow and Blue regiments are spoken of. Louis the Fourteenth first introduced the uniform dress of soldiers into France in the latter part of the seventeenth century ; and it was mainly in imitation of his army that the other European sovereigns began to do the same. At first enormous sums were paid in almost all states for the uniform equipment of armies ; and not until the great French Revolution was there any return to former simplicity. The pigtail was one of the earliest victims of the Revolution ; all the rest of the former "ornaments" with which the soldier was overloaded fell gradually, first in France, and then in the other countries. It was then that the comfortable and the useful took the place of the so-called ornamental, and that a soldier came to be looked at not only as a kind of toy on which to hang all kinds of haber- dashery, but as a human being who feels—and suffers. A great deal of this tawdry taste still remains. Viewed from head-quarters in peace time, the soldier is not an individual man, who is to be equipped for the purpose of military activity, with direct regard to his freedom, comfort, and health—he is part of a picture. The hat upon his head occupies exactly the same place that is occupied by the knobs of an area railing—it is the conspicuous pinnacle in the series of ornaments. If the soldier stood upon his head, the boots of a company would become an object of the same regard ; but as they are unseen they are disregarded. The same cause is aggravated by another. The soldier is not an independent being : he is only a single item in a machine, with many such
i items—one brick n the wall—one zoophyte in a coral reef; and his tailor makes not for the individual but for a crowd. The whole tailoring of the soldier is done upon the prin- ciple of the bed of Procrustes. Another abuse incidental to the dishonesty which has crept into our commercial system aids the other two : the contract has degenerated into a mere compari- son of tenders ; the articles furnished are not considered by the makers honestly for their objects, but only for their use as pre- texts to draw the money. If they will simply pass so that the money be paid, it is enough ; and hence the keen eye of the per- son who should be morally responsible, the maker, is turned away from the construction of a proper article of clothing, to discover the nice points where the soldier and the state can be stinted in cloth, where size can be made to do the duty of quality ; and there is no doubt that if it were possible whole regiments would be clothed in shoddy and devil's-dust. Hence it is that our regiments are clothed in caps that at once press the head and balance loosely on the top, in stocks that strain instead of clothe, in coats that admit the wet and wind like sieves and sponges, and in boots that fail to protect the feet against wet or wear. Do we wonder at the spread of consumptive disease ? The Commissioners recommend several improvements-
" We recommend the adoption of a better boot ; also a lighter stock; a more horizontal peak to the forage-cap ; and the substitution of a light cap with a wadden linen cover, or a roll of linen, for the shako in hot cli- mates.
"That greater attention be paid to the interior of the head-dress,
whether shako or busby ; that the greatcoat be of a better quality and more durable texture; that all clothing be made sufficiently loose to permit the free use of the limbs and unimpeded action of the muscles ; and that the material of the clothing be varied according to the climates in which the troops may be serving.
" We strongly recommend the immediate testing, by its issue to half a battalion, of the Berrington ' knapsack-sling."
These recommendations are good as far as they go ; it will be seen, however, that they involve another improvement—one far more important than mere alterations of coats, food, or barrack- room walls,—they imply a thorough change in the organization and spirit with which the several departments of the Army are administered. But that is a part of the subject which we shall have to consider separately.
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