THE EARL ORKNEYrose to call the Attention of the House to the reported want of Aptitude for their Situations in the Junior Officers of Her Majesty's Service now on Duty in the Crimea. The noble Earl said that it was generally supposed that this country was at war with Russia; but every military person with whom he had the honour of conversing thought that the term was entirely misapplied, and that it should rather be stated that Russia was at war with this country. He conceived that to be at war with a country meant to carry on against it every species of destruction short of reverting to the practices of savages. The Government had not so carried on the war with Russia:—had they done so, it would not, as it had up to this moment, have been attended with such serious disasters. He had heard the memorable and prophetic warning of the late Duke of Wellington, who had said that this country should engage in no such thing as a little war. He (the Earl of Orkney) was afraid that this had not been sufficiently borne in mind, and that a little and diminutive war was being carried on, wholly inadequate to cope with the resources of so mighty a nation as Russia. He thought it most unwise to underrate an enemy, and he believed that it was the opinion of all military men, that Russia was a magnificent military nation, and that its troops were in a state of subordination little inferior to those of this country or of France. He wished to draw the attention of the House to another term that was in general use, and to be met with in every publication. All talked of an army; but all his military friends—of whom he had a great many—had come to the conclusion that this country had no army in the Crimea; 230 that it never had one; arid, until it had, he was afraid that the same disasters which had hitherto attended our troops would still continue. An army was composed of infantry, cavalry, artillery, waggon train, hospital staff, and various other branches; and he believed that three, if not four, of those elements were altogether wanting in what was called the English army. The nation had also been led to suppose that the present war could be carried on at an an annual expenditure of 3,000,000l. or 4,000,000l.; but if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had asked for 7,000,000l. or 8,000,000l., and expended most of it previously to last September and October, the war, in his (the Earl of Orkney's) opinion would have assumed a very different aspect to what it presented at present. He was led to this conclusion by an event that had taken place during the war—he alluded to the Battle of Alma. There the troops had shown their gallantry, but nothing had resulted from it, for the Commander in Chief was so crippled by the want of an army that he could not follow up that victory. He was the last person to wish that the war should be unnecessarily prolonged, for all his sons were in the army, and many of his friends; seventeen or eighteen of them had been killed already, and many more wounded. He had been last night in the society of an officer who was with the Duke of Wellington at the siege of Badajoz. That great commander did not wait to go through the regular operations of a siege, but stormed the place before they could be carried out, and his reason was, that by making a sacrifice at that time, he should net be called upon to make a further sacrifice afterwards. He (the Earl of Orkney) believed that, in certain cases, sacrifices made at first proved humanity in the end. In addition to this delay before Sebastopol, certain places had been spared—Odessa, Anapa, and other towns had not been reduced, but were as flourishing as ever;—and this was another reason which induced him to say that the war had not been carried on efficiently. He believed that he was correct in stating that, in December, 1853, when it was found that the war could be no longer delayed, a meeting took place, which was attended by all the officers of the different departments; and, when the Commander in Chief was called upon to give an account of the number of troops he could furnish, he stated that his hands were so 231 tied by want of material, that the requisite amount of troops could not be sent out. And that this was so was proved by the fact that the requisite number of troops had not been sent out. He thought also that the Government were to blame for not having sufficiently considered that the climate to which the troops were first sent was one of the most pestilential in the world, and every precaution ought to have been taken to guard the men against its effects. That this had not been done was seen in the fearful mortality that had taken place both among the officers and men. He now came to another subject, and that was the pay of the officers, which was miserably inadequate. There was no mercantile establishment in the City of London requiring confidential service, and the real work done by regimental officers in which those officers would not receive three or five times as much remuneration as they did in the army. They received, in fact, no pay, the British nation entirely forgot the services these officers rendered to their country, and the real state of the case was, that they served principally for honour and the society of the gentlemen with whom they associated. They had heard a great deal of the vast amount of talent required in Her Majesty's service; but he could show their Lordships that this was not to be attained in the present state of the service. He would merely instance the Sappers and Miners. All knew the scientific attainments required in that corps; but what took place at Chobham? Why, these men knew so little of actual service, that they staved off their wells with green wood. Surely, then, it was very hard to complain of the inaptitude of the subalterns of the British army, when the best men, from want of practical experience, did not know how to carry out these matters. He had been told by a friend who served in the campaigns in the Peninsula, that it was the practice for every soldier who was detached to perform a particular kind of duty, to carry away with him a small bit of wood from the camp, in order that next night, when he and his comrade were about to encamp, they might have some fuel to begin a fire with. It was by means such as this and the like expedients that troops were enabled to provide for their own comfort am) well-being. The noble Earl then referred to certain defects in the arrangements of the camp, and in the state of the tents of 232 the army in the East, which, he said, had produced great unhealthiness among the men, and caused a fearful mortality, one-half of which might, in his opinion, have been avoided. Alluding to the want of means of transport in the Crimea, he stated that our officers had had to wear the same clothing as they landed in until they were literally covered with vermin. These were some of the hardships to which English gentlemen were subjected, and to which they submitted without a grumble or a murmur; and yet they were now held forth to the public and the world as men who were wholly unfit for the duties assigned to them. While these officers cheerfully submitted to every sacrifice and denied themselves many a comfort for the good of their men, it was certainly very hard that such imputations should be cast upon them. He knew of officers, who, having been enabled to procure horses for themselves, allowed them to be employed, not for the benefit of their masters, but in slaving to draw necessaries for the use of the men belonging to their regiments. He was happy to say, that the officers of the British service looked first to the welfare of the men under them, and to their own interests afterwards. The discipline of our troops was as complete as it could well be; but if the men were to be told that their officers were unfit to command them, was that course calculated to maintain or to strengthen that discipline? During the political excitement which prevailed in 1833, attempts were made to seduce certain men of the Artillery corps from their duty by holding out to them offers of money and drink. One of the men having told the commanding officer of what was going on, that officer, being a judicious man, instead of making a noise about the matter, very coolly replied, "Oh, very well; take the money and whatever you I can get, and make yourselves happy and comfortable." This had its proper effect upon the men, and these noble privates maintained their fidelity unshaken in spite' of the temptations to which they were exposed. Those who were acquainted with the army knew that the most irksome and painful duty which the officers had to discharge was to inflict punishment upon their men, and the men themselves freely acknowledged that they were never punished by their officers excepting when they had richly deserved it. This, then, was the excellent feeling which now existed 233 between the British soldier and his officer, and it was to be hoped that that feeling would long continue. The noble Earl was understood to conclude, by asking whether Her Majesty's Government had any objection to produce a return, showing the relative number of officers and men that had been admitted into the military and naval hospitals at Scutari and other places.
§ LORD PANMUREwas not aware that the noble Earl had at all improved his address by asking for this return. That return might be difficult of preparation, and might not, therefore, be possibly produced for some time, but he could see no objection to laying such a return on the table. As regarded the object with which the noble Earl had addressed their Lordships' House, it appeared that from some quarter or another some slur had been thrown upon the character as well as upon the conduct of several officers of the British army engaged in the Crimea. He had not gathered from the noble Earl's speech the sources to which he referred for those attacks which had been made on subaltern officers, and he could only say that no report whatever had come home from Lord Raglan reflecting in any way on the conduct of those gentlemen; and he could not conceive what circumstances there could be which had given rise to the slightest suspicion in any man's mind that those officers had failed in any respect to discharge their duty to their Queen and to their country in the manner in which a British officer had ever been known to discharge that duty. He knew of no body of men who were more deserving of, and more entitled to, the thanks of their country than that body of officers to which the noble Earl had referred; and he had no hesitation, although lie considered it to be most unnecessary, to bear his testimony, in his place in their Lordships' House, to the high character those officers had ever borne. He would not follow the noble Earl in his speech with reference to the origin, conduct, and issue of the British expedition. He did not think the discussion of the details of that subject either would advance the interests of the public service, or that it would be convenient for the operations of the army now making war in the East. He had never heard it doubted by anybody but the noble Earl that the junior officers in Her Majesty's service were qualified for the situations they held. He believed that the war would be prosecuted with as much 234 vigour as could be shown in the prosecution of any war, and no endeavours would be spared to carry it to the conclusion which Her Majesty's Government had always had in view—namely, to the establishment of a satisfactory and honourable peace. Upon the present occasion he could only say again, that the charge which had been brought against the officers of the army of the East, to the effect that they had not shared in the hardships of the soldiers under their command, was totally unfounded; and if he were called upon to produce evidence in support of that assertion, he was sure he could not do better than refer to the lists of officers who fell sick, and who had been received into hospital. He should endeavour to procure for the noble Earl the return he had asked for, and he had no doubt that it would show that the officers had taken their full share of the dangers and hardships of the Crimean campaign.
§ House adjourned till To-morrow.