Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/143

 ^VlIl:X ABANDONED DY THE Ali.MY. 113 less hasten to accept tlium. It they were of such chap. a kind that they threatened to dislocate his plans, '. and turn to naught his past labours, he did not for that reason fail to jrive them, and give them at once, their just place in liis reckonings. Tliat which most tries the powers ot" a conimander is not the mere solution of any problem laid clearly before him. His harder task is to learn in good time that he has a problem to solve, and then to see what it is. For the questions which he ought to be deciding are very many; they are, some of them, strange and startling, and they spring up — often suddenly — from day to day, from hour to hour — nay, in battle, from minute to minute. It avails him but little to be able to see any truth unless he can marshal and place it in due relation with the existing conjuncture. He needs the swift judgment, and the firm, en- compassing grasp which enable a man to lay out of his sight the conditions no longer material, and to gather clean into one problem the terms which really belong to it. There are few who, in war, can thus steadfastly look upon the present, dis- carding those things in the past which have only just lost their import. And often the most in- dustrious man is the one least able to exert this power; for when change of circumstance conies, it finds him carrying on with a great momentum in a direction which has ceased to be the right one, and he can hardly at once change his course. It was not so with Colonel de Todleben ; for although he had been gifted, as we shall see, with VOL. IV. n