Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/199

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 177 sent purpose — for the purpose, namely, of illus- ohap trating the mischief of entrusting high command ' to a veteran of the peace-service unversed in war — the sworn statement of Lord Cardigan is suf- ficiently instructive. After speaking of Captain Morris's alleged interposition, he goes on to say that ' Captain Morris never gave any advice, or ' made any proposal of the sort ; ' that ' it was not ' his duty to do so ; ' and that he ' did not commit ' such an irregularity.' When the Oxford undergraduate stopped short of presuming to snatch his fellow-student from a watery grave, on the theory that it was indeco- rous for one lad to rescue another without hav- ing first been presented to him, the objection was perhaps overstrained, but, at all events, it pro- ceeded from the formalist who stood on the bank, and not from the one in the river. Here, more wonderfully — for Morris was willing, nay offered, to rescue Lord Cardigan from his error — it was the drowning man who, on grounds of a stiff etiquette, protested against being saved. If Lord Cardigan's idea of an * irregularity ' was upheld by the sanction of the Horse Guards, it must be acknowledged that our Home dispensers of military power had performed their task with a rare completeness. They found a man who was of an age, and endowed with natural qualities, highly favourable to effective command, who had had rich experience in the business of war, who in the second affidavit of the Honourable Godfrey Charles Mor- gan filed iu the suit of Cardigan v. Calthorpe. VOL. V. M