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 6 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, nient of operations in the field, it is difficult foi ' any man who is not of an almost violent nature to prepare troops long used to peace service for the exigencies of actual war by tearing them out of the grooves in which they have long been moving. Of course, the grave task of choosing our cavalry generals was converted, as it were, into guess- work by the determination to take them exclu- sively from the list of those officers who had never served their country in the field ; but apart from that grave objection, and the objection founded on age, Lord Lucan was an officer from whom much might be reasonably hoped, if the soundness of his judgment could be inferred from the general force of his intellect, and if also it could be taken for granted that he would prove willing and able, after having long had his own way, to accept the yoke of military subordina- tion in the field, and to bear it with loyalty and temper. Lord Lucan had one quality which is of great worth to a commander, though likely to be more serviceable to a commander-in-chief than to one filling a subordinate post. He had decision, and decision apparently so complete that his mind never hankered after the rejected alternative His convictions once formed were so strong, and his impressions of facts or supposed facts so in- tensely vivid, that he was capable of being posi- tive to a degree rarely equalled. When he deter- mined that he was right and others wrong, he did not fail also to determine that the right and the