Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/101

 A llETKOSPECTIVE ENQUIRY. 57 Nature had given him: and, the machinery of CHAP. ... 1 IV our War administration remaining in the state [_ we have seen, he nowhere could hope to find that stafif of men versed in preparing for hostile enterprises, that treasured, that registered ex- perience, that co-ordinated knowledge, that care- fully sifted 'intelligence,' that perfected collec- tion of surveys and military plans, of ' army- ' states,' maps, and reports, which gathers in a sound War department. Thus almost of neces- sity the basis on which he rested his warlike measures was information snatched up for the nonce, and furnished to him often hy men act- ing either from interested motives, or under the warping effect of some eager hope or strong bias.(iO) From his own room in Downing Street, with an ample map spread out before him, and too often at his elbow some zealot enforcing the last new idea, he directed in this or that quarter the impacts of a far-reaching war.(-'--^) To protect him from visions and visionaries, he had no wary mentors like those whose minds have been dis- ciplined in a well-ordered War Department ; and accordingly, wlien not either forming his great coalitions, or breaking up some league against England,(^2) he was a man drawn hither and thither by numbers of sanguine advisers with their souls in all parts of the world, — some full of the opening there was in the patriotism of Holland invaded ; some, liowever, soon after resolved that, instead of defending the Dutch, it would be better, on the whole, to attack tlieiii —