Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/252

 208 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, facts, if any, lie ought to supply the enemy by ^^- the London and St Petersburg route? Of all the thousand causes of wrong and irresolute counsels that hamper the action of a commander, there are hardly any more formidable than the interposed dimness which prevents his knowing with certainty the condition and plans of his adversaries; so that plainly to send him full tidings from the opposite camp, and to send them under a voucher which affords strong pre- sumption of their truth, is to give him an advan- tage of almost priceless worth. In transactions connected with that part of my sul)ject which I have called ' the demeanour ' jir Russell, of our pcople, Mr Eussell, the 'Times' corre- spondent, was destined to take a great part. He was not at all one of those who, by temper or temperament, are predisposed to be censors ; and his subsequent career as a journalist received in the Indian camp of Sir Colin Campbell, in the camp of General Benedek during the Sadowa campaign, and finally, in the war of 1870 at the quarters of the CTerman invaders, showed him plainly to be a loyal conformist who, under fit- ting arrangements, could effectively serve his employers without betraying the interests of belligerents who might make him their guest. But in the Crimea, as already we have seen, he wrote under no restraint except such as might be imposed upon him in the midst of the most pressing haste by his own sagacity and good feeling. He perhaps thought it likely that the accounts he was sending to England (including