Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/275

 THE DEMEANOUll OF ENGLAND. 231 the previous abolition of the Horse Guards would chap. IX be to defer them — to defer tliem beyond any ' known time. So the critics applied their whole power to and coneen- a scrutiny of those lesser mischiefs which had lesser mat- ters. aggravated, though they had not produced, the hard trial undergone by our troops. Their atti- tude towards the calamity may be likened to that of the fabled officer on the evening of the 14th of November who ignored the assaults of. the hurricane, and rated his shivering servants for the wet, the mud, the snow, the utter want of good cookery that he found on the wretched spot where — until torn away by the blast — his com- fortable tent had been standing. The common soldier had a better understand- The soldier's ing of the cause of his sufferings, and it is not the cause of . 1 1 1 T ^'S suffer- paradoxical to say that he knew better because inss. he thought less ; for a scrutiny so minute as to make a man study a subject under a wrongly- chosen angle of vision is a poorer guide for man's judgment than even the most rapid glance which sees things in their right proportions. The soldier's manful theory was that his hard- ships in the main resulted from stress of war, and that belief was the very truth ; for, although our army had gone into duress of its own accord, with a set will to carry Sebastopol, that same duress, when once in full force, was as much ' stress of war ' as if it had been caused )j defeat. m 1 • 1 • 1 • • Fa.rt taken To this plan of withdrawing attention trom bythecon- ^ °, ., . ductorsof the paramount or master force, and ascribing the 'Timwi,'