Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/343

 THE DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 299 should be sorry to be compelled to put such CHAP. 'a slight upon you. But your Staff must be ' changed, as the least that will satisfy the pub- ' lie, and that radically.' ' You have done us great service, nobody could 'have done better in keeping up friendly rela- ' tions with our Anies.'(^*) Eead as proffering an excuse for the coarsely vituperative language which the writer had been asing in his despatch, this ' aside ' would appar- ently mean: 'You see I have gone down into ' the crowd, and like the rest of them I am ' lustily hooting you ; but I assure you I only ' do this in order to gain the confidence of the ' clamourists by making them believe that I share ' their savage anger against you. My true object ' is to baffle them in their wish to interfere with ' the army, and besides, if I can, to prevent them ' from doing you harm ; but, to aid me in this ' little plot you must really throw over your ' Staff.'(^^) From the proffer of a clandestine alliance thus made to him by his reckless accuser Lord Raglan turned away in proud silence ; ^ and the document to which he addressed himself was the official despatch of the Secretary of State, the authentic paper conveying — however offensively — the mind and the will of his Queen's Government. He met the burst of ill words, thus a second the private letter.
 * He does not notice the intimation at all in his answer to