Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/367

 TIIK DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 323 itself with the state of the road by which our en a P. troops on the Chersonese were forced to draw ^^' their supplies ; and accordingly, upon that last subject they undertook to report. They re- ported that, from want of hands, it had been impossible to make such a road.(^^) Whilst reporting upon subjects connected with Commissariat arrangements, the Commissioners were performing a task distinctly within their competence ; but whether from mere inadvert- ence, or from the difficulty of disentangling connected subjects, or from construing their written instructions with a good deal of freedom, they trespassed beyond what appar- ently must have been their set bounds, and put into their final (^'') report some little stray ' animadversions ' which applied to three general officers — Lord Lucan, Lord Cardigan, and Sir Richard Airey — and to one with the rank oi Colonel — that is, Colonel Alexander Gordon.(^^) Their report was laid before Parliament. A whole year had by this time elapsed since the painful, calamitous weeks of our earlier winter campaign. And of late, too, the war had so languished that the subject of ' the ' Crimea,' with all its glories and sorrows, might have soon been relaxing its hold upon the hearts and minds of our people, but an ' animadversion ' directed against General Airey by two State Commissioners gave the men of the ' Times ' an enticingly sweet opportunity of ., , p. . ., Their ' an revivmg against two oi its survivors their attacks ; iinacUer- on the Headquarter Staff; and this the more, by the