Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/456

 412 APPENDIX. was undertaken with a strength of altogether 100,000 armed men (of whom more than 39,000 were land -service troops); and, so far as concerned the sheer lighting, it was altogether successful, for our people brought every conflict in which they engaged to a victorious issue. Yet the Expedition resulted in failure — in failure so signal and complete that at first, actual ridicule mingled with the feeling of savage disappointment which justly angered our people, and their bitter laugh only yielded to the bitter grief they endured when the enterprise was known to be ending in a piteous calamity — in the loss of great numbers of our splendid soldiery, destroyed or shattered in health by the ravages of the Walcheren fever. The three more immediate causes which thus brought grave misfortune to England were : — 1. Her want of apt knowledge ; 2. Her choice of an inefficient commander ; 3. Her want of the power to keep a momentous war secret. "With respect to the first of the causes, her want of the know- ledge required was a default that would not have been possible if our country had had the advantage of a well-ordered War Depart- ment. This is easily shora. The main objects of the enterprise were the capture or destruction of the enemy's fleet in the Scheldt, and besides, of that port and arsenal which — agreeing for once with Napoleon — England used to regard in those days as a 'pistol levelled straight at her breast.' Confronted by this standing menace, our country of course, if provided with a well- ordered War Department, would there have had carefully stored full and detailed accounts of the state of the Antwerp defences- accounts always kept so complete as to be never a month in arrear of any change going on; and the obviously momentous task of keeping such a department well supplied v/itli the information required would not have been a hard one to execute ; since, as all the world knows, information about the state of any town, port, or fortress in Europe is distinctly a purchascaljle commodity, if the arrangements made for acquiring it are deliberately set on foot in good time, and industriously kept up to the last. But the diffi- culty of obtaining information of this kind ' for tlie nonce ' is immense in proportion to that of acquiring it beforehand by steady continuous efforts ; and, incredible as it may seem in these days, our people — having no such department as was needed for obtaining and storing the kind of knowledge required — were, not days, not weeks, not months, but even several years in arrear of the knowledge that by the most peremptory dictates of prudence they were bound to have had in good time. Because they knew Antwerp to have been weak in old times, and had failed to acquii-e due knowledge of the subsequent changes, they appa