Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/57

 ENGLISH WAR ADMINISTRATION. 13 There were, however, many other Depart- chap. ments — some great and some small — which ; — had more claim to pass for 'belligerent' than the innocent, account-keeping ' War Office.' In the ancient Tower of London, amongst the clubs in Pall Mall, in the Strand, in Wliitehall, and besides in the neighbouring purlieus, there were nests of public servants transacting their respec- tive bits of England's military business: some, for instance, in strength at the Horse Guards, some holding the Ordnance Department, some ensconced at the Admiralty, yet engaged in land- service duties, some busied under the roof of the Treasury, others burrowing in several small streets, yet somehow providing for our army, pay, pensions, adjudgment of claims ; the means of transport by sea ; stores, clothing, equipments, recruits ; surgeons, surgical implements, med- icines ; courts - martial, chaplains. Church ser- vices ; but there was not, until war approached, any high, overruling authority that bound up the aggregate number of all these scattered offices into anything like a real unit of admin- istrative power. Far from always appealing for guidance to some paramount chief, they rather co-operated with one another, and this, too, in a highly English spirit of independence, each maintaining with firmness the integrity of its little dominions, and expressing in able de- spatches to coequals over the way, or perhaps at the end of the street, all those delicately shaded varieties of request, pressure, warning, remonstrance which diplomatists well know how