Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/91

 in Europpan war. ENGLISH WAK ADMINISTRATION. 47 VI. We have said that the business of conducting chap. liostilities against Eussia was entrusted to de- "^' partments unpractised in recent campaigns ; but it must be added, that not even so much as a leaven of precious M'arlike experience was ac- cepted from the great India Company. Owing England's largely, of course, to distances, but yet more to a fo?eg^?ng°^ tenacity of customs no longer wholesome, and a indfanofn-^' never-remitted pressure of selfish interests, the mSsteators resources of a sovereignty which England had established in every quarter of the globe were kept so distinctly apart that scarce any one recognised the possibility of ever transposing them as occasion might require. In one book — a pink one — there was a list of officers belonging to the royal army which, so far as concerned the vital work of Intendance, was meagre almost to nothingness ; whilst another book — a crimson one — contained a list of officers belonging to what was then the service of the East India Company, — men, some of them, the most able campaigning administrators then known in the world who had been engaged in great warlike operations ; but — as though there were some law of heaven forbidding it — our authorities sincerely believed that of the gifted and experienced men in the crimson book not one, although present in England, and not needed for work in India, must be called to take part in a European war. Reminding one of the nations discovered by Gulliver, they imagined that, happen what might.