Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/42

38 defence, and in a fit state for rapid augmentation.'

The Memorandum states that this question must become more pressing the longer we remain at peace. 'As the feeling and recollection of the late war subsides, the more confirmed becomes the habit of looking at all our establishments as a sort of arrangement limited to the duties required of them in peace, without reference to a state of preparation for war.' It is further maintained in the same Memorandum that 'we ought to redouble our efforts to counteract the ill effects of over-reduction for all the various parts of which the military force of the empire is composed. The Ordnance establishments, from the scientific nature of their details, are those which are the slowest to bring to perfection. The clamour raised against many of these establishments is followed by the assertion that the manufacturing departments should be put down, and that the private mills and manufacturing agencies of Birmingham should supply our wants, without such establishments as Enfield, Waltham, &c.'

Sir H. Hardinge also observes that 'on the breaking out of the Revolutionary War the inefficiency of the army did not proceed so much from any inferiority of discipline, as from the total break-down of its establishments. The troops constantly distinguished themselves, but the artillery department was so unwieldy that the guns were an impediment instead of affording assistance to the troops. The army had no field-train, no waggon-train, and can hardly be said