DESPATCH-WRITING.
IF France is under arbitrary rule-if the Government keeps a firm hand over everything that is published within the country- we might expect to find a great reserve in the accounts furnished to the French of the transactions in the Crimea. If we Britons are happy under a free constitution, with the most unrestrained right of discussion' we might expect to find in the authenticated accounts furnished to ourselves by a responsible Government the utmost fulness and exactness. Yet the facts are the very reverse: it is the French commanders who give the full and explicit ac- counts, the French Government which feels itself under a respon- sibility towards an anxious public : our public, not less anxious, is left to get its information how it can. And it does continue tZ get sonic account, from writers whose professional business it is to report; but, with all their adroitness and energy., those writers cannot learn all, cannot know nor tell, as the military and poli- tical officers of Government can. We might rave expected, at least, that the English commanders would have given us the most complete and intelligible account of the English movements, the French of the French. But although the despatches of our own commander reached this country first, it was not until we had those admirable reports by the French commanders that we were able really to understand how and why affairs took the turn they did. The French Government and peo- ple were able to understand the course of events throughout, and at all points : we need not dwell on the contrast afforded by our own despatches. It seldom happens that men who perfectly understand what they intend to do, and what they are doing, are unable to tell their purpose, their proceeding, and the results. Thorough mastery overrules any defect of mere literary education. We could not have a better instance than is afforded by the history of general- ship itself. Setting aside Xenophon, our great examples of de- spatch-writing are Ctesar, Frederick, Wellington ; and even the monarch Napoleon, with all his reserves, wrote what he intended. Why is it that the responsible English Ministers have men in the place of generals who cannot, or do not, write despatches ?
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