MILITARY POLICY.

MANY things that are passing under our eyes recall attention to the policy that sports with the management of the British Army. There is a great demand for recruits, and a short supply ; thus severely testing the voluntary system of enlistment. India will in future absorb a larger European force than England ever before maintained on foot in any country ; and he would be a wise man who could say where they are to come from. The Minister has appointed to a most important post in India an officer of cavalry whose qualifications are only respectable, when he should and ought to have selected an officer about whose fitness there was no question. The Prietorian exhibition in France has roused the English national feeling ; and although we do not, with a corre- spondent, anticipate an arrival of the Grande Armee in Kent or Sussex as soon as the equinoctial gales have passed and removed one of our safeguards—sea-sickness—yet it must be admitted that the gasconading of Colonel de Chastagny and his fellows makes the absence, not so much of fortifications of stone and earth as of walls of wood on the sea, of men on the land, painfully evident to astonished Britons.

In all this, we may be told, there is nothing new. Granted. But that is one of the worst symptoms. It is, unfortunately, not new for England to want an adequate and well-proportioned mili- tary- force. The Duke of Wellington said, years ago, that we had hardly men enough to furnish sentries for ordinary duty. A spirit of uncertainty reigns over our military calculations. When the storms of danger threaten, we collect men and arm them ; war makes them into an army ; when peace comes we disband it. In the hot fit of military ardour, we launch out into extravagance; in the cold fit of reaction, we grow impatient of taxes and rush into the shallows of parsimony. We obey the famous maxim of cutting our coat according to our cloth, and when the coat is out and made it proves to be a misfit, and we have to weather a sud- den tempest in rags. You seek in vain for any intelligible prin- ciple of management in the military annals of the country. Hear a living authority on the subject.

"The fluctuating force of our Army, never responsibly computed or set- tled by the wants of the nation, must, on a moment's thought to any mili- tary mind, show the Army to be devoid of any pretensions to system. No Commander-in-chief of the English Army can, on the chance of political changes of Government, calculate for any reasonable duration of time, the numbers of the Army he has to deal with. At the commencement of a war, we have invariably had to create an army. At the end of a war, with reck- less haste, whatever may be its acquired perfect state, it is broken up; and all the benefits of organization and experience are cast to the winds till we are two years' deep in another war The armies of England are never sent forth but under most palpable disadvantages, from legislative control during periods of peace ; and but for the indomitable courage of our officers and men,. would be invariably exposed to failure in the service for which they are intended."*

- Nor is this mere assertion, wanting in proof. The military annals of England testify to its accuracy in almost every page ; and the respected veteran from whom we have just quoted cites an array of instances that fell within his own personal experience in the service. An expedition directed against Minorca in 1798 landed without carriage for its ammunition, without commissa- riat stores, without draught-animals for its field-artillery and siege-train. The army sent to Hanover in 1805 found itself stuck fast at the mouth of the Elbe for iyant of horses to draw the ar- tillery and ammunition ; and the horses required had to be sought in a country previously drained of its Cattle by the French. The gallant troops who gamed the battle of Maids in 1806 could do nothing but fight where they stood, because their equipment and appointments were inadequate for field movements. On paper, Sir John Moore' in the expedition which terminated at Corunna, commanded 28,000 men ; but from delay, and inadequate trans- port by land and sea, "the army under that honoured and la- mented chief never actually realized more than 18,000 men." In the subsequent campaigns in the Peninsula, Wellington's de- * " Question of Legislative Military Responsibility : a Consideration respectfully addressed to the Honourable the Members of the House of Commons. By General Sir Habert Gardiner, ROB., Royal Artillery."

" Moments on the Question of Legislative Military Responsibility." Addressed as above, by General Sir Robert Gardiner, K.C.B., &e. Both Pamphlets published by Byfleld, Hawksworth, and Co.

'Rands for provisions, horses, stores, field and siege artillery, were urgent and continuous. At Waterloo, there were only 23,000 British troops, and a lamentable deficiency of artillery. The Crimean war showed the present generation how we fare in a sudden emergency, and how we have to provide men, (not

soldiers,) armaments, and equipments, under, the very fire of the enemy's guns. Nor is the latest instance, that of India,- the weakest in the series.

Such are and have been the defects of our military, experiments. We have succeeded in accomplishing many of our objects, but at

what a cost of gold and of blood ! The same kind of defects ap-

pear and reappear continually. Well may it be asked, do the people of this country think that extended empire can be securely main-

tained on such a hand-to-mouth system. "If England cannot

really pay for the recruiting and maintenance of an artny ade- quate to the defence of her commercial dependencies, the depen-

dencies should be diminished or cast off." Bacon says, that when Persia and Rome "flourished in arms, the largeness of territory was a strength to them, and added forces, added treasures, added

reputation: but when they decayed in arms, then greatness be- came a burden." Is that to be our case now? Is our greatness to become our burden, because we will not provide a real " Army " to uphold it ? And when we speak of an army, what do we mean ?

"An army," as defined by Sir Robert Gardiner, is a body of troops com- puted on fixed principles, of known necessary proportions, of various arms, having relative purposes, working under a staff instructed for distinct duties, with extensive, various, accessory departments, and practically so habituated to the combined discharge of their distinct duties as to be available at all moments, and under all circumstances, for immediate service."

We have no military body answering this definition. It is not in numbers alone that military power resides. "We' might double the number of our troops and England might still be with- out an army."

Sir Robert Gardiner thinks he sees the key to our deficiencies in the constitutional control of the House of Commons. But that is a view which to many appears to be unsound. How, it is asked, can the House of Commons exercise so large an influence for evil on the Army, when the Minister, and the Minister alone, is answerable for its efficiency? The fact is easy of explanation. It is true that the Minister is responsible, and that responsibility we trust will ever be maintained ; but whatever may be the views of the Minister, he cannot carry out his views if the House of Commons refuse him the means. Thus it may happen, and in- deed does happen, that, under a dread lest the Commons should reject his plan because it is too expensive, the Minister frames his estimates rather with a view to suit the House than with a view td complete efficiency. The Minister ought to act upon the dic- tates of military science and military needs : the House 'of Com- mons knows nothing of military necessities ; it possesses no knowledge of military science. But, fully aware of this, the Minister should guide the House of Commons by force of state- ment and argument; or he should cease to hold his post when he is not permitted to fulfil one of its highest duties because the means are denied him.

We have a huge empire • we daily stand on the verge of great perils; possibility of war is ever present. If we would maintain that empire, successfully front those perils, and diminish in num- ber the possibilities of war, we must-neither forget to sustain in high efficiency the machine which embodies our military power, nor neglect to cultivate the military art, without which the ma- chine would be of little avail. This is the moral enforced by the pamphlets of Sir Robert Gardiner ; pamphlets full of earnestness and the fruits of long experience.