Board of Ordnance and the old Secretary-at- | paper, but, with great respect for those who War to what they were prior to 1855. But, advance it, we doubt exceedingly whether an in this case, both the Controller and the Fi- officer, qualified by nature and education to nancial Secretary must, in points of detail, command an army in the field, will ever conbe as independent of him as the old Board sent, as this condition manifestly requires that of Ordnance and the old Secretary-at-War he should, to make the success of his operawere of his predecessors. In like manner, the tions dependent on the skill and capacity of Commander-in-Chief must revert to what he any single subordinate whatever. At home was in the Duke of Wellington's day, per- and in the colonies, where deficiencies are forming his high functions, subject only to made good with little loss of time, and all the same general control, which the Secre-, our most important transport is carried on tary of State, representing the Cabinet, has, by rail, the proposed arrangement may prove since the Revolution, exercised over every convenient enough. Time and corresponofficer and department appointed by the dence are undoubtedly saved where the Crown, to command or to minister to the General at the head of a district, instead of wants of the army. It is true that a single making his requisitions, as he used to do, Controller-in-Chief, laden with so many re- through a circuitous channel, takes counsel sponsibilities having on his shoulders all with his Controller on the spot as to what is the weight both of the Ordnance and the and what is not wanted within his command. Commissariat, the manufacture of arms, But apply the principle arbitrarily to an army ammunition, and stores, the clothing and in the field, suffering no interference with supply of the army in all parts of the world the Controller-in-Chief, except by the Com-will, if he do his duty, be the hardest- mander of the Forces in person, nor with worked functionary in existence. And his sub-controllers, excepting through the Conattendance in the House of Commons, troller-in-Chief, and you will create that very which must follow as a matter of course, duality of government which it is the prowill not lighten the labour. Still this labour fessed object of recent changes to destroy. may be sustained, provided there be under A General, with an enemy before him, can him at least two heads of great departments work only through his Military Staff. The -a Storekeeper-General and a Commissary- officers of his Quartermaster-General's Staff in-Chief-perfectly independent the one of in particular are his eyes, his ears, his hands. the other. But is there not an obvious risk, Prohibit them from giving instructions rewhile the Controller is answering for these specting transport and supply, and the army two gentlemen in Parliament, that in the can move only upon lines determined by the War Office itself he may be thrown into the Controller-in-Chief. shade? For why are requisitions to go to Observe that we are very far from objecthim, only that his private secretary may sifting to arrangements which shall fix upon and dispense them to the branches for which some one officer, the head of a well-organised they are intended. And why should the Secretary of State and Commander-in-Chief be debarred from communicating directly with the Commissary-General or StorekeeperGeneral, as the case may be?

We know the sort of answer that will be rendered to these questions. We are preparing in peace a machinery adapted for war. We are setting up a model at home which must be faithfully copied abroad, whenever the country is called upon again to put an army in the field. No cominander of the forces need henceforth be burthened with the care of providing his own transport, or looking after his own supplies. There will be at his elbow a functionary to whom he shall be able at any moment to say, 'I propose to move twenty or thirty thousand men to-morrow or next day in such and such a direction, and I hold you responsible that food, forage, ammunition, tents, medicine, ambulances,every article required to make my movement effective, are forthcoming.' Very plausible such a statement appears to be on

*The views of the Duke of Wellington on this

head were very decided, as the following extract from one of his unpublished letters will show :—

Munro is much mistaken if he supposes that the Commander-in-Chief at Fort George can ever relieve himself, in war, from this responsible part of his duty by the appointment of a Commissary-General. A Commissary-General may often, upon the expectation of war and the preparation for military operations, be useful in pointing out to the Commander-in-Chief the supplies he would require, and where they were to be stored; but the Commander-in-Chief of an army in India, as well as in every other country, must be his own Commissary-General, if he means that his army is to be fed.

'I enclose to you the copy of a memorandum which I gave to Lord Wellesley when I was in India, at the moment when Lord Lake's army

was in such distress for provisions, pointing out the detail of the mode in which I had conducted this branch of the service. You will observe the

variety and extent of the details which it embraces, and how impossible it would be for any superintend them and to combine them, for the man, except the Commander-in-Chief himself, to public service.'-Letter to the Right Hon. Robert Dundas, London, 17th March, 1809.

at the seat of war to that system of Intendance Militaire, which, according to the highest authorities among those from whom we borrowed it, broke down with the French army. Still, freely admitting that the steps recently taken are taken with a view to ex

chaos into which it had fallen, we will go further, and express the belief that they have not been taken in vain. Their object is excellent: let us hope that by the removal of a few obvious defects in the means the good end which they seek may ultimately be attained.

department, all the responsibility of providing and keeping complete the stores and transport of the whole army. Under the great Duke that responsibility was divided among the Commissary-General, the Quartermaster-General, the Commandant of Artillery, and the Head of the Medical Depart-tricate our military administration out of the ment. These received from the Duke himself severally their instructions before an operation began, and perfectly understood that orders sent by him at any subsequent moment, by whomsoever carried, must be obeyed. It may be better, perhaps though that remains to be proved-that the whole transport of the army should be in the hands of one Controller. But the Controller must not, because he is alone, fall into the mistake of imagining that he has any voice whatever in planning or prosecuting the campaign. For example: in conference with the General overnight, he may have been instructed to send so many munitions of war by one road, so many commissariat stores by another, to move his reserves to such and such places, and so on. But while his people are faithfully executing the orders which he had transmitted to them, a change of circumstances occurs, and the General finds himself under the necessity of suddenly changing all his dispositions. The General is far away from the Controller when this necessity becomes evident to him. Are we to be told that, before stopping the advance of stores and changing the positions of the reserves, the General must seek out the Controller, and through him transmit the necessary orders to the sub-controllers, or whatever else the officers may be called, who act under the Controller-in-Chief? This would be fatal. What we object to, then, is thisnot that a Control Department shonld be created, and a Financial Secretary added to the War Office, but that either the Surveyor-General or the Financial Secretary should be free from personal responsibility to Parliament, and that controllers should be so placed towards the army, at home or abroad, as to interfere with its efficiency by invading the proper functions of the Military Staff. Correct these two evils, and we will accept and make the most of the only substitute which we are likely for the present to get, for what was in an evil hour taken away from us fifteen years ago. We may entertain some doubts whether the Surveyor-General will provide better or more economically for the public service than the old Board of Ordnance did. We may believe that there never was a more efficient guardian and dispenser of stores at out-stations than the Board of Respective Officers, and entertain considerabie misgiving as to the wisdom of trusting

There is yet one other point on which, before bringing this paper to a close, we feel ourselves bound to touch. A rumour is afloat while we write, of the intended abolition of the separate establishment of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief. The departments of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General are, it is whispered, to be amalgamated, and all the details of moving, quartering, and maintaining discipline in the army, to be managed by a chief of the Staff. And, finally, it is said, that His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge is to be shown into a room in Pall Mall, where he is to become directly, what he already is indirectly, the military adviser of the Secretary of State. On the propriety or impropriety of creating a Staff corps, for to that the amalgamation of the two military departments must surely lead, we abstain from offering any opinion of our own. We know what the late Duke of Wellington thought about that matter, and not knowing where to look for higher authority, we confess ourselves to be unconvinced of the expediency of the arrangement. But to bring the FieldMarshal Commanding -in-Chief under the same roof with the Minister of War, and to make him the head of a branch or department in the Secretary of State's office, appears to us to be the strangest proposal that ever was hazarded. For one or other of two consequences must inevitably follow. Either the General Commanding-in-Chief subsides into a cypher, which we consider to be in the highest degree improbable ;or he becomes, as our neighbours would say, master of the situation. The Secretary of State is, after all, but the creature of the House of Commons. As long as his party commands a majority there, he will retain his place. Let the House withdraw its confidence from the Government of which he is a member, and his place at the War Office knows him no more. On whom will then devolve the chief authority in the office. On the Surveyor-General ? No; because we cannot believe that Parliament

NOTE to No. 256, p. 226.-In the Article on 'Sir Charles Eastlake and the English School of Painting' in our last number, we stated that Sir Charles Eastlake's picture of Napoleon on board the Bellerophon' had disappeared. We have since been informed that this picture is in the possession of Lord Clinton at Heanton Satchville, Beaford, Devonshire, and that it is in good preservation.

ART. I.-1. The Overthrow of the German | ment of its neighbours. So it was with
Confederation by Prussia in 1866. By Christian William and the great Gustavus;
Sir Alexander Malet, Bart., K.C.B. Lon-
don, 1870.

2. The Times,' 'Standard,' and Daily News' Newspapers. July to October,

1870.

so with the great Elector, and after him with the great Frederick, the man who said if he were King of France he would not allow a cannon-shot to be fired in Europe without his leave; so it was with Frederick William the Third, the father of the present King, A GREAT poet has said that the history of whose dubious policy towards his Allies, the world is the judgment of the world; and and especially to the King of England, when in such a judgment the public opinion of he seized the Electorate of Hanover as his Europe has been taking part for the last own in 1805, left him alone to contend three months in the quarrel between Ger- against Napoleon in 1806, when after the many and France. Here in England some battle of Jena-a defeat almost as disastrous of us may be Germans at heart; some may as any suffered by the French in the present feel the wounds inflicted on France as though war-Berlin and the whole kingdom lay at they were our own; but we are all interested the mercy of the French Emperor, who ento ascertain the rights of the dispute which tered his enemy's capital within a month has laid Imperial France prostrate at the from the declaration of war. From October, feet of Germany, and we are all in some 1806, till 1813, the Prussians, in their momeasure bound to lay the guilt of this bloody ment of victory, will do well to remember, struggle on the nation which really provoked Prussia was completely at the mercy of the it. It would be idle, however, to look for conqueror. Then it was, in those days of the cause of the war to the provocation af difficulty and distress, that the present miliforded to France by the proposal of a Prince tary system of Prussia was founded by Stein of the House of Hohenzollern for the Spanish and Hardenberg. On the downfall of Na throne. That was only the last grain that poleon's system, after the retreat from Mosbroke the camel's back: the real reason cow, Prussia was full of materials for a large must be sought in far remoter times. Let army, which, under Blücher and Gneisenau, us begin, therefore, with the beginning, and most materially contributed to the success of see what Prussia has really been from the the Allies. But even in the hour of common first hour of her existence. We say 'Prus- triumph, the aggressive instincts of Prussia sia' advisedly, because throughout this con- were shown in the discussions which took test it is as important to bear in mind the place at the Congress of Vienna. The sedistinction between Prussia and Germany as cret history of that great diplomatic gatherit is that between the Emperor Napoleon ing, as shown in Klüber's 'Acten des and France. What, then, has Prussia al- Wiener Congresses,' proves that the dubious ways been, even in the time of the Thirty policy of Prussia-now siding with one facYears' War, but a self-seeking State, of du- tion in the Congress and now with another bious policy, which has often drawn down-had resulted in so many secret convenon itself the indignation and the chastise- tions and engagements among the contract