| <Saturday Review 31 January 1863: Hayward>
| <Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea (Third Notice)>
| Mr. Kinglake candidly allows that the destruction of the 
| Turkish fleet at Sinope was not an act of treachery on the 
| part of Russia, as the people of this country commonly 
| believed, but an act of fair and open war. Nevertheless, 
| that event roused the spirit of the English people to such a 
| pitch as to be beyond the control of any but a very strong 
| Government, and at once transferred the struggle ~~ 
| without, perhaps, any diplomatic reason of a very 
| assignable kind ~~ from the sphere of negotiation to that of 
| force. Still, the war might have been kept within moderate 
| proportions, had it been waged on the defensive principle, 
| to clear the Czar’s army out of the Principalities, and to 
| secure the territories of the Sultan. Its character was 
| entirely changed when we undertook the invasion of the 
| Crimea. The struggle then became one of the most 
| tremendous magnitude, while the separation of the two 
| Western Powers from their confederates became 
| complete; for of course Austria and Prussia, although 
| ready to put forth their force, in concert with France and 
| England, for the delivery of the Principalities, were not 
| ready to enter into an aggressive war, much less to take 
| part in a great maritime expedition.
| The invasion of the Crimea, to the threshold of which we 
| are now brought, is, morally speaking, one of the most 
| marvellous events in history. If it has any parallel, it is the 
| expedition which the Athenians, intoxicated with 
| adventurous daring, undertook, in defiance of the councils 
| of their best military advisers, against Syracuse; and, if the 
| issue of the English was not so calamitous as that of the 
| Athenian enterprise, the difference seems really to have 
| been due more to fortunate accident than to anything 
| which could be the ground of calculation. The expedition 
| was undertaken against the judgment of Lord Raglan, and 
| so far as appears, of all the military and even of the best 
| naval authorities. For although Lyons, in his hatred of 
| Russia, and his ardent desire of action, threw himself 
| heartily into it, to undertake a great military enterprise at his 
| suggestion would have been about as wise as to undertake 
| a great naval enterprise at the suggestion of Lord Anglesey 
| or Murat. Not only so, but the Government and the 
| Generals were without any satisfactory information as to 
| the amount of resistance and danger to be encountered in 
| the country which it was proposed to invade. Mr. Kinglake 
| thinks that the blame of the failure to obtain trustworthy 
| knowledge on this vitally momentous point attaches more 
| to the Ambassadors, who had been in the Levant for many 
| months while the sources of inquiry were open, than to the 
| military and naval commanders who had been on the spot 
| only since the sources of inquiry were closed by war. 
| Whoever was to blame, however, the fact was that from 
| the country to be invaded itself no glimmer of information 
| had come. The inquiries of our Foreign Office alone 
| afforded a precarious light, the indications of which, 
| however, happily proved tolerably correct. Marshal St. 
| Arnaud had heard a rumour, which he appears to have 
| believed, that the force of the enemy in the Crimea was 
| 70,000. Admiral Dundas had received a statement that it 
| amounted to 120,000. The upshot was, that Lord Raglan, 
| when he sailed on the expedition, <q> </q>. A more 
| haphazard adventure, a more complete escapade, cannot 
| be named in the whole history of war.
| What power, then, sent Lord Raglan against his own 
| judgment and all in the dark to the Crimea? Nominally, a 
| stringent despatch from his Government; really, the excited 
| spirit of a nation burning for an adventure, and from long 
| desuetude ignorant of war, Bt between these two forces 
| there intervened another, wielding the passion of the 
| people, and at this moment overpowering the Government. 
| The invasion of the Crimea is the most memorable 
| instance of the power of the <hi> Times. </hi> With a true 
| insight into history, penetrating through the conventional 
| account of matters, Mr. Kinglake has grasped this fact and 
| brought it our into strong relief. His description of the 
| influence which in effect took the conduct of the war out of 
| the hands of the Government will be often cited by those 
| who may write the history of our age. It has made the <hi> 
| Times </hi> wince in a way which shows that it is not only 
| pungent but true. After explaining that in old times the 
| general public of England used to take the trouble of 
| thinking for themselves, and showing how they were partly 
| relieved of this trouble by the intervention of public writers, 
| he proceeds to observe that people were still placed under 
| the difficulty of having to choose between the counsels of 
| rival journalists; so that room was still left for a further 
| improvement, which an enterprising <p> “Company” </p> 
| undertook on behalf of the nation: ~~ <q> </q>
| It is then shown how the journal flourished by the 
| extraordinary enterprise of the Company in the gathering of 
| intelligence, so that it became the greatest in the world; 
| and how, having attained that eminence, it gained still 
| greater strength by opening itself as the common resort 
| and asylum of all the theories, grievances, and passions of 
| the world. But a further improvement was to come: ~~ <q> 
| </q>
| The method in which the managers made use of the 
| knowledge they had gathered by this process is described 
| in the following passage, from which the English public 
| may see how it has been led, and decide whether it will 
| follow the same leading for the future, or return to the 
| habits of a less advanced civilization, and take upon itself 
| again the burden of liberty of thought: ~~ <q> </q>
| At the period in question some people might think that the 
| great newspaper governed all England, and others that 
| England governed the newspaper. Philosophic politicians 
| might trace events to public opinion, practical men might 
| ascribe them to the <hi> Times. </hi> What was certain 
| was that the power of the journal, whether collective or that 
| of an individual writer, was absolute over all worldly men. 
| To such men its words were to use Mr. Kinglake’s 
| expression <p> “the handwriting on the wall.” </p>
| Of the manner in which this power has been wielded, Mr. 
| Kinglake gives a description which is certainly calm and 
| judicial and which will, we think, be acknowledged to be 
| true: ~~ <q> </q>
| One morning the great newspaper declared that 
| Sebastopol must fall, and that the objects of the war could 
| be accomplished by no other means. In those words the 
| Government read their fate. Some of them, Lord Aberdeen 
| especially, must have had qualms, but they knew the voice 
| of doom. Therefore there went out, rather from the <hi> 
| Times </hi> and the nation, than from the Government, a 
| despatch to Lord Raglan, which he construed as leaving no 
| choice open to a man of honour. Some members of the 
| Ministry had, from the beginning, thoroughly and 
| conscientiously entered into the popular desire for the 
| attack upon Sebastopol, and the despatch expressed their 
| sentiments in the most decided manner. The same 
| members of the Cabinet, it is just to say, had most 
| vigorously pressed such an increase of the army as would 
| supply proper means for the expedition. Lord Raglan, 
| perplexed between his military convictions and what he 
| regarded as the dictates of his honour, took Sir George 
| Brown into his councils. Sir George Brown said, with great 
| frankness, that without more certain information the 
| expedition ought not to be undertaken; but that, 
| nevertheless, he advised Lord Raglan to undertake it, 
| because it was clear that the mind of the Government was 
| made up, and that if he declined the responsibility, they 
| would send <reg orig=“some one”> someone </reg> else 
| out to command the army, who would be less scrupulous 
| and more ready to come into their plans. This suggestion, 
| says Mr. Kinglake, did not at all govern Lord Raglan’s 
| decision. That which governed his decision was his 
| reverence for the authority of the Duke of Wellington, one 
| of whose theories was, that an officer commanding an 
| army on foreign service owed obedience to the Home 
| Government akin to that which a military subordinate owes 
| to his military chief. But Mr. Kinglake very justly observes 
| that, to construe the precepts of the great Duke rightly, we 
| must apply to them the splendid context of his deeds. 
| Whatever his theory might be, he never allowed his 
| judgment on military matters to be superseded, or his 
| designs to be thwarted, by the military opinions of the 
| Home Government.
| But how came it that a despatch so stringent passed a 
| Cabinet containing such a variety of temperaments and 
| views without the insertion of any qualifying words such as 
| would have enable Lord Raglan to act in some degree 
| upon his own discretion? The answer to this question, as 
| laid before us by Mr. Kinglake, is one of the strangest parts 
| of this strange history: ~~ <q> </q>
| We are prepared to believe a great deal as to the laxity of 
| Boards in passing papers for which they are only 
| collectively, not individually, responsible. We are also 
| prepared to believe a good deal as to the languid 
| indifference with which Ministers, who have exhausted 
| their powers of attention on Parliamentary contests and the 
| business of their special departments, may acquiesce in 
| despatches written by a colleague. But our powers of belief, 
| we confess, are strained by the present narrative. If, 
| however, the facts are as here related, the natural as well 
| as charitable, and probably the true, inference is that the 
| Government must have completely settled the substance 
| of the despatch, so that its form was a matter of small 
| importance. This of course would imply that they were 
| more unanimous in desiring the invasion of the Crimea 
| than we should have supposed, and than Mr. Kinglake 
| believes, and would forbid us to lay a special share of the 
| responsibility on any particular members of the Cabinet. At 
| the same time, it is to be remembered that the Minister 
| who, if this account be true, was left alone to frame the 
| despatch, was also left alone to bear, and did bear with 
| extraordinary fortitude ~~ and, considering his difficulties 
| with wonderful success ~~ the crushing task of 
| administering the war.
| This despatch, however, embodying, beyond doubt, the 
| national feeling, sent the British army to the scene of its 
| glory and its suffering in the Crimea. The French 
| Government on its part was not forward to undertake the 
| expedition, although it had instructed its General to concur 
| in case the English should seem bent on undertaking it. 
| The lesson which this history ought to teach, and almost to 
| brand into the mind of the English people, is, that when the 
| nation and the Government have resolved on war, they 
| ought to leave its conduct entirely to military men. It is right, 
| of course, that a Government should communicate to its 
| Generals the political objects of the war, because those 
| objects may sometimes determine the direction, and still 
| more frequently limit the scope of military operations, but 
| the mode of accomplishing those objects should be left in 
| professional hands. In this case, the Government itself 
| directed a military operation of the most hazardous kind. 
| The Government again was impelled by the <hi> Times, 
| </hi> and the <hi> times </hi> was the organ and exponent 
| of popular feeling, ignorant of military matters, incapable of 
| distinguishing between the end to be obtained in a war and 
| the means which military science would take of obtaining it, 
| and eager for random escapade. On popular feeling and its 
| organs, ultimately, the responsibility rests. The 
| Government did what a popular Government must do ~~ it 
| gave effect to the will of the nation. It might truly be said, 
| <hi> <f> delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi; </f> </hi> but the 
| <hi> reges </hi> were the <hi> Times </hi> and the people. 
| <(To be continued.)>