Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/506

462 APPENDIX. ' you have made in them, and the results likely to attend them ; ' your notices of the condition of your army are brief and unsatis- ' factory, and convey little more than is to be gathered from the ' gloomy character of the " morning states ; " ' and secondly, .having before me the two folio volumes comprising Lord Raglan's despatches and private letters to the Duke of Newcastle, I per- ceive them to be abounding — richly, largely abounding — in that very information which Lord Panmure says he ' cannot iind. ' It follows that, as stated above. Lord Panmure did not carefully read, did not master the papers in question. I think that, pro- bably, the explanation of this extraordinary neglect is as follows : For enlightenment upon some special subjects recently brought under discussion in the Cabinet, selected portions of Lord Rag- lan's correspondence had been confidentially printed ; and Lord Panmure perhaps looked at those printed portions only under an impression that they comprised all the material part of the correspondence, and that the rest of the despatches and letters were not worth reading. But whatever the cause, we know with actual certainty that he had at his command a most admirable, clear, and complete repertory of information, and unhappily omitted to master it. Note 72. — He, with some naivet4, avows this (see post) in his despatch of the 19th March. Note 73. — Lord Panmure himself says that the Department was momentarily expecting the despatch evoked by the Duke of Newcastle's demand of the 6th of January. Note 74. — Private letter to Lord Raglan, 12th February 1855. Note 75. — Lest it be said that, because not published, the despatch could scarcely have served for any hoodwinking pur- pose, I must remind the reader that there was nothing to prevent the tenor of it from being confidentially imparted to an editor ; and besides, whenever convenient, the Government could publish the despatch. Note 76. — After speaking of conditions affecting the health of our army in the spring and the summer of the previous year Lord Raglan showed how the sickness afflicting it began at Galli- poll, continued at Scutari, became suddenly virulent in Bulgaria, pursued our troops over the sea, and went on committing its ravages throughout the field operations which preceded the siege of Sebastopol ; and then wrote : — ' From the end of September, when the siege operations coin- ' menced, to the present time, the troops have been fully and