Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/88

44 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, loyal compliance; and accordingly it may be said ^^^' that the anomalous state of our military offices at the outbreak of the war did not really involve, after all, any actual clash of power. Still, though treated as authoritative, these appeals were almost of necessity less cogent, less swiftly compelling than the peremptory ' word ' of command ; ' and the evil of the system was specially conspicuous in the cases where a depart- ment subordinated to others, yet called upon to initiate measures, had to work, as it were, uphill, by appealing to one of its rulers. Thus, if the Director-General of the Army Medical Depart- ment wished to furnish to our liospitals in the East some kinds of supplies, as, for instance, wine, sago, arrowroot, he had to send his pur- pose revolving in an orrery of official bodies : for, first, he well knew, he must move the Horse Guards, and the Horse Guards must move the Ordnance, and the Ordnance must set going the Admiralty, and the Admiralty must give orders to its Victualling Office, and its Victualling Office must concert measures with the Transport Office, and the Transport Office (having only three transports) must appeal to our private shipowners, in the hope that sooner or later they would furnish the sea-carriage needed ; so that then the original requisition becoming at last disentangled, might emerge after all from the labyrinth, and — resulting in an actual, visible shipment of wine, sago, arrowroot — begin to receive fulfilment. When, so early as the 11th of May 1854, the