Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/89

ENGLISH WAR ADMINISTRATION. 45 Director-General submitted to the Horse Guards, chap in writing, a well-considered plan for ensuring L_ the careful removal of the wounded and sick by- appropriating for the purpose beforehand due means of sea-transport ; when he showed the expediency of stationing in convenient ports ships prepared for the reception of patients; and when, finally, speaking out in good time, he urged the establishment of hospitals at weU- chosen spots, his appeals remained unanswered, and apparently provoked no attention.(^'^) When he asked that competent and able-bodied men should be taken from the army to act as hospital orderlies, he was overruled.(^-^) When, as a substitute for the English soldiers thus refused him, he proposed recourse to a people whom he judged to be apt for the work, he was met by an objection which, unless put forward in jest, was itself fair game for the jester.(^2) When, speaking with ample knowledge of the subject, he urged his well-founded conviction that men taken from the class of ' pensioners ' would prove grossly unfit for the tasks of hospital orderlies, he gave the warning in vain ; and from the pensioners — from the pensioners only — the hospital orderlies were chosen.(^^) The officer primarily answerable for the error of disregarding these appeals was the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards ; C^"^) but the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, and many more, though not chargeable in the same distinct sense as Lord Hardinge, might still have been called to account for not having pressed the adoption of