command or promotion, is most injurious to efficiency; while, during
war, to allow them, no matter how high their political capacity, to
dictate to commanders in the field any line of conduct, after the
army has once received its commission, is simply to ensure disaster.

The first of these lessons is brought home to us by the opening
events of this unreasonably protracted war. As I have elsewhere said,
most military students will admit that had the United States been
able, early in 1861, to put into the field, in addition to their
volunteers, one Army Corps of regular troops, the war would have
ended in a few months. An enormous expenditure of life and money, as
well as a serious dislocation and loss of trade, would have been thus
avoided. Never have the evil consequences which follow upon the
absence of an adequate and well-organised army been more forcibly
exemplified.

But, alas! when this lesson is preached in a country governed
alternately by rival political parties, and when there is no
immediate prospect of national danger, it falls on deaf ears. The
demands made by the soldiers to put the army on a thoroughly
efficient footing are persistently ignored, for the necessary means
are almost invariably required for some other object, more popular at
the moment and in a parliamentary--or party--sense more useful. The
most scathing comment on such a system of administration is furnished
in the story told by Colonel Henderson. The fearful trials to which
the United States were subjected expose the folly and self-deception
of which even well-meaning party leaders are too often capable.
Ministers bluster about fighting and yet refuse to spend enough money
on the army to make it fit for use; and on both sides of the Atlantic
the lessons taught by the Peninsula, the Crimea, and the Secession