, or less than
one-sixth of what it had been[50].
The American army, in the war with Great Britain fifty years ago,
suffered from the want of proper provision for their necessities and
comfort, from exposures and hardships, so that sometimes half its force
was unavailable; yet, at the present moment, a monstrous army is
collected and sent to the field, under the same regulations, and with
the same idea of man's indefinite power of endurance, and the
responsibility and superintendence of their health is left, in large
measure, to an accidental and outside body of men, the Sanitary
Commission, which, although an institution of great heart and energy,
and supported by the sympathies and cooperation of the whole people, is
yet doing a work that ought to be done by the Government, and carrying
out a plan of operations that should be inseparably associated with the
original creation of the army and the whole management of the war.
CRIMEAN WAR.
The lesson which the experience of the Russian army of 1828 and 1829
taught the world of the mortal dangers of Bulgaria was lost on the
British Government, which sent its own troops there in 1854, to be
exposed to, and wither before, the same destructive influences. But at
length sickness prevailed to such an extent, and death made such havoc,
in the army in the East, that England's great sympathies were roused,
and the Ministers' attention was drawn to the irresistible fact, that
the strongest of Britain's soldiers were passing rapidly from the camp
to the hospital, and from the hospital to the grave.
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