maintain a school for European officers, whence, after having thoroughly learnt their duty, good men may be drafted to the command of other corps. But, in those regiments which are to be officered by Europeans, I would increase the number of officers, keep them with their regiments, and make them really effective officers of companies. I calculate the present personal cost of the native infantry, including officers' pensions paid at home, to be nearly as follows: I would admit men of all classes, and would introduce a strict system of discipline; men of the very lowest class of all might, if necessary, serve in separate regiments. I would make it a particular object to get new classes into the army, and especially the different military and pugnacious classes. I would enlist as many Sikhs and Goorkhas as possible. They fraternize with our European troops, respect and appreciate us, and are ready to drink grog and fight, eat whatever they can get, and cook however they can, with a most laudable absence of prejudice. Nothing can be a greater contrast to the immense paraphernalia of a sepoy regiment, and its innumerable cooking-pots, than Sikhs marching light and messing Necessity of infusing new blood into the army. together like Europeans. I have alluded to the unu sually complete and entire deprivation of all political privileges which has overtaken the Sikhs. This can only be politically justified if we at the same time entirely draw all their political teeth by employing their men-and I am sure that those men will make the best soldiers in our army. But if they are employed beyond seas, or in distant countries, it is to be hoped that their health will be cared for. Being almost as much foreigners as Europeans, they must be sufficiently supplied with food. They cannot live on rice alone, for it is a food to which they are totally unaccustomed-and it seems a pity that a Sikh regiment should have been cantoned at Dacca, where all the men have been seized with fever, when the sepoy regiment which refused to go to Burmah had been much more appropriately sent there. I would make some arrangements with the Nizam to relieve him of his troops. He should pay us what they cost him, and we should take military charge of his territories, and, taking the Arabs and Sikhs into our infantry, and the Rohillas into our irregular cavalry, we should probably find them on regular pay capital servants, and some counterpoise to the present sepoys. The seniority system of promotion must cease, and those men must be promoted who are likely to make good officers while they are yet in their prime and vigour. With the view of obtaining good officers, it will no doubt be desirable to use every effort to induce a proportion of men of education and influence to enter our service. In the first instance efficient men may at once receive commissions as officers; but in future it will be better that they should all first enter the ranks, and should thence be promoted, after the fashion which prevails in the Austrian service; the more as the rank which they can ultimately reach will not be very high. I do not think that cadets of families of rank or considerable pretensions would be at all useful to us; but the style of educated middle-class men, whom we find as officers in the troops of native states, and in our irregular cavalry, will answer our purpose admirably. ferent armies. I am not sufficiently acquainted with military matters to venture an opinion on the expediency of Union or sepauniting the different armies; but I have ration of difno doubt that there are certain advantages in the maintenance of a distinction between different native forces, since if all were on a uniform system the occurrence of differences between Government and its soldiers, on questions common to the whole army of India, might be very inconvenient. Perhaps the excessive staff charge at Madras and Bombay might be reduced, and our military arrangements might be centralised in some things while left distinct in others. I would as now keep a very large portion of the army near the site of the proposed capital, about Meerut, Sirhind, and Jullunder. The name "Head of India (Sir-Hind) very well expresses the situation of that part of the country. Troops stationed there are alike available for frontier service and for our older provinces; and if anything were to occur in Central India, the headquarter army, marching through Agra, would at once get into the centre of the native states. I would post most of the European regiments along the outer Himmalayas, from the borders of Oude to the Indus. a permanent The union of the Commander-in-Chief, the military offices, and the military board, in one per- Union of milimanent capital, would be a very great tary offices in advantage; and the military board, properly capital. located and constituted, and relieved of civil duties, might become fitted for its many onerous tasks, and the fit advisers of the Governor-General and Commander-in Chief. If the board, and the departments subordinate to it, become thoroughly efficient, a great saving may be effected in some of the largest items of our military expenditure. The commis- One of the most important of the departments under the military board is the commissariat, and, though I do not venture upon military details, civil servants have so much to do with the commis sariat, and take so large a part in procuring supplies, that I must say a word upon it. In speaking very disparagingly of the commissariat I am sure that I am only echoing the opinion of the whole service, military and civil. Whatever it may be as an instrument of distribution, it is certainly most grossly inefficient as an instrument of supply. Not a regiment can move except by the instrumentality of the civil authorities. So long as the duties of the commissariat merely consist in selecting among competing cantonment vendors and keeping the accounts, they manage their own affairs, but the moment anything is wanted, which is not voluntarily thrust upon them, they do not dream of making the smallest exertion to procure it, but, with the utmost indifference, send off an indent to the magistrate. When troops are to be moved, or real service commences, nothing whatever is to be got from the commissariat.* The most crying evil connected with the department is *The story goes that, when the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej and commenced the war, the Governor-General sent for the respectable head of the commissariat, and asked how soon he could move the troops. That functionary, having considered, replied that, looking to the emergency of the case, he thought that, with aid from the civil authorities, it might be done in six weeks. "You will do it in three days," replied the Governor-General, “ or I will find some one else who will ;" and he found some one else who did. The then political agent, whatever his other qualities, was a man of energy, and in three days the army was on its way to meet the Sikhs. the total absence of any arrangements whatever for the supply of carriage for military movements. The supply of There is a great deal of carriage in par- carriage. ticular parts of the country which private individuals have no difficulty in procuring for mercantile purposes, but the commissariat hardly ever procures a cart, and indents for carriage are simply handed over to the magistrate. On the other hand, that functionary has it not in his power to make proper arrangements for the voluntary supply of carriage. He has no funds whatever applicable to such a purpose; he can neither contract for a fixed supply to be drawn from other districts nor anticipate probable wants, nor insure the due payment and good treatment of the carriage which he supplies; he is not in a position in which he can deal on equal terms with individuals, nor is it his habit to do so; and it generally happens that the particular districts in which there is the largest military demand are those in which there is the smallest supply. When a magistrate receives an indent for carriage to be supplied within a very few days, he must get it in his own district as he can; and, when the demand is large and the supply small, he is constantly obliged to press all the carts he can lay his hands upon. The more this kind of thing goes on the less becomes the supply of carriage; the candle is burnt at both ends; and so, in poor districts, where large bodies of troops are quartered, and are continually passing, the evil becomes most frightful; no owner of a cart and cattle can call them his own, they are constantly seized, made over to the troops, and marched off at the mercy of the soldiers. In case of sudden emergency such evils may be inevitable, but it is too bad that they should habitually occur in times of peace, and they can only be remedied either by a trunk line of railroad or by a decently efficient commissariat, or, I should rather say, by both. |