is, 373.  Of the remainder, little more than one-tenth were unavoidable deaths.  The natural deaths, as we may call them, were only 521; while the preventable deaths were 4,465.  Very different would have been the spirit of the parting in England, if the soldiers’ friends had imagined that so small a number would fall by Russian gun or bayonet, or by natural sickness, while the mortality from mismanagement would at one season of the next year exceed that of London in the worst days of the Great Plague.

That the case was really what is here represented was proved by the actual prevention of this needless sickness during the last year of the war.  In the same camp, and under the same circumstances of warfare, the mortality was reduced, by good management, to a degree unhoped for by all but those who achieved it.  The deaths for the last half year were one-third fewer than at home!  And yet the army that died was composed of fine, well-trained troops; while the army that lived and flourished was of a far inferior material when it came out,—­raw, untravelled, and unhardened to the military life.

How did these things happen?  There can be no more important question for Americans at this time.

I will not go into the history of the weaknesses and faults of the administration of departments at home.  They have been abundantly published already; and we may hope that they bear no relation to the American case.  It is more interesting to look into the circumstances of the march and the camp, for illustration of what makes the health or the sickness of the soldier.

Wherever the men were to provide themselves with anything to eat or to wear out of their pay, they were found to suffer.  There is no natural market, with fair prices, in the neighborhood of warfare; and, on the one hand, a man cannot often get what he wishes, and, on the other, he is tempted to buy something not so good for him.  If there are commissariat stores opened, there is an endless accumulation of business,—­a mass of accounts to keep of the stoppages from the men’s pay.  On all accounts it is found better for all parties that the wants of the soldier should be altogether supplied in the form of rations of varied food and drink, and of clothing varying with climate and season.

In regard to food, which comes first in importance of the five heads of the soldier’s wants, the English soldier was remarkably helpless till he learned better.  The Russians cut that matter very short.  Every man carried a certain portion of black rye bread and some spirit.  No cooking was required, and the men were very independent.  But the diet is bad; and the Russian regiments were composed of sallow-faced men, who died “like flies” under frequently recurring epidemics.  The Turks were in their own country, and used their accustomed diet.  The French are the most apt, the most practised, and the most economical managers of food of any of the parties engaged in the war.  Their campaigns in Algeria