Why should we add to this dismal recital the appalling sufferings of the soldiers,—­helpless victims to bad management at home and shameful neglect in the field,—­the long, freezing nights of trench-work under a driving rain, “without warm or water-proof clothing,—­the trenches two and three feet deep with mud, snow, and half-frozen slush, so that many, when they took off their shoes, were unable to get their swollen feet into them again, and might be seen barefooted about the camp, the snow half a foot deep on the ground,”—­creeping for shelter into “miserable tents pitched as it were at the bottom of a marsh, where twelve or fourteen unhappy creatures lay soaking without change of clothing” until they were called out again to their worse than slave-labor,—­disease, brought on by exhaustion, exposure, overwork, and deficient food, sweeping the men off by thousands, and yet no sufficient supply of medical stores and no adequate number of medical attendants, not a soul seeming to care for their comfort or even for their lives,—­so neglected and ill-treated that “the wretched beggar who wandered about the streets of London led the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers who were fighting for their country, and who were complacently assured by the home authorities that they were the best-appointed army in Europe.”  The world knows the whole sad story by heart.  And is it not written in the volumes of evidence sworn to before the Commission appointed by Parliament to inquire into the condition of the army?

Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the extent to which the home administration was responsible for the general mismanagement of the war, in its main features and its minute details,—­nor the thoroughly English stolidity with which all complaints were received by every member of the Government, from the cabinet minister who dictated pompous and unmeaning despatches, down to the meanest official who measured red tape,—­nor the intense and universal popular indignation which, after a year “full of horrors,” compelled the resignation of the Aberdeen Ministry.  Lord Derby did not, perhaps, overstate the verdict of the nation, when he said in the House of Lords,—­“From the very first to the very last, there has been apparent in the course pursued by Her Majesty’s Government a want of previous preparation,—­a total want of prescience; and they have appeared to live from day to day providing for each successive exigency after it arose, and not before it arose.  TOO LATE have been the fatal words applicable to the whole conduct of Her Majesty’s Government in the course of the war.”  The change in the Ministry, however, by no means cured all the evils which had existed; for, although the sufferings of the soldiers—­thanks in large part to the providential appearance and heroic conduct of Florence Nightingale—­were greatly diminished, still, as we have seen, the military blunders continued to the close of the war.