RECRUTING FOR THE ARMY.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1350, 6 March 1867, Page 3

RECRUTING FOR THE ARMY.

[From the " Daily News."]

It would seem the natural and better course, in considering the question of recruiting for the army, to determine first, with some approach to accuracy, the permanent strength we desire to maintain, and the special occasions on which we might need to make further efforts, ere we enter on consideration of the means by which we can obtain the men. This, however, is not the system adopted either by the recruiting Commissioners, or by some of the public instructors who use their report for a text. They first define the higher rates of pay and pension, and the ration of meat with bone which they consider ought to prove attractive, or they discuss vague schemes for amalgamating militia and regulars, and forming armies of reserve, and then proceed to enforce their ideas by terrifying us with huge dim suggestions about our imminent danger, about the new rapidity and decisiveness of warfare, about the deficiencies of our fleet, about the probability of "at least 100,000 men " being landed in England, about the capture of London and the annexation of the British empire to some —we are not told which— Continental military despotism. If these suggestions, which every morning grow more horrible, seem to some sober person who has not looked at the' newspapers for a week, sufficiently ludicrous, it is not any exaggeration in our statement which maizes them so,

It seems to be thought by some critics that because the late campaign in Bohemia was very short and decisive, it is the first which has been so. These gentlemen having read in history of a thirty years' and a seven years' war, and remembering our long struggles in the Peninsula, are lost in amazement at a campaign commenced and concluded in a month, fought with armies of 200,000 men, emUraciug-two great battles, and involving the overthrow of an ancient empire. They seem to think that there is something in modern appliances which makes such results now possible for the first time, and that henceforth all wars will be after the same pattern. - But if they would turn to the page of history of fifty or sixty years back, they would find instances of as= Sapid and decisive success. Thus in 179G the first movements of the campaign in Italy were on the 10th of April, and on the 26th .Napoleon was able to tell his soldiers, " You have in fifteen days achieved six victories, taken twenty-one colors, fifty-five pieces of _annoj_, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont." On the 20th of May he could 'add, " Milan is yours; the Republican flag floats throughout Lombardy.'V By the middle of June, all Italy, as far as Rome, was - in—his —hands. Again, in 1800, the first French troops moved to cross? the Alps on the 17th of May, and on the 1 _th of June Marengo was fought, and the whole of the fortresses of North Italy as far as Yenetia were as a consequence surrendered. ■'■ Yet again, in September, 1805, war was declared by France against Austria and Russia, the Rhine was crossed on the ' 20th September, and on the 19th of October the Austrian army at TJlm was forced to capitulate ; Vienna was,entered on the 13th of November; on the 2nd of December the crowning; victory of Austerlitz _ the_„campaign, and allowed peace to be dictated at Presburg on the 6th. Next year the Prussians declared war on the Bth of October, their army of 150,000 men was annihilated at Jena on the l_th of October, and Berlin was taken on the 25th. So in 1809, hostilities recommenced against Austria; the first movements were on the ,10th of April, each side operating with about 150,000 men ; on the 22 nd -Eckmuhl was fought; on the 11th of, May the French occupied Vienna, and on October 14 peace was signed. Lastly, that brief and certainly most decisive Waterloo campaign, need hardly, one might think, be recalled as a proof that the campaign of Sadowa has not been the first in which a single battle changed the fate of Europe. As to the chance of our being invaded at home there is still less occasion for fear. The great Napoleon declared it could not be done with less than 150,000 men, and he did not dare to do it even with that force. Certainly no smaller leader is lightly to attempt what such a commander recoiled from. Indeed, though steam has made the passage shorter, other changes have made it far more difficult. Who now will dream of embarking 150,000 men to run the gauntlet of our Channel fleet in wooden " slaughterhouses ?" And where are ironclads to be found to carry a tenth of the number, with horses and guns ? And if the ironclads were found, how is the debarkation from vessels drawing twenty-five feet of water to be effected on a defended coast ? These are practical questions, to be answered by any of the easy alarmists who try to revive the exploded panic of "invasion."

It is unnecessary, we hope, to explain that these remarks are not intended to depreciate the importance of improving the recruiting and organisation of the army. We must always have an army, and it is material for our credit and security that it should be thoroughly-efficient and capable of becoming the nucleus of any strength we may at any moment desire to put rapidly into the field. But we cannot better approach the useful consideration of these subjects when we have disabused our minds of any vague unreasoning panic ; when we have assured ourselves by amoment's calm comparison of the present with the past, that we are not standing in any novel and instant danger, that the experience of bygone wars has not become utterly valueless, and that if we are ever forced to fight we. shall still have time to add to our moderate existing force, if only it is placed on a proper footing, whatever additional strength our circumstances may demand.