112 OUR INFANTRY. 



sums we have done to other nations for their 

 assistance in previous wars, obtaining usually 

 a very small return. 



If no better plan suggest itself than that 

 here proposed for getting our armies well com- 

 manded when in the field, aided by a competent 

 staff, it is surely worth while to give this a fair 

 trial, as by doing so no expense worth naming 

 would be incurred. 



The improper interference of our civil 

 government with the Commander-in-Chief in 

 a time of war should not be again practised. 

 We lost very many men at Waterloo on account 

 of our want of guns, yet the Duke of Wellington 

 had written sufficiently early to the government 

 to state the number he required. Then, in- 

 stead of allowing the Duke to select his own 

 staff for that campaign from amongst the 

 officers he had known in Spain, they sent him 

 young ones, with whom he was wholly un- 

 acquainted. He remonstrated on both these 

 subjects, but to no purpose. He says, in one 

 of his letters to government, " It is quite im- 

 possible for me to superintend the details of 

 the duties of these departments myself, having 

 already more to arrange than I am equal to ; 



