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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
Austrian ranks solely to the needle gun, we should rate too highly the value 
of the weapon, whilst we neglected certain very important features of national 
character and political conditions which contributed to it. These two points 
then,—the comparative proficiency in the art of war, and the national 
elements on both sides, claim our next attention. 
The art of war in its full signification is not confined to the leadership of 
an army in the field, it includes also the organization which fits it for taking 
the field, including all the arrangements for supplying the combatants with 
food, medical attendance, ammunition, and other wants. It is, however, 
only within the most modern periods that proper attention has been paid to 
those branches,—the non-combatant departments of the army. .Formerly 
all kinds of supplies and transport were arranged by a contract system kept 
up during hostilities only. But it depends on the condition of an army in 
the non-combatant as well as the combatant branches whether it is at once 
fit to “go anywhere and do anything,” (as the Duke of Wellington said of 
his army at the end of the Peninsula war), or whether it has to pass through 
a stage of helpless inefficiency, frequently attended by hardship and disaster, 
before it is brought into working order. 
In our own country, up to the time of the Crimean war, most of the non- 
combatant branches were totally neglected. Continental nations have been 
obliged to pay more attention to their military system, and both Prussia 
and Austria had armies so well appointed in all branches that no advantage 
could have been predicted to either on that score. The extraordinary 
course of events prevented any good comparison between their capabilities 
under this head, because the circumstances quickly became so widely 
different, but the merits of the Prussian army shone clearly forth. The 
men fought bravely, behaved soberly, and suffered the trials of the campaign 
cheerfully. The officers of every grade, from the highest to the most 
subordinate, fulfilled their duties with a surprising excellence. There was 
no want of decision, nor of co-operation; nor was there any blundering 
detected. Of the non-combatant departments no complaints were made, 
though doubtless some of them were overworked, and unequal to the heavy 
and immediate strain on their resources. It would be captious and unfair 
to make much of short comings due only to want of strength and not to 
want of organization. It must be acknowledged, on the whole, that the 
army as an organized and well trained body reflected the highest credit on 
the government. 
Apart from the military style and discipline, there was an unusually high 
tone of feeling in the Prussian army. There was patient trustfulness 
without arrogance. The men were brothers, and their country was the 
Patherland. They had a definite national ambition. Whatever the politics 
of the government might be, their own earnest wish was unity and freedom 
for the whole German race. The system also which obliged all stations of 
life to undergo military service, infused in the ranks a high degree of in¬ 
telligence and education. 
Now, compare this unity of race, and this community of feeling, with the 
incongruous assemblage of the Austrian army. 
Austria is an empire which might be taken as a representative example of 
that system under which countries were the appanage of thrones and 
dynasties, and nations were united by bequest or by hereditary succession 
