ride, are all swept into the general fund, as
contributions of labour." Surely here are golden
rules for military observance, and which we
ought not to be above copying of our neighbours.
If ever an army wanted an entire and
radical reform in this respect, it is our army
in India. We drive our soldiers in that country
into all kinds of vice and intemperance, by
the do-nothing life which we force them
to lead. And this, with the fact before our
eyes, that so long as a man is properly clothed,
and his head protected from the sun, those
persons who are actively employed in the open air
are invariably the most healthy. Algeria is
quite as hot during the summer months as any
part of India that I have been in; yet the
French soldiers in that colony labour at all kinds
of handicraft in and out of doors, without detriment
to themselves, and with a far smaller
amount of mortality than obtains among our
European troops in India.

Let any one who wishes to know the amount
of baggage, and the number of camp-followers
which follow our armies into the field in India,
read MR. RUSSELL'S Diary in India, recording
what he saw in that country during the
campaigns under Lord Clyde, which followed the
mutiny of 1857. The native cooks, washermen,
grooms, tent-pitchers, and the hundred other
natives who follow the soldier whenever he goes
into camp— each individual native taking with
him his wife and children, and often his father,
mother, uncles, and brothers— exceed all belief:
they seem to be more numerous than the sands
of the sea. Nor is the evil of this immense
following confined to the camp-followers
themselves, for these, in their turn, must have their
followers. In addition to the commissariat that
feeds the troops, each corps must have a large
bazaar establishment to feed its followers. The
extent and ramifications of these hangers-on
may be in some degree conceived, when I
mention that, during one of our campaigns in
Afghanistan, although the followers were reduced
to the lowest possible numbers, there were
European regiments that counted no less than
seven native camp-followers to every effective
English soldier. Many old Indians will say that
our men could not dispense with these native
servants, and that if they attempted themselves to
do the menial work of the barracks their health
would suffer. Now, I am an old Indian, and
have seen service in the Punjab, in
Afghanistan, and in other countries; and I
altogether deny that our English soldiers would
suffer, even if deprived of all their native
servants to-morrow. Surely our men are not
more helpless than Frenchmen! And I have seen
a brigade of the latter take the field for months
in the burning plains towards the frontier of
Morocco— a far hotter climate, with far fewer
rasources than any I have marched through in
India from Peshawur to Calcutta— not having
with them more camp-followers than they would
have in Europe. The average number of
non-combatants with a French column in the field in
Algeria, is less than one per cent of the soldiers
present, and these are nearly all suttlers or
shopkeepers, who are allowed to follow the
troops and sell odds and ends of comfort to the
men. In our Anglo-Indian camps, the number
of camp-followers is something like seven or
eight hundred I have known it as high as eleven
hundred— per cent more than the fighting men!
In other words, where the French in Algeria
take one camp-follower in the field, we take from
seven to eleven hundred!

Our military legislators need not go far to
learn why campaigning in India is ruinous
work. When every company of a hundred
men requires something like a thousand
followers to administer to their comforts, no
wonder that we have often to extricate ourselves
from difficulties with little credit or honour.
According to the last army estimates, the
number of English soldiers now serving on the
Indian establishment is eighty-three thousand
five hundred and twenty-one: so that, if the
statistics of the Sanitary Commission be true, the
number of deaths in that country must be close
upon six thousand every year; and, from what
I have witnessed in the country, I believe
this figure is not overstated. Surely such a
state of things should not be allowed to exist
without some attempt being made to alter it for
the better! Six thousand men represent the whole
brigade of Foot Guards. Imagine the whole of
this corps dying off and having to be replaced
every year! Even reduce the number by
one half, and it is hardly conceivable that we should
allow three thousand able-bodied men to vanish
off the face of the earth every year, without
making an attempt to stop such mismanagement
as must exist somewhere. Yet I fear that no
effort will be made in the right direction. Old
Indians, and particularly old Indian doctors,
have an idea that to save English soldiers'
lives in the East they must be allowed to do
nothing whatever for themselves; and if changes
be made in our Anglo-Indian military system,
I fear they will be for the worse, and not for the
better.

Connected with the subject of our soldiers'
health in the East, there is the subject of military
cookery: which is and has been, from time
immemorial, a standing disgrace to the English
army. In India the cooking for the men
is done by native cook-boys: the men
themselves being allowed to take no part whatever
in preparing their own food. What are
the consequences? A recruit joins his corps,
lives and serves his time in India, and— if
spared to return— comes back to England
entirely helpless to perform what every officer
or soldier who has been on service knows to be
the very first of military duties, unconnected
with actual fighting: namely, that of turning
to the best and most healthy account for
himself and his comrades, the meat, flour,
vegetables, and rice, provided for rations. Unless, or
until, the cook-boys of his troop or company
have reached the camping-ground, there is no
breakfast or dinner that day. I have seen again
and again, on the march in India, dozens of