Educated officers.
There are two kinds of military education; one, of the military schools combined with military service; another of military service merely.
The Southern Government has, thus far, if we are not mistaken, given prominent position to gentlemen having one or the other of these qualifications, and much of their success be attributed to this fact.
The Northern journals complain loudly of the number of politicians placed in high commands.
It is not for us to mourn over their blunder.
Erse, we do not believe it accounts for there uniform defeats.
The best talent of the old U. S. Army directed the late movement from
Manassas.
But we wish no worse luck to an enemy than to appoint politicians to high military commands.
It implies that the appointing power is utterly regardless of the welfare of the country and the lives of its people; or, at any rate, that these do not occupy as high a place in its regards as the increase of political influence.
It proves that the officers thus appointed are as self-conceited as they are ignorant, for no others would seek as position for which they know themselves to be unfit.
Blunders and destruction must necessarily follow every stop they take.
We should as soon think of selecting a doctor to act as
Judge Advocate, or appoint a lawyer
Surgeon-General, as put a politician at the head of an army.
Politicians are bad enough at the best.--They are the guests of the country in peaceful times, and the authors of all the political woes and nearly all the wars that afflict mankind.
But when they seek to increase the public calamities by asking to be put in positions for which they are notoriously unfit, they ought to be handed over to the
Provost Marshal.--Would any one think of putting one of them in command of a line-of-battle ship?
And yet, they know just as little of managing ‘"a squadron"’ in the field as a squadron at sea. It is murder in the first degree to send men to battle under such leadership.
Long may
Lincoln monopolize the manufacture of such warriors as
Major-General Butler,
Banks,
Patterson,
Cadwallader, and others of that ilk!
