212 TIIK WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP IX. Lord Rag- lan's letter of the 13th November on the sub- ject of tho Press. The Duke of could be said in disparagement of the ruling administrators, and thus had at command the materials whicih, when used as he knew how to use them, with the skill of a powerful writer, might well move our people at home ; for, after having already laid hold of their minds and their hearts with liis pictured story of battles, he now had to be appalling them with accounts of the misery endured on the Chersonese Heights, and inflaming them with rage, honest rage, when step by step led to infer that, because of delin- quencies traccal)le to one or more pul)lic servants, their ti'oops had been suffering and dying, and still must suffer and die. Long ago when they showed how our army established itself at Gallipoli, the conductors of the * Times ' had been giving publicity to a good deal of criticism which, however, though keen and vexatious, was not apparently calculated to do any much greater harm than that of weaken- ing authority by weakening the general confi- dence. But before the terrible period of the winter campaign, and indeed no less early than the month of October, they had already begun to make disclosures so likely to benefit the enemy, and therefore to injure their country, that Lord Eagian, on this anxious subject, felt constrained to address the Home Government. After showing the nature and the extent of the mischief, he suggested an appeal to the patriot- ism of the editors conducting our daily news- papers. (^) The Duke of Newcastle's conse(iueiit appeal
