"Certainly no counter orders have reached the colonel this evening.

I don't suppose anything will be decided upon for some time.

The Powers will all exchange notes and hold councils and spend weeks in talk before they make up their mind whether anything is to be done, and if so what; and long before they come to any decision on the subject we shall be on the other side of the Atlantic, and then, possibly, after all the trials and monotony of perhaps a two months' voyage, we may land there only to be fetched back again.

I quite agree with you that England can put nothing worth calling an army in the field, and that it would be madness to send a fine regiment out of the country at the present moment.

But everyone knows the lack of wisdom with which we are governed, and the miserable slowness of our military authorities.