ABSTRACT
The despatch of our expeditionary force to the East, for the purpose of engaging in what may prove to be a long European war, has naturally brought before the public the startling question, as to what is to be done with the wives and children of the soldiers composing it, and whose unavoidable separation from their husbands leaves them friendless and destitute. Unhappily it is no new thing for this unfortunate class to be placed in such a situation, and not a month passes, that cases of individual hardship, surpassing anything in the pages of romance, do not inevitably arise from the operation of the present regulations. It is only on an occasion like the present, when we are dispatching, not a solitary company, or a single regiment, but an army, that the public eye is attracted to this distressing spectacle, and at least a show of sympathy is manifested. The sufferers vanquish the apathy of the public, as the Russians win a battle, by mere dint of numbers; though, after all, their victories, like those of Gortschakoff, make but little impression on that old Turk, poverty.
