ENGLISH OFFICERS IN THE TURKISH ARMY.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Issue 4, 27 October 1877, Page 2

ENGLISH OFFICERS IN THE TURKISH ARMY.

The "Argus" correspondent says:—"A year ago, the Danubian fortresses, with the exception of Widdin, were both obsolete and dilapidated. Some of the iuin ir ones indeed himlly longer deserved the narmi of fortresses—.so rotten were their crumbling ramparts, so contemptible their armament. It lias not been possible for them to rebuild the decaying battlements, but they have faced them up where practicable, and converted them into earthworks. Where they were too far gone, they have thrown lip detached works on modern principles, always from plans prepared in England, often under the personal superintendence of English engineer officers, of whom last autumn a dozen were lent to Turkey for the special purpose of putting her fortresses into repair. In fact there are at present in Turkey several English engineerofticers in full pay, making themselves as useful as the Turks, who are not fond of foreign interference, will permit. It seems to me that the Russians have good cause to feel sore with us on this account. It is not as last year in Servia, when the Russian officers who helped the Servians left the Russian army, at least temporarily, to come and help the little principality. We send, or rather force, upon the Turks skilled officers on full pay ; and as for the half-pay officers of the English army waiting in Constantinople for employment by the Turks, their name is legion. With a rotten military system, or rather no military system at all, with an empty Treasury and no credit, the Turks nevertheless had got the Danubian fortresses into a respectable state of defence. Rustchuk which a year ago, with its obsolete fortifications enclosing it, must have succumbed before a two days' bombardment with heavy rifled artillery, is now a great entrenched camp, or rather a series of earth-work fortresses, havin" three lines of defence, each heavily armed with cannon to the full as good as those which the Russians can put in the batteries agaiust it.