=The V.C. and Distinguished Conduct Medal.=--These were comparatively small but significant campaigns, although the period between Waterloo and the breaking out of the Crimean War has been termed the long peace. The war in the Crimea was of a very different kind. Once again it was the meeting of Europeans face to face, and a long struggle resulted. An important outcome of the war from one point of view was the institution on January 29th, 1856, of that coveted decoration, the Victoria Cross, preceded by the institution of the Distinguished Conduct Medal on December 4th, 1854, and the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for naval men on August 13th, 1855. The ribbon for the V.C. is dark red--dark blue for the Navy--that for the Distinguished Conduct Medal (illustrated facing page 140) dark blue with broad, red stripe down the centre, and the ribbon blue with a white stripe down the centre for the Conspicuous Gallantry medal. In the first issues the names were impressed on the edge, but in the later issues they are engraved, and the date of the action is also included. It is particularly noteworthy that the first medals of this class issued were struck from the Meritorious Service Medal, the two words being erased and Conspicuous Gallantry engraved in place thereof (see facing page 140). THE CRIMEAN WAR In October 1853 the Czar of Russia declared war against the Sultan of Turkey, and to defend "the sick man" Great Britain and France landed troops at Varna, a Bulgarian port in the Black Sea. At the end of February 1854 Queen Victoria bade farewell to the Guards at Buckingham Palace, and these with other regiments sailed for the East to take part in a war which, declared on March 28th, 1854, was to cost us the lives of thousands of brave men: 21,815 were killed, or died of wounds or disease, and 11,876 were wounded--a total of 32,691 officers and men. Disease accounted for the deaths of 16,041, battle only 4,774! The old soldiers, as Sir Evelyn Wood states, died without a murmur, and it "is impossible to overpraise the disciplined silence of men under privations which in a few weeks reduced one battalion from nearly 1,000 effectives to a strength of 30 rank and file." At the end of February 1855, although the strength of the British army was on paper 44,000, only 18,000 were "present and fit for duty"; and yet the medals of the brave and patient survivors of this war are selling at a few shillings apiece unless they happen to have the bar for Balaklava or Inkermann--Sebastopol, that long-drawn agony, counts for nothing!