THE LESSON OF LORD WOLSELEY'S LIFE.

The interest of once historical,

a narrative of

Ar a critical moment, when the nation finds itself at the parting of the ways in relation to the efficiency of its Army, a great soldier has come forward to relate the story of his life. Lord Wolseley's admirably written book is at personal, and practical. Regarded merely as events, it possesses immense value. In its pages much new light is shed even on old facts. We have here a vivid presentation at first hand of the personal impressions of one whose experiences in war are unsurpassed in what may be termed their intensity, while in point of variety they are literally unique in military history. It is safe to affirm that no other soldier, living or dead, in the British or in any army, has ever taken part in such diverse forms of warfare, waged under every sort of conditions and circumstances, in every quarter of the globe, and in every species of climate, against every kind of foe-civilised, semi-civilised, savage. And this long and extensive experience is the more remarkable as it is combined with a quarter of a century of laborious work within the confines of the War Office. Lord Wolseley won his spurs by severe and often hand-to-hand fighting in Burma, where his exploits, indeed, included a specially creditable incident of conspicuous valour, which the author's modesty has not permitted him to narrate. In the Crimea, where he was severely wounded, his technical knowledge of the details of his profession-a knowledge amazing in one so young-was abundantly shown by his services in the trenches. Immediately afterwards he is engaged in the campaign which quelled the Indian Rebellion. Again, after a very short interval, he is fighting in China; next he is to be seen hard at work on the reorganisation of the military forces in Canada, whence he contrives to pay a visit to the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Then he receives the command of the remarkable Red River Expedition for the suppression of Riel's rebellion in the Far West; while a little later he is entrusted with the intensely difficult operations in Ashanti.

At this point ends the second of the two masterly and attractive volumes which are all that the author has so far completed of his life's story. His promised continuation of his narrative will of course include within its purview his civil and military work in South Africa, his brilliant Egyptian Campaign, and his skilful

advance up the Nile into the Sudan. The complete autobiography will then cover a record of military service, which in its manysidedness has never been equalled and seldom approached.

But the interest of these volumes is not only or chiefly historical: it is even more personal and psychological. As a piece of self revelation, as a study of character, the whole story is full of charm as well as of instruction. Basing all his opinions on a profound knowledge of military science acquired by serious study and fortified by his large and varied personal experience, Lord Wolseley early entered upon the great task of endeavouring to awaken the British officer to a keener sense of his duty and to an appreciation of the honour and glory of his profession, and to educate the British soldier into becoming something more than a machine requiring to be wound up for every action. The success of this strenuous effort can be read in the personnel of the Army to-day.

Over and above the spur of professional ambition and a love of fighting for its own sake there was in Lord Wolseley the ever-present, all-pervading sense of duty, which with him meant in a high degree religious duty. Lord Wolseley's profession was bound up with his religion, and each coloured the other. Like his favourite heroes, Charles Gordon and Hope Grant, he took for his guidance the simplest tenets of the Christian Faith, and was imbued with the strong, if elementary, religious instinct frequently found in great military leaders.

Lord Wolseley was not only professionally, but essentially and in the very core of his being, a soldier. The story of his life offers a complete contradiction to the vulgar theory which at one time obtained that he regarded soldiers only as pawns, and was wont to scoff at anything approaching to sentiment in military matters. His passionate outburst at the end of this book testifies to his intense approval of esprit de corps, and his desire to improve upon it by building up a still more potent esprit d'armée. Like Lord Kitchener, our great ex-Commander-in-Chief does not profess to win actions without losing lives, and would probably be forward to condemn a hesitation to deliver" men at the right moment, which so often means a largely increased deathroll from sickness induced by a protracted campaign.

The work of promoting reform at the War Office was obviously a far harder and more ungrateful task than any operations in the field. The reader of "Pickwick" will remember the scene where, on the occasion of Mr. Bob Sawyer's supper-party, Mrs. Raddles conjures her spouse to eject the too-convivial guests: "Why don't you knock them every one downstairs? You would, if you was a man!" "I should, if I was a dozen men," was Mr.

Raddles's reply! And certainly Lord Wolseley's experiences compel the reflection that something in the shape of a batteringram, and not a mere individual restrained within the usual limitations of flesh and blood, is required to knock down the wall of War Office prejudice, stolidity, and inertia. Occasions are constantly being cited in the volumes before us on which this great war-expert was thwarted in respect of his best-considered military plans by the civilian element in that citadel of inefficiency. Bitter, however, as were many of the experiences of this kind here recorded, they were but the forerunners of incidents similar in character but of far graver import, among which the first place belongs to the cynical disavowal of two proclamations issued by Lord Wolseley in the name of the British Government-one in South Africa, the other in the Sudan. In October, 1879, he had, as the representative of the Sovereign, declared to the Boers that the act of annexation of the Transvaal was irrevocable; while at Standerton, speaking by the same authority, he told the people that the Vaal would flow backward through the Drakensberg before the British would relinquish their hold of Transvaal territory. How these solemn assurances were stultified when only two years had passed it is needless to specify. A similar announcement, mutatis mutandis, made with equal solemnity, in a proclamation issued at Korti, after the fall of Khartum, was followed by the British Government's withdrawal of its troops three months later.

But the supreme and abiding interest attaching to these volumes lies in the practical illustration they afford of Lord Wolseley's life-long advocacy of Army reorganisation. Determined to think and judge for himself, this great soldier, even in his Crimean days, was persuaded of the paramount necessity for entirely recasting the British Army. Severe in his condemnation of the deep-seated ignorance and disastrous inefficiency of most of our generals, he was still more severe in his strictures on blundering civilian interference with the Army. Yet the most severe censure of all he reserved for the criminal negligence and miserable cowardice of successive Cabinets, whose attempts to shift blame from their own shoulders on to those of their harassed military subordinates he holds up to a righteous obloquy.

In contrast with these scathing judgments it is to be noted that deep down in the heart of the great Commander is his love for "the Rank and File" of the British Army. Again and again he recurs to the enumeration of the British soldier's many and great virtues his sturdy bravery, his patient and uncomplaining endurance of every hardship and privation, his loyal devotion to officers who treat him with any degree of consideration or kindness.

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Lord Wolseley, it is evident, was pre-eminently a judge of individual aptitude, and an ardent advocate of placing round pegs, whenever they were to be found, in round holes. He dwells in some detail on the demand he made for a composite battalion to serve in West Africa-a demand which, at that time, met with a refusal. In this as in other instances it is possible to allege that Lord Wolseley, in common with many great reformers, lived before his time. His extraordinarily varied experience lends unsurpassed weight to all his expressions of opinion relating to the Army. For Lord Cardwell he expresses unstinted admiration; but it was to Lord Wolseley himself, as the pioneer and leader of the distinguished group of military officers who more than thirty years ago urged the the cause of reform, that the real credit is due for the formation of our Army Reserve. Perhaps it needed the war in South South Africa to demonstrate finally the thorough soundness of this, the great scheme of his military career. Lord Wolseley's admirable loyalty to his companions and subordinates is enhanced by his appreciation of men of honest purpose, however widely they may have differed from him in policy or practice. His tribute to the Duke of Cambridge is couched in no conventional phrases, but is unaffectedly the outcome of a sense of his old chief's genuine and remarkable qualities.

One striking instance in later life of his justice and generosity merits special mention. In 1879 he was despatched by the Government of the day to South Africa, evidently to thwart and avowedly to supersede the High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, with whom-doubtless owing to instructions from home-he was too little brought into contact, and too often and quite unnecessarily brought into conflict. Yet Lord Wolseley has placed on record that if ever the history of recent events be fully and honestly written, the names of Sir Bartle Frere and of the late Colonial Secretary will stand therein illustrious as the founders of our South African Dominion.

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The Story of a Soldier's Life" places its author in that category of public servants to whom the country looks, and seldom looks in vain, in the day of strife and stress. It exhibits him as one who, moreover, has run a straight course, flagged out by the certain marks of public duty, whose name will be written in large letters in the pages of military history, and whose adsum will surely be recorded when the last roster of our great soldiers is called. GEORGE ARTHUR.

D'ANNUNZIO'S "LE LAUDI."

ITALY has many glories, but not one greater or more eternal than her language. Her art is, perhaps, a still more splendid possession but it is dead; and for none so entirely dead as for the nation that having once boasted of the Medici Chapel, is not ashamed to boast of the Campo Santo of Genoa. Her political greatness is a memory and a prospect, not a present glory. But her noble language is indestructible. The waves of vulgar realism, of sordid preoccupations, of the insolent mediocrity that thinks a fiftieth edition the proof of greatness, may engulf others, but against her they beat in vain. France finds it hard to recover for her delightful tongue the rich and sonorous quality an age of poetry gave, and an age of prose took away; only the rare felicity of a master can purge German of its clinging uncouthness; the tongue of England, the language of the world's business, and the world's telegrams, is for ever in danger of the commercial contagion; only the coinage of Italy seems so nobly minted that the cheapest journalism cannot debase it. It is a world of musical sounds and knows no other; and if it lacks something of variety, at least it has nothing harsh or base. It is so invariably and universally a delight to the ear, that, set forth in its music, a mere notice in a railway station is a thing it is hard to resist reading aloud.

A

What such an instrument as this, which triumphs so completely over the clumsiest handling, is likely to effect in the hands of such a master as Gabriele D'Annunzio, is easily guessed, or rather, is well known. D'Annunzio has very obvious faults, both as a man and as а man of letters. master of form in the word, the sentence, the paragraph, he is often as formless as Goethe in the larger architecture of his whole design. And then there is another defect which prevents his attaining as yet the European rank to which his splendid gifts seemed to destine him. Put briefly, it is that he never grows up. He is, for instance, still childishly vain. The present volume is issued as the first of a series of books of praise, "Le Laudi." Well, there is much praise, and splendid, and of many men, things, and places, in it; but its effect is not helped, but hindered, by the insolent abundance of the self-praise which accompanies it. And there are other ways in which it is time he began to get a little older. Some portions of the book can only be described as the indecent ravings of an ill-bred boy. And how very young the boy still is may be seen by the fact that he plainly thinks such talk the conclusive proof of grown-up man