the case of the present holder of that office, he possesses a highly trained legal mind, the fact that his military colleagues had succeeded in convincing him of the expediency of a proposed measure would constitute prima facie evidence in its favour. The proper method of Army administration in reference to all matters concerned with expenditure is that the professional military authorities should propose and the Secretary of State dispose: it is against common sense that a man who has never been a soldier should be set up as an infallible originator of military reforms.

If the Secretary of State would be content to hold the military members of the Army Council individually responsible for the efficiency of their several departments and collectively for the efficiency of the Army as a whole, reserving to himself only the control of the purse and of matters of policy, such a loosening of their own bondage would incline the Army Council-or, better still, a re-established Field-marshal Commanding-in-chief-to concede greater freedom to generals, and so the shackles of red-tape would gradually slacken right through the whole series of stages until the lieutenant-colonel would eventually be enabled to concede to captains actual instead of only nominal command of their companies. At present every superior authority is so busily employed in directing in minute detail the duty of the officer next under him that he has no time left for the proper performance of his own work. The right system is one man one job,' and let each stand or fall by the result of his own unaided efforts. Only thus can men be schooled so as to be ready at any moment to grapple with greater responsibilities. The all-the-year-round interference by generals is at present a very grievous stumbling-block to efficiency.

The efficiency of an army, like the stability of a building, depends upon the quality of its foundations. Good companies make good battalions, good battalions good brigades, and so on; the commander of each unit must be primarily responsible for the training of that unit, the business of the superior officer being to see that the subordinate does his work, to note how he does it, and to judge him by results; but not to do that work for him nor to interfere with the manner of doing it so long as it is done well. It is proverbially superfluous to teach your grandmother'; but neither is it necessary that your grandmother should always be at your elbow after you have learned how to walk alone. The officer who has been educated and who has been given his orders should not require dry-nursing; if he does, he should be compelled to make way for some more capable successor. The duty of a brigadier is to instruct his officers and to train his brigade as a whole, not to train the battalions of which it is composed; and the proper object of army manœuvres is not to train the troops, but to put to the most severe test practicable in peace the training they have received, and to train the generals and staff.

Therefore it is obviously necessary that he whose duty it is to train any unit, large or small, should have full opportunities conceded to him for the purpose. Constant field-days impede minor training, and by so doing defeat their supposed object. First train the companies, then the battalions, and so upwards. Let work be done strenuously when it is in progress, but let there be sufficient holidays periodically and intermittently; and, above all, let there be no mistake as to when work and play are to be respectively the order of the day it is the uncertainty now prevailing, which soldiers call messing about,' that makes the Service unpopular with all ranks. It is because the first essential is that everybody should be allowed to do his own work in his own way, and given the needful time in which to do it well, that reform in military matters must begin at the top.

For the reformation of our political system, or lack of system, in all its branches, and to purge it of pernicious sentiment, the beginning needs to be made at the very bottom. In the Army itself the dog wags the tail till that appendage is wearied of the wagging; but in politics, external and internal, the tail wags the dog, and so insistently that the bewildered animal frequently loses his way altogether. There are many men in so-called public life who, but for the extravagance of their untruthful assertions, would never have been heard of; because the newspapers would never have reported their utterances but for their astounding absurdity or rascality. The first stepping-stone to Parliamentary honours is to be frequently before the public,' by means of reported speeches. Only men who are already public characters of great prominence can dare to talk sober sense, confining themselves to actual facts, with any hope of being listened to or reported at length; but if a man is sufficiently mendacious in giving vent with fiery eloquence to the wild imaginings of a fifth-class brain, the pencils of the reporters will surely be at his service. The mass of the people is ignorantly impressionable-populus vult decipi et decipitur--and idiotic sentiment is thus easily aroused and maintained, despite the utmost efforts of wise men to confute or stifle it. Moreover, 'Oppositions' are prone to see a ready way to office in the adoption of prevailing sentiments, however false, and thus the mere vapourings of political cracksmen, poured forth with no other object than to direct attention to their own existence (which would otherwise have been likely to escape observation), may at any moment serve to emasculate the policy of the State.

We are already pretty certain to lose South Africa, and our authority in India is being daily undermined, solely in consequence of an ignorant public having been stuffed full of utterly misapplied sentiment. Recent events in Persia should have exposed the error of attempting to put the wine of Western Parliamentary systems into Oriental bottles.' Yet there are some who, knowing

India, have nevertheless pandered wickedly to preposterous sentiment.

Lord Morley is not responsible for the present unrest in India: he has merely failed as yet to adopt the sternly repressive measures which long-continued pampering of a politically warlike but militarily contemptible section of the inhabitants has now rendered indispensable to the restoration of order. The political rights' of disloyal agitators and of their dupes greatly concern some people in this country, but no thought is taken of the British lives, of soldier and civilian, of men, women, and children, that will certainly be sacrificed if the Hydra is not speedily destroyed. Hitherto the martial races have been on our side; but the East is the East, and if the fighting men are led to suspect that we are afraid to deal decisively with the Babus, they too will turn against us, and India will once again be deluged in blood. Shall we await the outbreak? Or had we not better prevent it betimes? Von der Goltz says that 'the statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing war inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country.' What, in comparison to the calamities of an insurrection, is the hanging of a few dozen Babus ?

The gentle art of political lying, as practised pertinaciously by obscure aspirants to public attention, lies at the very root of most of our failures in high politics. In addition to the inevitable scarcity of genuine statesmen, the actual number disclosed is unnecessarily small, because too many who might be statesmen prefer to be politicians: by constant indulgence in pleasant insincerities they can more easily gain the popular plaudits and suffrages. But the flashy twaddle talked would be far less mischievous if it were not reported in the newspapers. The unbridled licence, misnamed the 'liberty of the Press,' is at the present time a very serious danger to the Empire. What a political Ananias gives forth in some obscure locality becomes advantaged in the Press until it grows into a popular sentiment, rolling in a great flood that truth, wisdom, and common-sense are alike powerless to stem. We cannot perhaps legislate so that an ignorant public shall become wise, but at least we might arrange that that ignorance shall not continually be imposed upon by unscrupulous politicians of the baser sort. At all events, until the statesman is free to act unimpeded by sentimental pressure, solely in the true interests of national and Imperial security, it is idle to hope for a consistent strategical policy calculated to give to our fleets and armies the sound' take off' which must be of such infinite importance to them whenever they may be required to negotiate the dread Rubicon of war. It is the duty of our soldiers and sailors to die for their country if need be, and both have done so, willingly as well as gloriously in the past; but it involves an overstraining of their duty to require them to die merely in order that time-serving, self-seeking politicians may freely talk pernicious

VOL, LXV-No. 385

EE

nonsense and so befog the path of the responsible Ministers of the Crown. If soldiers and sailors are slain in the effort to make good political blunders, those responsible for the commission of such blunders should be indictable for manslaughter, for they are many times more guilty than reckless engine-drivers or sleepy pointsmen who may be tried for their lives upon account of railway accidents. Curiously enough, politics is the one trade for which no qualification but loquacity is required, and yet the fate of nations is concerned ! It is a fact that lawyers also live by their tongues, but in their case brains and knowledge are behind the words, whereas among politicians it is as a rule vox et praterea nihil.

Speaking in the House of Lords on the 21st of July 1908, Lord Cromer told his Majesty's Government that their main duty is to make provision betimes for the European conflict which may not improbably be forced upon us before many years have elapsed . . . a danger of which I, in common, I believe, with most people who can speak with real authority on foreign affairs, am very firmly convinced.' This full note of solemn warning fell upon deaf ears; but a ‘patriotic play,' chiefly realistic though with an absurd ending, appears to have accomplished what the carefully weighed words of a great pro-consul proved powerless to initiate! Could bathos be more profound? However, officers and men are now flocking into the ranks of the Territorial Force, and this fact is in itself so eminently satisfactory that we can afford to ignore the nature of the incentive. We are getting our soldiers, and it only remains to train them. It was not with an intention of holding up the Territorial officer to ridicule that the author of An Englishman's Home presented him in caricature, but in order to point a most valuable moral. Had Captain Finch been of the normal type, his native pluck could not have been contrasted in such bold relief against his professional deficiencies. The lesson taught is sufficiently obvious. Superlative courage is totally unavailing unless fortified by training for war. Herein, then, lies the root of the whole matter in reference to the Territorial Force. Thanks to Mr. Haldane, we have an excellent organisation, and thanks to a theatrical stimulant we seem likely to obtain the necessary personnel, but the final making or marring' of our newly born National Army depends chiefly upon whether those who join it are to be given, as recruits, a sound course of genuine training. The ship has been well designed, and her timbers are good British heart-of-oak.' Let her not be spoiled for a ' ha'porth o' tar.'

A. W. A. POLLOCK.

1909

A YEAR WITH THE PUBLIC TRUSTEE

EMERSON observes that 'every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him,' and he elsewhere speaks of the sensibility and magnetism needed to establish this rare human contact. There is not even a vainglorious Dives who does not readily assent to the observation, a forlorn human creature that does not illustrate it, nor a member of that vast population between want and wealth, living though they may be on the slopes of Sydenham and Penge' denounced by Ruskin in that splendid thunderstorm in the twenty-ninth Fors, who cannot establish it.

From one who has been privileged, and profoundly interested, to hear daily for the last year many a life's history, and every one of them worth hearing; from one who has counted himself fortunate in being allowed to assist in the founding of a department perhaps unique in the State, it is thought that some account of those 'crowded hours' may prove of interest, and, possibly, also valuable by way of explanation upon a subject which is still but imperfectly understood. A year ago in this Review in writing upon the Public Trustee conjecture alone was available. The creation of the office had excited attack, the enemy vacillating between an opinion, like Mr. Chamberlain's forecast of the Liberal Government, that after six inglorious months it would be hissed off the stage' of State enterprise, as a useless and futile conception, and that given in the printed report of a serious and august body that the new office would cost the State a million per annum. Details were given as to how these terrifying figures were arrived at, and the nation was almost persuaded that it had to choose between a new Dreadnought and the security of its trust estates. The bogey of compulsion appeared too like a will-o'-the-wisp in various provincial centres, and an attempt was made to infect the public mind with the apprehension that all trusts, with their vast number of matters requiring the exercise of a close and delicate personal discretion, would be arbitrarily seized by the Department, that our daughters' marriages would be delayed beyond the bloom of youth, and our sons miss whole terms at school while boots to enable them to return were being purchased by a dilatory department, struggling like a sort of Laocoon with strangulation by red tape.