taken to replace those withdrawn to South Africa. In case of a war with Russia in Afghanistan we should want an addition of fifty thousand British troops to the army in India; but no preparations have been made to supply them. A portion of our Indian army is of splendid material, and can be thoroughly trusted; but that portion is overworked, and signs of exhaustion showed themselves in it after the late frontier risings. It could not stand the strain of a prolonged campaign. As a whole the native Indian army is not in a satisfactory condition. The Madras army is useless-it would not even face the Burmese; the Bombay army is, in the opinion of many competent judges, not much better; fully one-half of the Bengal army is of doubtful value. None of these troops could with safety be placed in line of battle. We rely on the Punjab army, and there is not enough of that. Fighting races exist by the hundred thousand in Northern India, from which we could fill our regiments; but this would involve the abolition of the water-tight compartment system of the Madras, Bombay, and Bengal armies, adopted after the Mutiny. That this abolition must come we believe; otherwise with the strain of actual war our army will go to pieces. An aggressive war in Afghanistan is out of the question; we cannot in safety advance beyond the Khojak range or the Kuram Khyber hills; but a defensive war would be all in our favour. Even if the Russians were welcomed into Afghanistan, a few months would sicken the people of their presence; the country would rise against the Infidel; and if we were victorious, the Russians would have to retreat behind their present frontier, pursued by our troops and the Afghans throughout the length of Afghanistan, with losses which would for ever put aside any fear of the invasion of India. If we failed to defeat Russia all along the line, and if she established herself firmly at Kabul, then the English people would have to face the problem and to be prepared to keep two hundred and fifty thousand British troops in India.

To meet the contingency of a determined Russian advance on India we must entirely re-organise the native army, and reduce the useless southern troops, thus obtaining money for the up-keep of better troops. We must improve the frontier communications, fortify the passes, and largely increase and modernise our artillery. The number of British officers with native regiments should be doubled-there are now nominally eight; practically regiments often go into action with four or five, enough to last, with luck, through one battle-and we must organise large bodies of mounted infantry. Finally, we must be prepared, the moment danger threatens, to

throw a mass of Imperial troops-they need not be regularsinto India. Thirty or forty thousand men landed partly in Bombay, partly in Calcutta, would keep the country steady; and if the country is reassured, we have nothing to fear. This means money, and plenty of it, and India cannot find it all; but the existence of the Empire is at stake, and England must be prepared to help.

As for Afghanistan, we would adhere to the old policy: keep on good terms, if possible, with the existing ruler; strengthen him if necessary, but never trust him too much; and on no account, unless at the Amir's invitation, contemplate placing British officers in the country. It is an unsatisfactory plan at best; but any dealings with a savage Mohammedan State, short of complete subjugation, must always be so, owing to the genius of the religion and its influence on the character of the people. Our policy towards the border tribes not directly under our rule should be, we believe, unaggressive, but firm. Its direction should be in the hands of one officer, working directly under the Government of India, as proposed by Lord Lytton. Where roads have to be kept open, as in the case of the Khyber, or the road by Swat and Dir to Chitral, this should be done by the use of local levies. No annexation should be attempted, and no native middlemen relied on: selected British officers with a love for frontier life should alone be employed to deal with the tribes. If the British Empire is to remain in existence and to keep India, the tribesmen are bound, in the end, to come under our rule.

In short we believe that the lesson to be learnt from the history of our Indian frontier policy during the past thirty years is to keep our powder dry, to strain every nerve to perfect our defences on the border of the Indian Empire, to extend quietly and gradually our influence over the tribes on our frontier, and not to be drawn into a policy of adventure in Afghanistan. The fate of the Empire is in the lap of the gods; there may be dark times before us; but we cannot believe that if we are true to ourselves there is any reason to fear disaster. But there must be none of that deplorable lack of common-sense preparation on the part of our statesmen, none of that dilettante treatment of vital questions, of which they have so recently been guilty. From a defeat at Magersfontein or Colenso the nation can recover, but a crash at Quetta or at the mouth of the Khyber might bring down the Empire in India.

ART. XI. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

1. The Life of Wellington: the Restoration of the Martial Power of Great Britain. By the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P. Two vols. Third edition. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1900.

2. Waterloo. Par Henry Houssaye. Paris: Perrin et Cie., 1899. 3. Vie Militaire du Général Foy. Par Maurice Girod de L'Ain. Paris: Plon, Nourrit, et Cie., 1900.

4. A Boy in the Peninsular War: the Services, Adventures, and Experiences of Robert Blakeney. Edited by Julian Sturgis. London: John Murray, 1899.

5. La Campagne dans les Pyrénées, 1813-1814. Par Le Commandant Clerc. Paris: L. Baudoin, 1896.

IT

T is now many years since an English author attempted to write the Life of the Duke of Wellington, although an enormous mass of new evidence has been produced since Gleig and Brialmont and their contemporaries essayed the task. In addition to material that has hitherto been purposely held back, much more that seems to have been merely overlooked has now come to light. Almost every year some new diary of a Peninsular officer is exhumed from a long-unopened desk. Few of these are so lively as that of Robert Blakeney, which appeared last year. The cheerful and reckless young Irishman's account of what befel him at Corunna, Barrosa, and the Nive, is quite as interesting as anything in the narratives of his countrymen Grattan, Bell, and Lestrange, which we have long known. It contains, moreover, several new points of considerable military importance.

The time is therefore ripe for the appearance of a new biography of the Duke. Sir Herbert Maxwell has undertaken the task, and has produced a solid work, which will in many ways supersede all that has gone before. A great part of its value comes from the fact that the cabinets of Apsley House were opened to the author, so that he has been able to illustrate the Duke's private life and personal views with greater freedom and certainty than any of his predecessors. We rise from reading his book with a clearer view of Wellington as a man than we ever had before. On Wellington as strategist or politician we do not think that much new light is thrown; and, to our notion, Sir Herbert is prone to be unduly severe in his judgment on the Duke's military operations. He has evidently been impressed with French criticism, which (as we hope to show) is not much fairer now than it was eighty years ago, in

the days when every retired colonel across the Channel was ready to demonstrate that Toulouse was an English defeat, and Talavera a drawn battle.

Lord Roberts, in his Rise of Wellington,' published five years ago, expressed an opinion which seemed strange to many of his readers and critics. It was to the effect that the more we study the Duke's life in detail, the more we respect him as a general, and the less we like him as a man. This is precisely the impression that is left upon us by a careful perusal of Sir Herbert Maxwell's volumes. Fifty years ago it seemed almost treasonable to breathe a word against Wellington's personal character-so great was the debt we owed him for Salamanca and Waterloo. His strange political inconsistencies were condoned; his angularity and formalism were regarded with respect and even admiration; his lack of natural affection and his utter inability to understand the sentimental side of life were even praised as signs of Spartan virtue. Certain episodes which did not fit in too happily with the 'Spartan hero' theory were deliberately ignored. The Duke carried into political life a habit of arbitrary authority which had grown upon him from long years of command in the field; it was most galling to the Ministers who had to serve with him and the party which looked up to him as their leader. Nevertheless they obeyed. 'He'll say '-wrote Lord Clarendon in 1829, when the Catholic Emancipation Bill was impending-"" My Lords! Attention! Right about face! Quick march!" and the thing will be done.' Nothing can illustrate the Duke's unfitness for political life better than his ridiculous duel with Lord Winchelsea. Finding his motives for a change of policy questioned by a discontented partisan, Wellington must needs challenge his critic to a personal encounter in Battersea Fields. The idea of a Prime Minister who keeps recalcitrant supporters of his Ministry in order by means of the pistol is nothing short of grotesque. Yet the meeting actually took place, and even after shots had been exchanged the Duke was inexorable, till he had been propitiated by a written apology.

The popular conception of Wellington has been largely built up on laudatory sketches and essays written by those who knew him in his old age alone. He lives in our memories as a kind of Nestor, replete with useful and interesting information-as Lord Stanhope drew him in his Conversations,' or Sir William Fraser in his Words on Wellington.' Sir Herbert Maxwell's book leaves a very different impression. There were a few intimates to whom the Duke was readily accessible, and to whom he often spoke freely of the past; but on the whole he

was a friendless man. For none of the old Peninsular officers who had served him so faithfully does he seem to have shown any special regard. Lord Hill, Sir George Murray, and Lord Fitzroy Somerset, his most trusted subordinates, are said never to have been among his guests at Strathfieldsaye. For his political allies he had even less kindly feelings; his quarrel with Canning and his long estrangement from Peel were both due to his own touchiness and impatience of opposition. He never could comprehend the simplest principles of Cabinet government; the hopelessness of attempting to argue with him is clearly shown in one of his private letters, quoted by Sir Herbert Maxwell (ii, 194), where he is describing a meeting of his Ministerial colleagues :

'One man wants one thing and one another: they agree to what I say in the morning, and then in the evening up they start with some crotchet which deranges the whole plan. I have not been used to that in all the early part of my life. I have been accustomed to carry on things in quite a different manner. I assembled my officers, and laid down my plan, and it was carried into effect without any more words.'

The Duke was always prone to regard any criticisms of his views as insubordination, and too ready to impute discreditable motives to those who were guilty of them. It was almost impossible to serve under him without incurring his displeasure. We need not wonder if we find that, though he had many allies, he had no friends among the Tory Ministers of his day.

Wellington's home life leaves an even less happy impression upon us. He had made an unwise marriage with a pretty, flighty, brainless wife, who, though affectionate enough, was utterly unable to understand him or to help him.

They formed a couple wholly unsuited to each other, and it avails not to scrutinise or criticise their relations more closely. It would be idle to pretend that the parting brought deep grief to the Duke; it is not so referred to in any of his correspondence; indeed, there never was a wife, in her death, as in her life, of whom her husband made such rare mention in his letters. To Lady Salisbury, indeed, who. was at this time . . . his most intimate correspondent and confidante, the Duke did impart a very frank explanation of his infelicitous experience of married life of the Duchess's extravagance; of her insincerity towards himself about the amount of her debts; of her flightiness and injudicious treatment of her sons; these observations are preserved in Lady Salisbury's journal.' (ii, 260.)

Nor was Wellington consoled for his matrimonial infelicity by the sympathy and companionship of his sons, He never