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 EUROPE. 
 
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 THE 
 
 Balance of Military Power 
 IN Europe 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF 
 
 THE WAR RESOURCES OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 AND THE CONTINENTAL STATES 
 
 COLONEL . MAURICE 
 
 ROYAL ARTILLERY 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MILITARY ART AND HISTORY AT THE 
 ROYAL STAFF COLLEGE 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVIII 
 
 A'/ Rights resei-i'cd
 
 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHI-D IN ' BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, vii 
 
 THE BALANCE OF MILITARY POWER IN EUROPE, . I 
 
 I. RUSSIA AND ENGLAND, 29 
 
 II. GERMANY, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM, ... 65 
 
 III. GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA, . . -131 
 
 IV. ITALY, TURKEY, AND ENGLISH ALLIANCES, . . I9I 
 INDEX, 241
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The circumstances which led to the writing of the 
 articles forming the substance of this book were as 
 follows. About four years ago I was asked to con- 
 tribute to the " Citizen Series " — now being pub- 
 lished by Messrs Macmillan & Co. — a volume on 
 " National Defences." I objected at first, that as 
 the national defences of England depend on the 
 navy, it was rather a subject for a sailor than a 
 soldier. On the whole, however, I was persuaded 
 that though it was necessary for me to consult 
 some able sailor, the whole statement might be 
 more conveniently furnished by me. From that 
 time the question has been continually before my 
 mind ; but the more I have thought of it, the more 
 impossible it has seemed to me to deal satisfactorily 
 with it until there was, in some shape or other, 
 before the public a statement, to which I could 
 appeal, as to the warlike condition of other Powers.
 
 viii Introduction. 
 
 What is necessary for the defence of the Enghsh 
 Empire depends on what attack is Hkely to be 
 made upon it. 
 
 Furthermore, as it has happened to me to know 
 intimately ahnost all those who for many years 
 past have been practically considering the question, 
 1 was aware that for many reasons the time was 
 hardly ripe for bringing the subject in a satisfactory 
 shape before the public. The result has been that, 
 greatly I fear to the disgust of my excellent friend 
 and editor, Mr Craik, I have been continually post- 
 poning the publication of the volume. In the 
 course of last year circumstances changed. 
 
 The advent of Mr Smith to the War Office, and 
 of General Brackcnbury to the head of the In- 
 telligence Department, led to the serious and 
 earnest taking up of practical work of a kind that 
 many of us had been praying for for years, and 
 had begun to think past praying for. Notably 
 the defence of our coaling - stations — which my 
 friend the late Colonel Home had throughout his 
 active life, in season and out of season, pressed 
 upon the attention of successive Governments and 
 on the country — began to be seriously taken up 
 as a matter of practical politics. The subject had 
 been referred to a Royal Commission as long ago 
 as May 1879, when Lord Bcaconsfield's Govern- 
 ment was in office. But there did not seem to be 
 any prospect of the stations being properly gar-
 
 Introduction, ix 
 
 risoned, as well as fortified and armed, till Mr Smith 
 took office, and, both in his first tenure, his short 
 period of opposition, and his return to office, pressed 
 for the taking of practical steps to maintain at all 
 times in our distant possessions such garrisons as 
 would enable us to resist a coup de main. More- 
 over, fortunately information as to the steps being 
 taken both in this respect and in others to make 
 our defences practical, and not visionary merely, 
 was laid in such shape before the public, that it 
 was possible to quote it without divulging any 
 information which was not designed for the public 
 ear. 
 
 It had been my duty also, for the purposes of 
 my current work, to study with especial care dur- 
 ing two years, the present condition of the armed 
 Powers of Europe, and their military frontiers. 
 Naturally, for a duty of importance to the future 
 staff-officers of our army, I had facilities for obtain- 
 ing knowledge which were not easily accessible to 
 others. 
 
 Just at the moment when I was beginning to feel 
 myself competent to speak with some authority on 
 the subject, the following circumstances occurred. 
 
 First, Lord Wolseley very kindly allowed me to 
 study in proof the exhaustive essay, which has 
 since been published in Mr Ward's Jubilee volume, 
 on the Past and Present of the English Army. 
 That essay led to the conclusion that it is nee-
 
 X Introduction. 
 
 essary for some authoritative non-party tribunal 
 to determine the purposes for which we maintain 
 our army and navy, to consider how far our present 
 forces fulfil the necessary conditions, and to de- 
 cide what forces we do or do not require to 
 maintain. 
 
 Almost at the same time Sir James Fitz-James 
 Stephen's Commission, amongst many other most 
 valuable suggestions, made the same point. 
 
 In the course of conversation with me, Lord 
 Wolseley had expressed the view that in the 
 present condition of affairs we have the strongest 
 interest in joining those Powers who desire to 
 preserve peace, and in resisting those who threaten 
 disturbance. 
 
 All the circumstances of the time seem to make 
 it so probable that war may suddenly break out in 
 more than one quarter of Europe, that I thought 
 it probable that many readers would be interested 
 in having such guidance as a careful preliminary 
 study of the facts might enable me to supply as 
 to the probable conditions under which war would 
 take place, either between France and Germany or 
 between Russia and Austria, with Germany on the 
 side of Austria. I thought, also, that I saw my 
 way to that statement in relation to the European 
 forces which seemed to me essential as a prelimin- 
 ary to any discussion of " our national defences " ; 
 and therefore, for the purposes of the proposed
 
 Introduction. xi 
 
 volume, I was glad to seize it. Just at this moment 
 an acquaintance of Sir Charles Dilke's put into my 
 hand a proof of his last article of the series on 
 ' The Position of European Politics ' — that on the 
 " United Kingdom." He asked me to notice cer- 
 tain expressions which Sir Charles Dilke had used 
 about a recent speech of Lord Wolseley's, and to 
 comment on them for Sir Charles Dilke's informa- 
 tion. I had not seen Lord Wolseley since he had 
 delivered the speech referred to ; but as I was con- 
 vinced that Sir Charles Dilke had misunderstood 
 him, I wrote a series of comments which may now 
 be read in Sir Charles Dilke's volume. For, to 
 my no small surprise, I shortly afterwards found 
 that my comments had been embodied in Sir 
 Charles Dilke's article, with the statement that 
 they represented Lord Wolseley's own explanation 
 of his speech. As they did nothing of the kind, 
 and, from the nature of the case, could not do so, 
 I strongly conveyed that fact to Sir Charles Dilke, 
 through our common acquaintance, before the 
 article was sent to press ; nevertheless he retained 
 the words as he had originally written them. Nat- 
 urally I was not disposed for any further communi- 
 cations of that character. I had, however, been 
 reading the ' Fortnightly' articles with considerable 
 interest, and as they had touched on the very sub- 
 jdct I was anxious, for quite other reasons, to bring 
 before the world, this incident led to my writing
 
 Xll 
 
 Introditction. 
 
 to Mr Blackwood proposing to deal in his Maga- 
 zine with the question as a whole. I never have 
 been, and, unless it be so to be a supporter of the 
 Union, I am not now, a party man. I preferred, 
 nevertheless, to ask Mr Blackwood to take the 
 papers rather than any one else ; because, looking at 
 the matter solely as a question of justice, it seemed 
 to me that Sir Charles Dilke had been curiously ill 
 qualified, and had in his article shown himself so, 
 to address " those who desire to put aside personal 
 and party prejudice." He had fastened in his 
 attack upon a minor incident of the broad scheme 
 of reform, which owed its practical possibility to 
 Mr Smith. He had given to it a false interpreta- 
 tion. It seems to me that, if we are ever to get 
 things put on a proper footing, it is the bounden 
 duty of all those who do not care for party to rally 
 to the support of the first statesman, whoever he 
 may be, who will seriously take up practical busi- 
 ness. If that is partisanship, I am a partisan. I 
 am certain — and it is the opinion of all those who 
 have had the whole of the facts before them — that 
 Sir Charles Dilke's words on that subject did 
 noLhing but mischief. He has since tried to avoid 
 the issue ^ by saying that it is an irrelevant question 
 whether Mr Smith was a good man of business or 
 not. Certainly it is. I never raised it. It is 
 
 ' See tlie whole passage, ' Fortnightly Review,' Januaiy 1888, 
 p. 5.
 
 Introduction. xiii 
 
 not an irrelevant issue whether the effect of Sir 
 Charles's articles is or is not to move a vote of no 
 confidence in a particular statesman, precisely be- 
 cause he attempted to provide us with effective 
 garrisons for our coaling-stations and harbours, 
 and to enable our corps d'armcc to act in the field. 
 If to say that you will only believe these things 
 when you see them,^ as Sir Charles Dilke specifi- 
 cally did, be not to declare " no confidence," and if 
 that be not the ordinary English mode of express- 
 ing a wish to displace a statesman, I do not under- 
 stand what words mean. 
 
 I am anxious, however, to avoid making this 
 Introduction or these articles into a mere contro- 
 versy with Sir Charles Dilke. Considering the 
 amount of attention which his articles had at- 
 tracted, it was almost impossible to avoid noticing 
 those points on which I agreed or differed from 
 him. But my purpose has been to deal with ques- 
 tions only incidentally alluded to by Sir Charles 
 Dilke. 
 
 In the article under the general heading of the 
 " Balance of Power in Europe," my object has been 
 to show historically, that in the cases in modern 
 times in which we have had any interest in inter- 
 vening on the Continent, we could have, in fact, 
 intervened with decisive effect. I have, in order to 
 show this, dealt with the cases of Denmark in 1864, 
 1 ' Present Position of European Politics,' p. 316.
 
 xiv Introduction. 
 
 and of Constantinople in 1878. My complaints as 
 to Sir Charles Dilkc's statements on these subjects 
 were, in fact, little better than pegs on which to 
 hang certain historical statements, on which, for 
 the purposes of my general contention, I am most 
 anxious to insist. The appearance of Mr King- 
 lake's new volumes has enabled me to reinforce 
 these statements by appealing to his account of 
 the Kertch Expedition, and to his admirable com- 
 ments on that incident, as well as to the legitimate 
 deductions from what he has now proved to have 
 been the true story of the siege of Sebastopol 
 itself. 
 
 The deduction which it is my object to draw 
 from these records of the past is that, to quote Mr 
 Kinglake again, the places " where land and sea 
 much intertwine" are those where the power of 
 England can best be exerted. Further, that the 
 power which we can there exert does not depend 
 on our navy alone, but upon the marvellous force 
 we possess in our unrivalled mercantile marine. 
 That there is a quite peculiar and enormously 
 potent military influence which may be exerted by 
 a small army which can be landed at pleasure at 
 unknown points by a nation which possesses the 
 command of the sea. That, in order to make that 
 force available, it is indispensable that it should be 
 warlike — not merely military — in its composition : 
 in other words, that it is useless to shijD in this
 
 Introduction. xv 
 
 way mere regiments, batteries, and squadrons, but 
 that the force must consist of perfect little armies, 
 such as are formed by the corps cVarmce of the 
 Continent. That, from the nature of the condi- 
 tions under which we must always enter upon war, 
 it is more — not less — necessary for us than for 
 Continental Powers to have the force with which 
 we are to act ready for instant action, not on a 
 parade or at an Aldershot review, but on a field of 
 battle and throughout a campaign. That, never- 
 theless, our whole military power disappears unless 
 our navy is so overwhelmingly powerful that it 
 will be able to spare force for striking blows away 
 from home, and will not be absorbed in mere 
 defence of our shores and of our vast commerce. 
 That to that end it is necessary that our coaling- 
 stations and harbours shall be adequately armed 
 and garrisoned, and that the garrisons of our dis- 
 tant stations beyond sea shall be permanently 
 maintained there ; because war breaks out always 
 with such startling rapidity that garrisons not on 
 the spot are useless, while our Foreign Office will, 
 beyond all doubt, resist, as a matter of diplomatic 
 prudence, reinforcement on the eve of war, even if 
 war ever had a really long " eve." The only time 
 when we can garrison Hong-Kong, Singapore, and 
 the like, is during profound peace. 
 
 In the first article of the consecutive series, 
 called " Russia and England," I have maintained —
 
 XVI 
 
 InU'oduction. 
 
 having here very powerful support from Sir Charles 
 Dilke's arguments — that two facts have changed 
 altogether for us the circumstances with which 
 other generations of Englishmen had to deal. 
 The first of these is this, that the frontiers of 
 Russia and England now virtually march side by 
 side in Asia. The second is, that the armed 
 forces of Continental Powers have been devel- 
 oped to an extent of which most Englishmen 
 have never formed to themselves any conception 
 at all. I have appealed to evidence, which I be- 
 lieve to be unanswerable, to prove that we can 
 never make terms with Russia to which Russia 
 will adhere longer than it suits her. 
 
 Just at this moment, when Russia has objects 
 and purposes which clash with the wishes and 
 interests of Continental Powers, she will be sure to 
 be most willing to arrange terms which will for the 
 time keep us quiet. She is not actually ready to 
 attack us in India. We know that she intends to 
 do so. Of course, if she can divide us from others 
 whom she wishes to crush also, she will do it. 
 "Divide et Iinpera^' is not a maxim which is bran- 
 new in 1888. 
 
 My contention in this article is that, if we can 
 act in such a way that we can lend effective service 
 to other Powers who have an interest in opposing 
 the designs of Russia in Europe, and if we can 
 make that service so valuable that it would be
 
 Introduction. xvii 
 
 worth their while to make with us a treaty which 
 would equally prohibit Russian attack on India, it 
 is our true policy to do so. 
 
 Furthermore, I have shown that the territorial 
 conditions of our Indian frontier greatly increase 
 the importance of this question. It is vitally im- 
 portant to stop Russia from possessing herself of 
 the Heri Rud. For reasons I have given, we 
 cannot safely attempt this from India. It is not 
 there that " land and sea much intertwine." 
 
 The remaining articles all deal with the question 
 thus raised. 
 
 In the second — that headed " Germany, France, 
 and Belgium " — I have endeavoured to show, by 
 comparing the conditions of foreign Powers on the 
 Continent and our own, that those statesmen are 
 leading us on to a false scent who, acknowledging 
 the necessity which the present time presents for a 
 more effective condition of our armaments, believe 
 that they may at the same time reduce our expendi- 
 ture, because, as they say, foreign Powers do so 
 much more with a given sum of money than we do. 
 
 It is difficult to keep the bearing of an argument, 
 carried on in consecutive months, before readers 
 who do not necessarily read each article. I was 
 therefore not surprised that a few critics, who ad- 
 mitted the truth of what I said, made also some 
 complaint that I should connect this subject of 
 relative expense with that of the "Balance of
 
 xviii Introduction. 
 
 Power in Europe." Now it will be observed that 
 the problem I set myself was to discuss the ques- 
 tion raised by Lord Wolseley and Sir Fitz-James 
 Stephen's Commission, the importance of which 
 had been admitted by Sir Charles Dilke — " What 
 we want, what we want it for, and whether we can 
 afford to pay for it." My dealing with " The 
 Balance of Power in Europe" is an all-important 
 incident of the reply to that question, because I 
 contend that the present condition of the balance 
 of power in Europe determines how we can most 
 economically and effectively develop and employ 
 our power for the defence of the Empire. But it 
 is obvious also, that the question whether we can 
 for the same money obtain the results secured by 
 foreign Powers is also an essential element of my 
 answer. I believe that I have shown reason for 
 my contention that our own army is incomparably 
 the cheapest army in the world, in the sense that, 
 for the work it docs, it puts less strain upon the 
 country, and takes less money out of it, than the 
 army of any Continental State. I am far from con- 
 tending that no reforms are needed. I believe they 
 are. But I believe that they must be reforms which 
 assume the conditions of English life, and do not 
 ignore them. So far from wishing to modify any- 
 thing I have said in this part of the article, I desire 
 to reinforce it by two remarks I have not there 
 made.
 
 Introduction. xix 
 
 First, there is only one country in the world 
 which fairly compares with our own in expenditure. 
 The United States alone of all countries has, like 
 our own, the commercial wisdom to pay directly 
 for what it wants. 
 
 Now the great anomaly on which would-be 
 economical reformers fasten, as the extravagant 
 fact connected with our army, is, that with a force 
 of 208,357 regulars we have a non-effective return 
 of nearly tJiree million pounds sterling. 
 
 Now the United States army consists of 25,000 
 men, all told. Its non-effective return reaches 
 seventeen inillion pounds sterling. 
 
 As I am anxious to emphasise this fact, and do 
 not wish to be supposed to have made some mis- 
 take as to currency, I will put it also that it costs 
 eighty inillion of dollars. 
 
 Of course that is largely a result of the great 
 Civil War ; but that does not affect the point for 
 which I mention it — namely, that it may happen 
 that a non-effective return represents some of the 
 best money that is paid by a country. I have 
 shown in the text what the services are which our 
 non-effective return renders us in one respect ; but 
 as, since my articles were written, a great point has 
 been made about the extravagance of our medical 
 non-effective return, and as the facts on that sub- 
 ject supply some instructive information, I shall 
 touch on it here.
 
 XX Introduction. 
 
 The reason why our medical pension -h'st is so 
 high is this. A few years ago the Government 
 and the medical schools were at war. The schools 
 beat the Government hip and thigh, from Dan to 
 Beersheba. In utter despair of getting any medical 
 men for the army, the Government surrendered at 
 discretion. It appeared possible to take advantage 
 of the conditions of medical civil life in England in 
 this way. Young doctors usually spend the first 
 seven years or so of their medical life in getting old 
 enough to be supposed fit to take up a practice, 
 spending that time on merchant-ships, in attending 
 hospitals, or in various ways which for the most 
 part are somewhat disjointed from their after- 
 career. It was thought, and it has proved true, that 
 by offering a lump sum at stated periods early in 
 their career, or small pensions a little later, the 
 ablest young doctors might be tempted to enter 
 the army for a time, without sacrificing the more 
 lucrative prospects of civil practice. Now it is 
 to be observed that if this scheme succeeded, 
 its inevitable effect would be to increase the 
 medical " non-effective return " out of proportion 
 to the " effective return." The pensions were, in 
 fact, the very means by which the Government 
 paid for the services of the men actually in the 
 army. As they induced abler men to join the 
 service than could be obtained in any other way 
 because of the conditions of civil practice, and as
 
 Introduction. xxi 
 
 they induced them to accept relatively low rates of 
 pay, there is nothing in the mere fact of the large 
 "non-effective medical return," which of itself 
 proves that we are not obtaining our doctors by 
 the cheapest scheme on which we can get them. 
 Whether it may or may not be better to pay in 
 some other way, I am not concerned to discuss. 
 But I am certain that the outcry against the mere 
 circumstance of the high relation between the 
 medical "non-effective" and the "effective" re- 
 turn — that is, between the proportions paid for 
 pensions and for pay to doctors in the army — is 
 merely and only the result of ignorance of the 
 facts, or of short memories. It is startling to find 
 that, of all the statesmen who were members of 
 the House of Commons when these arrangements 
 were made, no one remembers them sufificiently 
 well to be able conclusively to answer a purely 
 fictitious though most plausible cry. All is not 
 gold that glitters ; but we are always being run 
 away with by glitter, because no one scratches 
 below the surface. The chances at present are 
 that, yielding to an outcry, the weakness of which 
 they do not take the trouble to examine, our 
 statesmen may be forced into a fresh trial of 
 strength with the medical schools. They will in- 
 fallibly be beaten, and will have to make probably 
 yet more ignominious terms with their triumphant 
 conquerers. " Their triumphant conquerers " think 
 
 c
 
 xxii Introduction. 
 
 of it Imagine these words applied to the Govern- 
 ments of Germany, Austria, and Russia, and then 
 gravely discuss the question of the money you vote 
 for your army, and the money they vote. In 
 Germany the medical man is under the compul- 
 sion which the general conditions of universal 
 service put upon him. He is glad enough to be 
 employed on his proper work, to go through a 
 Government school which offers him educational 
 facilities, binding himself to serve afterwards as 
 a medical man on cheap terms. But blink the 
 matter as they may, that compulsion is itself an 
 enormous money-tax inflicted on the profession as 
 a whole. It appears in no budget. Yet the general 
 effect is to extract from the country, though it 
 comes from only one section of it, an enormously 
 larger sum than we pay for our medical service. 
 
 It is strangely difficult to get people to look at a 
 question from a point of view to which they are 
 not accustomed. Because I was contending in 
 this article that, great as in many respects were the 
 services which universal military training renders 
 to the health and order of a country, it is very 
 dear as a mere question of money, I was in one 
 quarter answered, " No one thinks of introduc- 
 ing universal service. You waste your breath in 
 arguing against it." I am not arguing against it 
 at all. I am simply accepting our conditions as 
 they stand, and I say that our budget, ugly as it
 
 Introduction. xxiii 
 
 looks, is in fact so small a one as compared with 
 the concealed money waste of universal service, 
 that our people are deceived by its appearance. 
 Everybody says that, if only the country were con- 
 vinced that it is getting its money's worth for its 
 money, it would gladly do what is necessary for 
 national security. I maintain, and no one has yet 
 faced my argument, that we get our army more 
 cheaply than any other Power ; that here and there 
 economies may be effected, but that the broad 
 fact remains that the thirty - eight millions will 
 barely maintain our home and Indian army in 
 current efficiency, and that the additional sums we 
 require for horses, stores, effective armaments, gar- 
 risons for coaling-stations and harbours, and for an 
 efficient navy, cannot be obtained without excep- 
 tional expenditure, such as all Continental Powers 
 have incurred for them. Direct money payment for 
 each thing you want is, as every one who has ever 
 catered for bar or army mess, or for a party of any 
 other body of men, knows by experience, the most 
 thrifty mode of payment. But thrift may become 
 ruinous if the large figures staring you in the face 
 frighten you from paying what is necessary for effi- 
 ciency, because others who pay through the nose 
 without realising it, don't face figures as large. 
 
 The medical case is a capital illustration, because 
 it is the one instance in which the Government 
 comes fairly face to face with the professional con-
 
 XX iv Introduction. 
 
 ditions of a wealthy country. These conditions 
 tell, nevertheless, in directions where they are not 
 known to tell. All through my service I have 
 hardly known any very able men in the army who, 
 unless very wealthy, were not continually being 
 forced to consider whether they could afford to re- 
 main in it. Of course in many instances they yield 
 to necessity, and a disastrous process of weeding 
 goes on. This process, which drives able men out 
 of the army, is continually working. The tempta- 
 tions which are held out to them in England are 
 enormous. I could give case after case of the 
 most startling kind. It applies to all ranks. In 
 some instances I could clearly show the direct 
 pecuniary loss which has resulted to the country 
 from the fact of the tremendous competition offered 
 by civil life. When large English companies find 
 it commercially advantageous to pay their chair- 
 man ^7500 per annum, as is the case with one 
 large railway company, ;^8ooo per annum, as is 
 the case with others, it is absurd to say, as the cry 
 now is, that the pay of our highest civil and mili- 
 tary servants is to be compared with those of Ger- 
 many. I am certain that the direction in which 
 economy is being looked for is a false one. Not 
 one question is asked by any Parliamentary or 
 other committee with the view to ascertain these 
 facts. Nay, when any evidence is tendered which 
 may possibly show that economy lies in a different
 
 Introduction. xxv 
 
 direction from that which is assumed, it is usually- 
 ignored and neglected. Now you cannot really 
 secure economy except by facing facts. Inquiry, 
 the object of which is not to ascertain truth but to 
 confirm an established popular prejudice, will cer- 
 tainly lead to conclusions which end in disaster. 
 
 Therefore I am certain that the discussion in 
 the pages of this volume, 69-96, on " German and 
 English Economy," is a necessary and a most im- 
 portant part of the inquiry with which I am here 
 concerned. I am happy to find from the notices, 
 more especially in the leading provincial papers, 
 that hardly any has excited more interest, or has 
 been more generally confirmed from local experi- 
 ence, some papers having supplied fresh facts of 
 the greatest value bearing on the matter. I have 
 reason to know that Lord Randolph Churchill has 
 had some unpleasant experiences in trying to press 
 his views on men of large commercial knowledge. 
 
 The next subject — that of the military frontiers 
 of France and Germany — is intended, first, to 
 serve the purpose of assisting readers to under- 
 stand the general situation between those Powers, 
 so as to follow with an intelligent interest discus- 
 sions which are daily appearing in the newspapers, 
 and to understand events if war should unhappily 
 break out. Secondly, it is necessary as part of the 
 account of the general situation of Europe, in order 
 to show how our power can be most economically
 
 xxvi Introduction. 
 
 exerted for our own defence. The questions about 
 Belgium, and our relations to that country, so 
 obviously concern ourselves, that I do not think 
 they need be further touched on here. 
 
 In the article on " Germany, Russia, and Aus- 
 tria," the same double purpose is followed. The 
 final article deals with the whole situation as it 
 concerns ourselves. Its purpose is to show that 
 the rise of the Italian power has offered us the 
 opportunity of affording that assistance to the 
 Continental Powers which will enable us, on the do 
 nt des principle, to secure that alliance the advan- 
 tage of which it was the object of the first article 
 to insist upon. 
 
 The anonymous veil that was originally thrown 
 over the authorship of these articles was always 
 very thin. I never concealed my identity from 
 any one who cared to know it. Sir Charles Dilke 
 was informed of my purpose before I published 
 an article, because I was naturally unwilling to 
 attack him without letting him know who his assail- 
 ant was. Nevertheless it has had one useful effect. 
 Despite the extreme kindness which I have met 
 with from most of my critics, a few have illustrated 
 rather amusingly their ideas and experiences as to 
 the anonymous in writing. As they are most of 
 them anonymous writers, the facts are suggestive. 
 
 I had warmly defended the proper use of cavalry, 
 quoting the names of the greatest authorities in
 
 Introduction. xxvii 
 
 Europe as guarantees for the truth of what I had 
 said. Therefore one critic announced, without hesi- 
 tation, that I was a cavahy officer. I had spoken 
 of General Brackenbury as " one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of Hving artillery officers," therefore 
 another critic announced in three successive para- 
 graphs, as a fact within his own knowledge, that 
 I was General Brackenbury. It is needless to 
 say that, having this exact knowledge of my 
 identity, he displayed his literary critical capacity 
 by detecting in parts of these articles a style 
 identical with certain other articles which, as he 
 alleged, General Brackenbury had written. 
 
 I presume that it was in vengeance for his error 
 that he, the week after he had discovered it, pro- 
 ceeded to attack " military professors " — it being 
 obvious that two years' special study at the Staff 
 College in an official appointment, which I received 
 on the understanding that it would in no way 
 interfere with my employment on active service, 
 had changed my nature as a soldier after four 
 campaigns and twenty-four years' previous service 
 in the army. 
 
 The same critic assumed that it was because of 
 some salaries in which I was specially interested, 
 that I pointed out that, for instance, the Ports- 
 mouth command, the pay of which is unusually 
 large, is only an expense to its holder, and does 
 not in the proper sense yield pay at all.
 
 xxviii Introduction. 
 
 The one thing which these gentlemen seem un- 
 able to conceive is, that there are some of us, whose 
 business it has been to watch events closely for 
 some years past, not from a party point of view, 
 but in the interest of national safety, who really 
 and earnestly believe that there arc facts which 
 it is vital that the country should face. I myself 
 know from many conversations that even the most 
 intelligent classes in this country are not in the 
 least aware of the actual condition of the armed 
 Powers of the Continent. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is 
 able to say to an average audience without being 
 hissed, " Why should not we invade France in- 
 stead of France invading us, if we have a Channel 
 Tunnel ? " And the depth of the folly which that 
 sentence expresses is not understood by one 
 Englishman in ten among business men or pro- 
 fessional men. 
 
 Now we soldiers may be all wrong in what we 
 say. Those who are not soldiers or sailors may be 
 the only people who can think without bias — who 
 can judge what ought to be done. But no men of 
 any kind can be right who form their conclusions 
 from false assumptions as to facts. What I find 
 everywhere is that the facts which may be gathered ^ 
 
 1 Alack ! I had in my haste written, "say from the ' Statesman's 
 Year-Book,' " but reference at once showed that that work was de- 
 ceptive, and deceptive only and completely, as to the strength of 
 armies. English statesmen "care for none of these things," and 
 those who cater for them know it.
 
 Introduction. xxix 
 
 from any authoritative source altogether independ- 
 ent of soldiers are not known, and, as Mr Gladstone 
 once put it in an analogous matter, " If they are 
 read, they are not marked, learned, and inwardly 
 digested." 
 
 I do not know how the facts arc to be brought 
 home if it is assumed at once and without exam- 
 ination of what he says, that whoever has been 
 obliged to look into these facts must necessarily 
 have some secret base motive for asking his coun- 
 trymen to examine them. Surely the question is 
 sufficiently serious — I do not mean by that panic- 
 suggesting, but merely not fitting for a society 
 journal joke — to make it right that some men who 
 cannot have any base motive, such as these writers 
 instantly attribute to a soldier or sailor, should look 
 for themselves into the question and see whether 
 these things are so or not. 
 
 Perhaps I may now claim that, by the very 
 assumptions which these writers have made as to 
 my probable identity, I come fonvard under cir- 
 cumstances which do not suggest the presumption 
 of prejudice. A soldier, I am pleading before all 
 things for the navy. I am pleading on grounds 
 of the military study of the Continent, which it has 
 belonged to my office to undertake, and which I 
 think I have made intelligible to the mind of all 
 Englishmen, so that they who are not soldiers or 
 sailors may judge for themselves.
 
 XXX Introduction. 
 
 Trained and militarily bred as a field-artillery- 
 man, and having had the honour of wearing the 
 Horse-Artillery jacket, I am, from sheer conviction, 
 pleading that, for the sake of the country, we field- 
 gunners must bear to sec our own arm reduced, 
 rather than that the army as a whole, including 
 the artillery, should not be able to act with the 
 promptitude which is necessary for the service of 
 the country. 
 
 I am pleading thus, though I know that our 
 Volunteers and militia stand sorely in need of the 
 support of field-guns, and that they are not an 
 army without them. 
 
 I am pleading thus against a most brilliant 
 writer, who has given more study to foreign 
 armies than any other of our statesmen, and who 
 girds at me because I do not believe it possible 
 on our present estimates to make an increase of 
 390, or, as he at first not unfairly urged as the 
 proper complement, 900 field-guns. 
 
 Perhaps the generous critics to whom I have 
 alluded may discover for me the hidden baseness 
 which may lead me to suggest that the money 
 required for this object ought first to be spent in 
 ensuring the safety of our harbours and coaling- 
 stations — in none of which I hope ever to be em- 
 ployed — and in ensuring the supremacy of our 
 navy, in which I have no other concern than that 
 of a tax-payer and a subject of the English crown.
 
 Introduction. xxxi 
 
 The increase of the field-artillery would, in fact, 
 have for me the most direct and immediate pro- 
 fessional advantage. It would give to me under 
 almost any possible organisation such professional 
 advancement as would be of more value to me 
 than any other merely personal advantage that an 
 expenditure of money can bring. I do not think, 
 therefore, that the pleas I put forward ought, from 
 the mere source from which they spring, to be met 
 with suspicion. 
 
 The audience to which I am anxious to appeal 
 are the lawyers, the business men, the doctors, the 
 numbers of intelligent working men whom I know 
 to be interested in the concerns of their country. 
 Of course I am glad to have the support of soldiers 
 as to the military soundness of what I have urged. 
 I can hardly receive kinder, warmer, or more 
 authoritative testimony on that point than I have 
 received. But unless Englishmen generally will 
 judge for themselves of the policy I here advocate, 
 my words are wasted. Statesmen cannot, for the 
 reasons I have assigned, make for us that federal 
 treaty which, as I believe, will ensure peace in our 
 generation, will protect India and secure our com- 
 merce ; still less can they ensure the efficiency of 
 our small army and the necessary supremacy of 
 our navy without your support, sir, or madam, who 
 chance to be reading this. It is in proportion as 
 the nation refuses by practical voting to allow the
 
 xxxii Introduction. 
 
 question of our foreign policy to be made the 
 shuttlecock of party, that foreign statesmen are 
 ready to give as we give. I am speaking on some 
 of the very best authority in all Europe when I so 
 speak. You can play your part in making the 
 question intelligible to others. In its broad outline 
 it is a very simple one, and easily explained. The 
 Secretary of the Treasury is your representative. 
 It is to save your pocket that he turns out Lord 
 Charles Beresford. He does so merely because we, 
 none of us, like to pay what is needed to make the 
 navy efficient. I have as little liking for the tax- 
 gatherer's little chit as you have. I have no more 
 personal interest in the navy than you. But I have 
 had to study matters which, if you will follow these 
 pages, you may understand as well as I do. If you 
 do understand them, you will see that every shilling 
 we now save in taxes from Treasury decisions, 
 which help to make the navy inefficient, is ruin- 
 ous extravagance. We shall have to live a very 
 few years in order to pay for them in many pounds 
 for each shilling, and wc shall then have suffered 
 in a thousand other ways which no pounds will 
 redeem. 
 
 It was — as Mr Kinglake has shown without a 
 possible logical flaw, on the evidence of exhaustive 
 Parliamentary inquiries — the direct act of a Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, Sir Charles Trevelyan, which 
 absolutely caused all the misery, the extravagance,
 
 Introduction. xxxiii 
 
 and the loss of life of the Crimean Winter. There 
 is no man living who, for the reasons I have named, 
 is so directly your representative and mine as tax- 
 payers as the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury. 
 It is as you feel that he will act. If you choose to 
 have such a navy and an army so mobile that you 
 can by their aid ensure the support of the Central 
 Powers in keeping Russia quiet, Sir Reginald 
 Welby will not be a second Sir Charles Trevelyan.^ 
 You will have no war with Russia for India at all, 
 in all human probability. At the worst, if you do, 
 it will be a short one, for you will have some of the 
 greatest Powers in the world on your side. There 
 are few facts more certain in the world than that 
 within the next ten years the fruits of your decision 
 will have been gathered. The one thing on which 
 you must not reckon is, that any one in the position 
 of the Secretary of the Treasury will take them into 
 account. They never have done in all their his- 
 tory, and they never will. The question that con- 
 cerns them is the preparation of the Budget of the 
 year. The Budgets of the next ten years are be- 
 yond their purview. 
 
 I have had occasion to refer several times to the 
 scheme for the British army apparently suggested 
 by Sir Charles Dilke. My reference has been al- 
 
 1 The offices are not identical, though both are correctly described 
 as Secretaries of the Treasury. The distinction is irrelevant to my 
 purpose.
 
 xxxiv Introduction. 
 
 ways to these words : " I am convinced that by an 
 expenditure of far less than the 36 to 38 milHons 
 sterhng which we spend already upon our army, 
 we could create a force which would make our 
 enemies pause before they ventured to attack us. 
 This is not the time to work out, as I intend to do, 
 the possible relations in the new infantry system 
 between what might be called the guards, the 
 militia, and the volunteers. Some of the Australian 
 colonies, in their new military systems, have recog- 
 nised the distinction which should exist, in order 
 to call out the full local military strength, between 
 various classes of what they style volunteers. 
 Some of them have a force in the nature of a 
 volunteer militia which is paid, . . . and it will be 
 interesting at a future time to consider whether the 
 various Australian military systems do not point 
 out to us the way in which we should walk in 
 future." ^ 
 
 I think I was justified in concluding from these 
 words, accompanied by a fierce attack upon all the 
 steps actually being taken to give us two effective 
 army corps and a cavalry division, that Sir Charles 
 Dilke did not realise the importance of " our am- 
 phibious strength." The desire to bring home to 
 all men the importance to England of possessing a 
 highly mobile force, helped to make me wish to 
 lay before them the facts which arc here recorded. 
 ' ' I'resent Position of European Politics,' pp. 333, 334.
 
 Introduction . x x x v 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke, in his more recent articles, has 
 declared his wish to provide us with the two army 
 corps and a cavalry division, and has cited the case 
 of Switzerland to show that we ought to be able 
 also to possess several hundred field-guns. As he 
 has withdrawn from the proposal to reduce our 
 expenditure, and now, on the contrary, thinks that 
 we must increase it, I naturally can only await with 
 unalloyed interest the explanation of his present 
 proposals. I have no reason to suppose that they 
 will clash with anything that I have here said. 
 They certainly will not tend, if they carry out the 
 indications he has now given, to diminish the im- 
 portance of what I have urged. 
 
 The system of a developed militia, which the 
 original proposal appeared to suggest, met its coup 
 de grace at Olmutz in 1849. So long as we get 
 the power which will, on the do ut des principle, 
 enable us to play our part in keeping the peace 
 of Europe, and in keeping Russia out of India, I 
 am content.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I HAVE on the whole preferred to retain the articles in 
 their original form, only putting in such matters as 
 would bring them up to date. To distinguish between 
 the new notes added to the volume and the original 
 text and notes, I have retained the "we" of the originals, 
 but have written " I " in the notes added afterwards.
 
 THE 
 
 BALANCE OF MILITARY POWER 
 IN EUROPE. 
 
 It is a curious fact that the most unmistakable 
 mark of himself which it appears likely that Mr 
 Bright will leave behind him on our Statute-book 
 is to be found in the Army Act. Up to the year 
 1867 th^ preamble of the Mutiny Act had always 
 declared that the purpose for which the army was 
 maintained was "the safety of the United King- 
 dom, the defence of the possessions of her Majesty's 
 crown, and the preservation of the balance of power 
 in Europe." 
 
 But when Mr Bright became a Cabinet Minister 
 in Mr Gladstone's Administration, the words refer- 
 ring to the " balance of power in Europe " were, at 
 his instance, dropped out ; and as the preamble to 
 the annual Act now stands, our army exists only 
 
 A
 
 2 Meaning of " Balance of Poiver " 
 
 for "the safety of the United Kingdom and the 
 defence of the possessions of her Majesty's crown." 
 
 As a rule, abstract questions, such for instance 
 as the purposes for which we maintain armed forces 
 at all, arc not in England thrashed out. A writer 
 here or there propounds a theory which obtains a 
 certain amount of acceptance ; and a few years 
 later one finds it taken for granted by the careless 
 and the thoughtless that certain assumptions, on 
 which no adequate Areopagus has ever decided, 
 are to be accepted for the future as the primary 
 data of all discussion. Then some fine morning a 
 Cabinet Minister gives practical effect to the ab- 
 stract discussion, and we discover that the reason- 
 ings which appeared to be too little serious to need 
 the attention of men absorbed by everyday work, 
 have had the most momentous effect on practical 
 politics at least, if not on business and life. 
 
 Mr Bright, then, has duly dismissed to the 
 shades the wicked dream of our great statesmen 
 of the past, that it was not for the wellbeing of 
 England that any one Power on the Continent 
 should assume a position so preponderating that 
 it could dictate tyrannically to all its neighbours. 
 History would appear to confirm the view that for 
 any State to acquire, as Spain did under Charles 
 and Piiilip, or P^rance did under Louis XIV. and 
 Napoleon, or as Russia did under Nicholas, a posi- 
 tion of overweening power, is a matter dangerously
 
 as formerly used. 3 
 
 affecting the liberties of nations. In former days 
 our statesmen thought that, for the safety of Eng- 
 land herself, she ought to be ready to join hands 
 with other nations in defending the liberties of 
 Europe. They believed that nations, like individ- 
 uals, have their duties as well as their rights, and 
 that the neglect of one, or carelessness in regard to 
 the other, is sure, sooner or later, to meet with 
 punishment. They embodied these ideas in the 
 phrase, "the balance of power in Europe." It 
 may or may not have been a happy one. We 
 have no anxiety to see it restored to the preamble 
 of the Army Act. Still it had its advantages. It 
 avoided all terms of pharisaical assumption, yet it 
 declared to other nations our readiness to play 
 some other than a purely selfish part. It natu- 
 rally made them ready to meet us on the do itt des 
 principle — the principle, that is, of mutual co-oper- 
 ation for national independence. But what we 
 cannot help noting with some amusement is the 
 quaint humour with which, in these matters, Time 
 brings his revenges. Here, in the month of June 
 1887, we have a writer of the extremest Radical 
 school concluding a series of articles — on what ? 
 Well, he says they are on " The Position of Euro- 
 pean Politics." But, we call Mr Bright himself to 
 witness that we are setting down nought in malice, 
 — " the trail of the serpent is over them all." " The 
 balance of power in Europe" is the subject with
 
 4 TJie Work of our Armed Force. 
 
 wliich this very able writer finds himself at every 
 turn compelled to deal. Dismissed from the pre- 
 amble of the Mutiny Act, it forces itself into prac- 
 tical politics from the moment politics cease to be 
 insular — that is, from the moment that, in guiding 
 the helm of the State, the pilot does not sleep, and, 
 sleeping, dream that he can escape all storms be- 
 cause he sees none that are rising. 
 
 We have recently had from three distinct quar- 
 ters an earnest demand that the country shall 
 really make up its mind for what purposes it main- 
 tains its military forces, and what those forces are 
 expected to do. Differing on nearly every other 
 subject, the Fortnightly Reviewer and the Adjutant- 
 General of the Armyi are agreed in this, that it is 
 utterly impossible that we can have our armed 
 forces on a satisfactory footing until some authori- 
 tative body determines what we ought to expect 
 from them. In so far as Sir James Fitz-James 
 Stephen's Commission has had opportunity, it 
 has earnestly pressed upon us the same sound 
 principle. 
 
 It has been noticed already by some of those 
 who have criticised the work of the Fortnightly 
 Reviewer, that he has strangely ignored the con- 
 ditions under which modern armies engage ; and 
 that, whether his statistical calculations of numeri- 
 
 ' The reference is to the article contributed l)y Lord Wolseley to 
 the Jubilee Volume edited by Mr Ward.
 
 A Fictitious "Balance of Power." 5 
 
 cal force be accurate or not, his balance is not a 
 true balance, because he treats the value of a soldier 
 as a quantity absolutely independent of all his fight- 
 ing qualities and national characteristics. Yet 
 Napoleon was in the habit of reckoning the ele- 
 ments of the forces with which he dealt, for practical 
 purposes and as a matter of business, on the prin- 
 ciple that a man of one nationality might be taken 
 as the equivalent of so many more of another. 
 Whatever was the case in his day, it is perfectly 
 certain that in ours a mass of men incapable of 
 acting so as effectively to use modern arms be- 
 comes simply a broader target for shot as its 
 numbers increase. Moreover, the writer through- 
 out treats force, latent somewhere or other in a 
 country, as though that could be reckoned as the 
 actually available fighting -power on the battle- 
 field. He laughs, not without some justice, in his 
 final article — that on England — at Mr Howard 
 Vincent for speaking of the ultimate forces of the 
 British empire as 2,250,000 men, " without telling 
 us anything of the time that it would take to place 
 even a tenth of this force in line near London." 
 Yet in the article on Russia, he himself does pre- 
 cisely the same thing as regards the Russian forces. 
 He treats the vast numbers of armed Russians 
 available somewhere or other among the great 
 deserts and mountains and roadless morasses^of 
 Russia, as though they had all to be reckoned with
 
 6 Object of Present A rticlcs. 
 
 on the frontiers of Germany and Austria whenever 
 it pleased the Tzar to issue his fiat that they should 
 move thither. He complains that those who dis- 
 pute the accuracy of the picture he has drawn of 
 the colossus of the north do not appreciate the 
 improvement that has taken place in the Russian 
 army since the Turkish war of 1877-78, yet he 
 utterly fails to show how the weaknesses which 
 then existed have been remedied. He gives no 
 hint that he is aware how amazing was the weak- 
 ness which Russia actually displayed in the Turkish 
 campaign ; and indeed in some parts of his latest 
 article, when he is having his wicked will of the 
 " Jingoes," — a safe pastime always for a Radical 
 politician in distress, — he demonstrates absolutely 
 that he either does not know it, or finds it con- 
 venient for the purposes of his argument to sup- 
 press the fact. 
 
 Holding, therefore, with the Fortnightly Re- 
 viewer, Sir James Fitz-James Stephen's Com- 
 mission, and the Adjutant-General, that it is of 
 vital consequence for us to determine in military 
 matters "what we want," what wc want it for, and 
 whether we can afford to pay for it, we propose, in 
 the following pages, to discuss the military relations 
 of the great Powers of the Continent at the present 
 moment, and to consider how far those relations 
 affect our own military power. We propose to take 
 up those precise aspects of the question which have
 
 Our Strength and Weakness. 7 
 
 been altogether ignored by the Reviewer. We 
 purpose not only to study the armed forces of the 
 Continent, as they exist on paper, as well as our 
 own, but we intend further to take account of the 
 medium in which those forces have necessarily to 
 interact. That is to say, we mean to allow for the 
 influence of those conditions of modern warfare, 
 conformity to the laws of which determines what 
 the effective fighting-power of nations really is, 
 almost as much as any numerical estimate of their 
 fighting men can possibly determine it. We are 
 convinced that the whole tendency of the articles 
 which have dealt with the " Position of Modern 
 Politics " has been to put these matters in a false 
 light. We are sure that their writer would have us 
 believe that England is weak where she is strong, 
 and strong where she is weak, and that he has mis- 
 judged the other forces among which her power 
 has to act. In particular, as regards Russia, he 
 has, as we believe, put her strength for weakness, 
 and her weakness for strength. He has not taken 
 account of the effect upon the position of England 
 in Europe of the rise of the new power Italy, 
 whose army and politics he has in many respects 
 most admirably described. He has in many most 
 important respects misjudged the strength of 
 Austria, of Germany, and of France. In almost 
 every instance, not from an inaccurate statement 
 of bare facts, so far as he has given them, but from
 
 8 TJie War- Map of Europe, 
 
 assumptions radically false, he has tended to lead 
 our statesmen astray. We therefore look upon it 
 as a duty, for the sake of our national future, to 
 endeavour, whilst there is yet time, to remove the 
 false impressions which have been produced on the 
 minds of men by these attractive papers. 
 
 For the most part, we shall state our own con- 
 victions, and the grounds on which they are based. 
 We shall not weary our readers with lengthy con- 
 troversy. Indeed we shall have little need to do 
 so. The writer, as a rule, deals only in dogmatic 
 assertion on military matters. He is sure, for 
 instance, that the French frontier and the Russian 
 frontier against Germany are much stronger than 
 the German against either. He gives no grounds 
 for his assertion, and he does not describe the 
 character of the frontiers. We hope to be able to 
 make clear to all our readers our reasons for be- 
 lieving the precise contrary.^ He is sure that on 
 military grounds the Germans will march through 
 Belgium ; he is sure that England will not resist 
 them if they do. We deny the soundness of his 
 military assumption, and we propose to expose the 
 weakness of the grounds of his political one. We 
 intend, in either case, to state fully the reasons for 
 our bclicf- 
 
 ^ See II., "Germany, France, and Uclgium ; " and III., "Ger- 
 many, Russia, and Austria." 
 
 ^ See II., "Germany, France, and Belgium."
 
 and Strength of Powers. g 
 
 This part of the subject — that of relative mili- 
 tary power, and of the courses of action which arc, 
 as a consequence of it, open to us — is of such 
 paramount importance, and needs such full state- 
 ment, that we cannot follow him into those deeply- 
 interesting, but — may we say it without offence ? — 
 slightly gossipy records of past politics which have 
 enlivened his pages. 
 
 We must, however, once and for all, enter our 
 protest against the claim of the writer to appeal 
 to those who desire to put aside " personal and 
 party prejudice." Whether or not he " who drives 
 fat oxen should himself be fat," this much at least 
 is certain, that the appeal to men to judge, on 
 higher than party grounds, questions in which 
 party passions have been largely involved, can 
 only justly be made by a man who first takes the 
 beam out of his own eye. In our life, among all 
 the passionate perversions of facts, of which we 
 have had enough and more than enough of late 
 years, we have never read assumptions as to the 
 past more grotesquely unfair than those which are 
 thus paraded under the banner of impartial his- 
 tory. For a man with the past political record of 
 Sir Charles Dilke, who has now avowed the author- 
 ship of these papers, to attempt, when writing 
 anonymously, and at a time when his identity was 
 really concealed, to pass for an impartial historian, 
 weighing, with the fair balance and even weight of
 
 10 Past History shelving 
 
 one looking only to his country's good, the foreign 
 policy of the past, seems to us, to put it mildly, to 
 be a not very ingenuous proceeding. But in every 
 historical statement, still more in every carefully 
 considered omission, the cloven foot of the bitter 
 partisan peeps out. It is made worse, not better, 
 by the well-calculated compliment to Lord Salis- 
 bury's recent policy, so worded as to make it 
 appear as though Lord Salisbury had done little 
 more than adopt Lord Rosebery's line of action in 
 foreign affairs, so that it matters now little which 
 party is in office, so far as foreign politics are con- 
 cerned. There is something strangely cynical in 
 this boundless faith in the short memory of the 
 English public. 
 
 It happens that, in one particular instance, we 
 are anxious to recall a passage of past history 
 which it has suited Sir Charles Dilke's purpose to 
 forget. Our purpose in recalling it is, however, to 
 illustrate the form in which the power of England 
 can now be most effectively employed. We only 
 incidentally touch on the historical error. 
 
 It has pleased Sir Charles Dilkc to fix the date 
 when that reign of force began in Europe, which, 
 as he truly says, now so determines facts, that 
 every politician of the present day who desires to 
 be more than a vestryman, must understand the 
 conditions under which armies are marshalled for 
 the field. We allege distinctly that he has fixed
 
 ivJicn ojiv Pledge zvas Broken. 1 1 
 
 that date solely, we will not say for the purposes of 
 party, but blinded to the plainest historical facts 
 by that spirit of partisanship which, after years of 
 party life, has become to him a second nature, 
 from which he can no more emancipate himself 
 than he can leap from his own shadow. He says 
 that England, at the Berlin Congress, contributed 
 to set up that reign of force because we " virtually 
 annexed an island which had not been conquered," 
 and that from that moment the reign of force 
 began. We say that England did contribute her 
 share to the setting up the reign of force in 
 Europe, but that it was not in the year 1878, 
 when, with the full assent of the Sultan of Turkey, 
 we occupied Cyprus. The reign of blood and iron 
 was not established by paying good gold that 
 might have enabled reforms to be carried out, and 
 by actually improving the administration of a 
 Turkish island. No ! It was in the month of Feb- 
 ruary 1864 that England, after — through the mouth 
 of Lord Kimberley, then Lord Wodehouse — she 
 had persuaded the Danes to surrender to Prussian 
 aggression the first line of their defences and the 
 fortress of Rendsburg, expressly on the ground 
 that, till that was done, she could afford no ma- 
 terial assistance, drew back and left the Danish 
 monarchy to be dismembered avowedly by sheer 
 force.^ 
 
 ^ No doubt at all times fo7ce lias been the only means by which
 
 12 It need not have been 
 
 Nothing in all diplomacy is recorded with more 
 precision than the fact that then force was set up 
 as the rule of right. The Berlin lawyers expressly 
 recorded their opinion after the war that Prussia 
 and Austria were the sole lawful possessors of the 
 Duchies, because the only origijial right to them 
 was that of the reigning King of Denmark, who, 
 as a consequence of the conquest, had transferred 
 by treaty all his rights in them to the conquering 
 States.1 
 
 Of the part which England played in those 
 transactions, the father of the present ambassador 
 in Berlin, Sir A. Malet, has, in his ' Overthrow of 
 the Germanic Confederation,' recorded his view 
 in terms of such vigour as a diplomatist rarely 
 permits himself He has shown conclusively that 
 England did lead the Danes to suppose that 
 armed assistance would be offered by her, even 
 if she stood alone. It was, in fact, certain that 
 
 law could be enforced. It is almost tautology to say so. What I 
 contend is that, from the fall of Napoleon onwards up to 1864, 
 there had been an acknowledged principle that the "European 
 concert " should resist the exercise of mere force. Rightly or 
 wrongly, our statesmen in 1864 believed that force was being 
 wrongfully exercised, and yielded to it. I have myself always had 
 great sympathy with the German determination not to allow Ger- 
 mans to be bullied. Our action was based on no such feeling, but 
 on sheer fear of redeeming our pledged word. Either it was wrong 
 to pledge our word, or it was wrong not to redeem it. What I 
 desire to show is that we could have redeemed it. 
 
 ^ See a very clear summary of this remarkable State paper in the 
 Annual Register for 1865. Foreign History, p. 245.
 
 Broken from Fear. 13 
 
 she would not stand alone. Austria knew well 
 that Prussia was then preparing her overthrow, 
 and she was therefore only waiting for a signal 
 from us to abandon the artificial alliance into 
 which she had been forced. The French Emperor 
 was only sulking because we had refused to join 
 him in his proposed European Congress. The feel- 
 ing in France in behalf of the Danes would have 
 been too strong to be long resisted. Sweden with 
 her gallant little army was ready to join us at once. 
 All that was needed was the facing of a moment- 
 ary danger of enormous apparent magnitude. 
 
 We have always believed that, in a military 
 sense, the danger was apparent only. We speak 
 on the evidence of some of the best trained Eng- 
 lish soldiers who were actually present at the 
 struggle, when we say that we believe that, had 
 even such a force as we could then have sent to 
 Denmark been joined to the Danish and Swedish 
 armies, positions could in that most peculiar coun- 
 try have been taken up where, protected by the 
 guns of our fleets, the united army, all of excellent 
 quality, could have defied the utmost efforts of 
 the Austro-Prussian forces to break down their 
 resistance. It needed only a few weeks of boldly 
 facing the risk then, to have broken down the first 
 avowed effort at setting up the law of force in 
 Europe. 
 
 We are far from saying that we now wish all
 
 14 W/io decided 
 
 the history of the past undone. We are by no 
 means sure that the formation of a United Ger- 
 many in the centre of Europe, by whatever means 
 it has been brought about, has not been the event 
 of our time which in the long-run will most tend 
 to the happiness of the human race. But that 
 England then, for the first time, shrank back from 
 redeeming her virtually pledged word in the pres- 
 ence of mere force, and that she did so under 
 a mistaken estimate of her danger, we are firmly 
 convinced. We believe that then Prussia, despite 
 her breech-loaders, which she had not tried in 
 war, and with an army organisation which, in- 
 augurated only four years before, was not as yet 
 complete, would have evaded the struggle, knowing 
 well the dangers to which in a short time she 
 would have been exposed. 
 
 What Sir Alexander Malet does not record, 
 but what is nevertheless a matter of history, is 
 that the great question on which the whole future 
 of European history, " of the position of European 
 politics," for at least a century, of the " balance of 
 European power" was to depend, was settled at 
 a certain Cabinet Council in London. Then for 
 the first — not for the last — time the Sibyl pre- 
 sented herself to the responsible statesmen of 
 England, offering for a price, not, as she did to 
 Tarquin, merely the books which should foretell 
 the future, but ready at their bidding to change
 
 to Break our Pledge ? 15 
 
 the very course of history. Before that Cabinet 
 Council, Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell had 
 been conscious of the absolute obligation which 
 lay upon England to redeem words which, taken 
 in their natural meaning by those to whom they 
 were addressed, were now pleaded by Denmark as 
 binding us to support her. They had actually 
 ordered Sir Alfred Horsford to prepare the scheme 
 for an English army to be landed on the shores of 
 Denmark, though for the moment we should have 
 had alone to face two of the great Powers of the 
 Continent. But when the Cabinet Council broke 
 up, Sir Alfred Horsford heard no more of any 
 warlike proposals. 
 
 Who had carried the decision of the Council in 
 the teeth of two such statesmen ? Who had suc- 
 ceeded in persuading an English Cabinet to make 
 itself responsible for the true inauguration of the 
 reign of Blood and Iron ? Who had triumphed so 
 far over all the past traditions of English policy ? 
 Who had set the ball a-rolling which, with rapid 
 rush, was to lead on to the " overthrow of the Ger- 
 manic Confederation," to the annexation of Alsace- 
 Lorraine, to the creation of that life of war in 
 peace-time which now lies like a blight on all the 
 nations of the Continent ? 
 
 It has not needed that the Queen's secrets should 
 be betrayed in order that it should be matter of 
 notoriety that in that Cabinet meeting, though
 
 1 6 Partisan History. 
 
 other influences affected the question, and though 
 other members of the Cabinet were strongly in 
 favour of a peace policy, that which decided it was 
 the overmastering eloquence of Mr Gladstone. 
 
 It is not therefore surprising that a Radical 
 statesman who up to the last associated himself 
 with the very latest phases of what Mr Bright has 
 lately called " Mr Gladstone's many turnings of his 
 coat," should desire to forget that very noteworthy 
 date of February 1 864, and should desire to trans- 
 fer to the Congress of Berlin the responsibility for 
 that change in English politics and in the interna- 
 tional law of Europe which was then inaugurated. 
 It is not unnatural, we say, that he should "desire" 
 to make this change. But, seeing that all that we 
 have here written is known to Sir Charles Dilke as 
 well as it is to us, with what face, when he thus 
 changes some of the best-known pages of history 
 in accordance with partisan desires, can he address 
 himself " to those, if there be such in these days, 
 who are free from party prejudice, from prejudice 
 personal and national — to those, in short, who try 
 to see things as they really are " .'' That is cer- 
 tainly what we wish to do, as far as we can ; but 
 we are warned by the example of the Reviewer 
 against protesting too much. 
 
 It is by no means only with a view to the ques- 
 tion of the correct date of the origin of the modern 
 reign of force that we have referred to the story of
 
 A not/ier Historical Incident. 1 7 
 
 the Danish war. The chief purpose for which we 
 recall it to mind will appear fully after we have 
 dealt with a very curious confession, accompanied, 
 as we do not think but absolutely know, by an 
 enormous historical error of fact, of the gravest 
 possible consequence. 
 
 " If," says Sir Charles Dilke, " I have sometimes 
 fallen foul of those whom I look upon as belonging 
 to the Jingo school of 1878, it is because I doubt 
 their wisdom. Of their patriotism I have a pro- 
 found conviction ; and it is only of their methods 
 that I complain, believing as I do that the inflated 
 language of 1878 was a mere insult to our intelli- 
 gence, and that the occupation of Cyprus was a 
 blunder calculated to divert the country from the 
 penitential consideration of its own real military 
 weakness, and of the true ways in which that 
 weakness should be remedied. . . . Nevertheless I 
 hate to contend with them, because I feel all the 
 time that upon the essential points we are in real 
 agreement, — namely, that we are living in a fool's 
 paradise ; that we are not in a military position, 
 in spite of the enormous sums that we have 
 been spending, to defend the empire against 
 attack." 1 
 
 Now there is a good deal here which suggests 
 food for reflection. To begin with, the word 
 
 ^ Present Position of European Politics, pp. 330, 331. 
 B
 
 1 8 Thc^yingor 
 
 "Jingo " ^ is one of extremely doubtful acceptation. 
 It was originally invented by Mr Bradlaugh, and 
 made its first appearance, under his auspices, in a 
 letter which appeared in the ' Daily News,' in which 
 he said that a certain race of people had recently 
 come to be known " whom / call Jingoes." The 
 word was eagerly caught at, at the time, by Mr 
 Gladstone's followers, because there existed, inde- 
 pendently of party, a widespread feeling of patriotic 
 appreciation of the position which, under Lord 
 Beaconsfield's guidance, England had assumed in 
 Europe, and it was necessary, for party purposes, 
 to pour contempt upon that feeling. 
 
 In all such popular movements there are neces- 
 sarily elements of vulgarity mixed, and the music- 
 hall song which was popular at the time expressed 
 undoubtedly the vulgar side of the feeling in the 
 w'ords — 
 
 " For we don't want to fight, 
 
 But, by Jingo, if we do, 
 We've got the ships, we've got the men, 
 
 We've got the money too." 
 
 Shortly afterwards Sir William Vernon Harcourt, 
 at Oxford, fully explained what he and his friends 
 meant by flinging the expression "Jingoes" at 
 those who differed from ihcni in opinion. He 
 began by saying, " Do you want to know who the 
 
 ^ Wc speak, of course, of the polilical nicl^namc, and not of the 
 ancient oath.
 
 Use of the Word. 1 9 
 
 Jingoes are ? I will tell you who they are." And 
 then, using that ample vituperative vocabulary with 
 wdiich he is supplied, he proceeded to represent a 
 character in which everything that was contemp- 
 tible in point of brains, loathsome in point of vice, 
 repulsive in manners, was mingled in a well-chosen 
 mass of offensiveness. 
 
 From this time onwards, therefore, the word 
 served two purposes, different in degree but simi- 
 lar in kind, and both of them invaluable. In the 
 first place, the name was of a meaning sufficiently 
 uncertain to prevent it, in its apparent use, from 
 being too manifestly abusive for the purposes of 
 ordinary conversation. "Oh, you are a Jingo!" 
 was in 1880 the ready reply to any one who 
 thought that Mr Gladstone was a man capable of 
 human error, or that Lord Beaconsfield might 
 occasionally slide, by accident, into conduct which 
 was neither that of a fool nor of a knave. To all 
 who so far in either respect transgressed the party 
 creed of the passing hour, the expression was so 
 used, no matter what their antecedents might have 
 been. It was intended to hint, without asserting 
 that it would necessarily follow, that the person so 
 addressed was probably an habitual frequenter of 
 the lowest music-halls in London, and that it was 
 quite an open point whether, properly speaking, 
 all that Sir William Vernon Harcourt had said 
 of him was not true.
 
 20 A Hopeless Confusion of Term. 
 
 Thus the word was delightful alike in the uni- 
 versal sweep witli which it could be flung', in its 
 deliberate and essential insolence of purpose, and 
 in its vagueness. When, therefore, now Sir Charles 
 Dilke, who was immediately afterwards a member 
 of the same Government as Sir William Harcourt, 
 rakes up these expiring embers of partisan warfare, 
 and flings about these brands after he has set them 
 a-burning, at the very moment that he is appealing 
 to those who love country rather than party, we 
 must, before attempting to grapple with his words, 
 have some little definition of their meaning. Of 
 course, if he means to assert that any one who 
 has the misfortune not to agree in every syllable he 
 writes is guilty of all those wickednesses which Sir 
 William Harcourt declared to be the peculiar attri- 
 butes of the Jingo, discussion with him is closed. 
 We naturally have no special affection, on the one 
 hand, for the character described by Sir William 
 Harcourt. On the other, if we have to choose 
 between the part of pouring such language upon 
 the heads of those who differ from us in opinion and 
 of receiving it, we unhesitatingly prefer to be called 
 Jingoes rather than to violate all the decencies 
 which make fair argument possible. But appar- 
 ently Sir Charles Dilke, whilst smacking his lips on 
 almost every alternate page over the insolence 
 which he is able subtly to convey in the use of the 
 term "Jingo," reserving its more offensive meanings
 
 Author s own Position. 2i 
 
 to be only understood as latent in it, usually means 
 by it only the equivalent of chauvinism or gas- 
 conade. He expressly says so in one place ; but 
 he uses the term in so many different senses, that 
 it is hard to know what the policy he really refers 
 to is. 
 
 How it can be that he is " attacked by the true 
 Jingoes for saying that we are still able to defend 
 ourselves," we are absolutely at a loss to under- 
 stand. We thought that it was the Jingoes who 
 used to boast our ships, our men, and the like. 
 Nay, in the very passage we quoted just now. Sir 
 Charles Dilke spoke of the " inflated language of 
 1878." 
 
 It is necessary for us, therefore, to define our own 
 position, and to explain the historical fact which, 
 as we allege. Sir Charles Dilke has mistaken, re- 
 gardless of the various meanings with which he 
 finds it convenient to play in using this term. 
 
 Certainly, then, we at all events are not amongst 
 those who think that our army or our fleet is at 
 this moment so complete in its organisation that 
 we either now have, or can be said to have had in 
 1878, the men and the ships that are needed for 
 the defence of our commerce and the empire. In 
 the main we heartily agree with very much that 
 Sir Charles Dilke has said in these matters, though 
 we think we shall be able to show that he has not 
 taken the best course to remedy them.
 
 22 Russian Forces in 1878. 
 
 But when Sir Charles speaks of the " inflated 
 language of 1878," it is tolerably evident that he 
 refers to an altogether different matter from the 
 silly music-hall ditty which produced the name 
 "Jingo." He manifestly refers to the tone adopted 
 in dealing with Russia by Lord Beaconsfield and 
 Lord Salisbury in the early months of that year. 
 Now we assert positively what is a matter easily 
 susceptible of historical proof, that the haughty 
 tone then taken by our statesmen was simply 
 founded upon abst)lutc knowledge of the complete 
 collapse which had attended the Russian attempt 
 to march upon Constantinople. We do not for 
 a moment doubt that the confession which Sir 
 Charles Dilke now makes that his opposition to 
 the policy of that time was not founded upon any 
 doubt of the patriotism or the importance of the 
 object of keeping Russia out of Constantinople, 
 but upon a belief that we were pretending to be 
 able to keep her out when we could not have done 
 so, is representative not only of the opinion under 
 which he himself acted, but that of thousands of 
 others throughout the country at that time. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill's Wolverhampton speech is 
 virtually a confession that that was his view. The 
 real facts were not known out of the Government 
 offices. We have always held that, as a piece of 
 party statesmanship, it was a very great mistake 
 that steps were not taken to make them known.
 
 Our Pozver to stop tJicm. 23 
 
 We can well recall how, after the meeting of Par- 
 liament, country members came up to town saying', 
 " Well, we have got peace certainly ; but what an 
 amount of swagger and bunkum there has been 
 beforehand about it ! " 
 
 There was no swagger and no bunkum, if by 
 that is meant any threatening to do that which at 
 the time we were unable to carry out. The Turkish 
 resistance had no doubt completely collapsed. 
 Without our action, the advance force of the 
 Russian army could certainly have made its way 
 into Constantinople. As certainly the force which, 
 with the assistance of the Indian troops brought 
 to Malta, we could have landed at Gallipoli, was 
 enough and more than enough to have utterly 
 defeated the feeble remnant of Russians who had 
 passed Adrianople. It does not take a large force 
 of well-mounted and well-trained cavalry to defeat 
 mounted men whose horses have utterly broken 
 down under them, and that was actually the con- 
 dition of every Russian dragoon who passed the 
 Balkans. Numerically the Russian force beyond 
 Adrianople never exceeded 30,000 men. They 
 were disappearing day by day, from exhaustion 
 and illness, more rapidly than they could be re- 
 placed. Of those that did reach Adrianople, large 
 numbers arrived by way of Varna. That supply 
 would have been cut off the moment our fleet 
 entered the Black Sea. If there be a fact more
 
 24 TJie Facts not known t/ien, 
 
 certain than another in history, it is that at that 
 particular moment our position was such that, 
 at all events till the summer, we were able by- 
 mere military and naval force alone to prohibit 
 the advance of Russia upon Constantinople. In 
 the then condition of the Russian army, even a 
 Tzar could not venture to keep it till the summer, 
 with its sea-borne supplies cut off by our fleet, 
 and those terrible snow - covered roads, blocked 
 with broken waggons, with dying and dead horses 
 and men, as its sole means of being fed. Upon a 
 knowledge of these facts alike the Tzar'and the 
 English Government acted. 
 
 But they were not understood throughout the 
 country in England. To those who were living 
 not immediately behind the scenes (and we ought 
 to say, what we believe Lord Salisbury would now 
 declare, that no Government was ever better served 
 with information than our own was in those days), 
 it appeared incredible that we, with all our un- 
 readiness — with our little army and our slight 
 preparation — could really face the power of the 
 Tzar, whose forces even then were reputed to be 
 counted by the million. 
 
 Englishmen revolted against what seemed to 
 them a sham and a false pretence. They punished, 
 as they always have punished, by their votes, a 
 Government which acted honestly in their behalf, 
 but acted upon information which they did not
 
 and iiozv Misstated. 25 
 
 possess. There is a na'ivctc about Sir Charles 
 Dilke's admission that he at least to this day does 
 not know the truth, and that, had he known it, he 
 would have been bound to appear on the opposite 
 side to that which he took in 1880. We can afford 
 to allow him to employ what is virtually an alge- 
 braical formula — an unknown variable — sometimes 
 equated with Sir William Harcourt's vituperation, 
 sometimes chauvinism, sometimes panic-mongering 
 to his heart's content, in return for an acknowledg- 
 ment at once so important and so instructive.^ 
 
 1 I shall have occasion in the final article to challenge the reply 
 which Sir Charles Dilke has made to this passage, both as regards 
 Constantinople and as regards a point not alluded to above — our 
 power to forbid to Russia advance in Asia Minor.
 
 I. 
 
 RUSSIA AND ENGLAND
 
 RUSSIA AND ENGLAND. 
 
 Let us now, in regard to Russia and to England, 
 and to the question generally of English power, 
 draw together the points on which we desire to in- 
 sist in these corrections of historical inaccuracies. 
 
 We believe, then, that twice since the establish- 
 ment of the rule of force in Europe — once at the 
 time of its inception, and once since then — it has 
 been either the duty or the interest of England to 
 be ready to intervene on the continent of Europe. 
 We believe that, in either case, from the most 
 peculiar circumstances of the time, it would have 
 been possible for us, even as our armed forces 
 then were, to have intervened with decisive effect ; 
 but most assuredly not in either case without a 
 loss proportionate in men and money to the want 
 of actual readiness for war, from which we then 
 and now suffer. To what, then, do these experi- 
 ences point .'' Let us consider what were in either 
 case our points of vantage and of weakness. Be-
 
 30 English Poiver 
 
 yond all doubt, our point of vantage in cither case 
 consisted in the facilities of sea transport, and in 
 the fact that the points in which alone we were 
 interested were easily accessible from the sea. In 
 the case of Denmark, we believe that the fighting- 
 power of our fleet could have been directly made to 
 tell in aid of our land forces. In the case of the 
 Russo-Turkish war, the enormous facilities supplied 
 by our fleet, mercantile as well as warlike, for the 
 transport, almost to the field of battle itself, of our 
 whole available force, would have told with incal- 
 culable efl'ect. 
 
 We speak grave fact, and speak in no chauvinist 
 vein, for which, indeed, no one who really knows 
 our actual deficiencies at this moment has any 
 heart, when we say that no other Power in Europe 
 could have so quickly subdued the Egyptian revolt 
 as we did in 1882. The reason is simple. The 
 force that was actually landed in Egypt, about 
 30,000 men, was just sufficient, not much more than 
 sufficient, for the task assigned it ; and we pos- 
 sessed the means — thanks to our vast mercantile 
 marine and the efficiency of the personnel of our 
 navy in such matters — of transporting at short 
 notice that number of men, and the stores required 
 for them on a desert march, more easily than any 
 other European Power. 
 
 We would earnestly urge any of our readers, who 
 suppose that these cases are altogether exceptional,
 
 " Cometh but by Sea." 3 1 
 
 to study the masterly account of the Kertch ex- 
 pedition, which is to be found in Mr Kinglake's 
 eighth volume, chapter four. Every word of Mr 
 Kinglake's wise and sound comment on the general 
 deductions to be drawn from that experience is as 
 worthy of examination as the striking story itself. 
 
 Compare now the case of Russia. To any point 
 at which she desires to strike, she must, by an in- 
 exorable necessity, when we are opposed to her, 
 convey her troops over enormous distances by 
 land. By no manner of means, though Sir Charles 
 Dilke and Lord Randolph Churchill exercise all 
 the genius of man, and show a knowledge of the 
 real conditions of warfare which, as we shall have 
 presently occasion to show, is singularly wanting 
 in these papers, can either of them, with the rival 
 schemes for our military forces which they are ad- 
 vertising as concealed in their respective breast- 
 pockets, enable us to compete, in point of numbers, 
 with the paper millions of the Russian empire. 
 
 But the one advantage we do possess, that of 
 transporting, to the very point where we want to 
 strike, the force we can embark in England, is a 
 power the nature of which those know best who 
 best understand the real conditions of war. To 
 Sir Charles Dilke it seems enough to show what 
 forces Russia can collect at her depots. He does 
 not understand how those terrible miles of road, 
 over which the loyal Russian soldiery, whose heroic
 
 32 Verestchagin and Russia. 
 
 readiness to die, and whose patriotic and religious 
 enthusiasm he has so truly and so well described, 
 will stretch their limbs, present themselves to the 
 minds of any soldier who does understand what 
 war is, Verestchagin has, perhaps, with his terribly 
 veracious realism, in part brought home to Lon- 
 doners at least the awful truth which Sir Charles 
 ignores. He does not see that an army wanting 
 altogether alike in an officer and in a non-com- 
 missioned officer class, with habits of peculation 
 engrained in those who cater for it, and suffering 
 always from that disease of " Too much Archduke" 
 which proved so fatal to it in 1877, enters upon 
 any distant campaign under disadvantages which 
 no numbers at the depots can compensate. 
 
 We cordially and heartily agree with Sir Charles 
 Dilke that it is needful for us, for the defence of 
 the empire, to be able to strike blows far from the 
 shores of England. It is only an application to 
 our time of that which, in the grandest of the Duke 
 of Wellington's despatches, was for ever insisted 
 on, that the true principle for an English patriot 
 is, not to make preparation for fighting an enemy 
 at home — though in its measure that too is need- 
 ful — but to strike blows abroad which shall keep 
 the shores of England sacred from invasion. In 
 all reason, then, where is the weakness of our 
 enemy at which we ought to strike ? Where is 
 the special strength which we ought to develop }
 
 Our real Pozver. 33 
 
 We have given illustrations which supply the 
 answer. Wc were not ready, as we ought to have 
 been, to land at once, and in effective fighting trim, 
 upon the shores of Denmark, the force which, 
 properly equipped and ready for war, would have 
 pricked the bladder of the apparent strength 
 which in February 1864 inaugurated the reign of 
 force in Europe. We were much more ready in 
 1877, but we were not as ready as we ought to 
 have been. 
 
 In each of those cases, and in 1882, exceptional 
 opportunities — in the latter case, brilliantly seized 
 and taken advantage of — would have enabled or 
 did enable us to use our real power. But we can- 
 not hope to have such opportunities in such form 
 so presented to us as that, no matter how careless 
 we are, we can act against armed nations, whilst 
 we, secure in our island home, trust to the free 
 service of our — we thank Sir Charles Dilke for so 
 boldly asserting it — really warlike people. Not 
 all the militia, not all the guns, not all the officers, 
 with which he would supply us, will serve our need 
 for the precise purpose which he has well shown 
 that we need. Of the ultimate and essential power 
 of England, if only time be granted her to develop 
 it, no one, as Sir Charles Dilke himself asserts, has 
 any doubt. What is doubtful is what she can do 
 in the first few weeks and months of a modern 
 war, and, as he has well shown, that is the time on 
 
 C
 
 34 Hoiv to develop it. 
 
 which now the fatal issues hang. But no mercan- 
 tile marine, not even our own, can in the first few 
 weeks of war transport to a hostile shore AN ARMY 
 reckoned by the hundred thousand, even if we 
 possessed such a force. Perhaps in a month or 
 two the transport of 200,000 ARMED MEN, if all 
 our vast mercantile resources were strained to the 
 utmost, and everything sacrificed to it, might be 
 possible. But 200,000 men are not an army. If 
 we have afoot a force of something like 70,000 
 men, complete in all its arms, and actually ready 
 to take the field, that represents pretty nearly the 
 limit of the power with which we could, under any 
 circumstances, strike our blow. Not if we were to 
 submit to all the strain of universal service under 
 which the Continent is groaning ; not though we 
 spent upon our army all the milliards which Ger- 
 many wrung from France, which she has employed 
 for military service, forgotten as they have been 
 alike by Sir Charles Dilke and Lord Randolph 
 Churchill ; not though we spent those yet vaster 
 sums of the extraordinary budgets of France 
 which, while they have heaped debt upon her, 
 have created and armed her fortifications, and are 
 quietly left out of the account of these most ac- 
 curate financiers and would-be economical army 
 reformers, — not so, or by any other means that 
 they can devise, will England be made so ready 
 to meet the special needs of her position, as by
 
 Navy, Wires, Harbours, Mobility. 35 
 
 four simple means. First, by having her fleet 
 actually able to perform the duties of guarding by 
 effective offensive strokes the vast commerce — 
 uiore than double as it is of the whole carrying trade 
 of the world outside of Greater Britain — the guar- 
 dianship of which entails upon that fleet such 
 duties as fall to the lot of no other navies, not of 
 all the combined navies of the world besides. 
 Secondly, by completing the armament and gar- 
 risoning of her home fortresses and foreign coaling- 
 stations, so that, possessed as we are of the most 
 important points of vantage for a steam navy 
 throughout the world, we may be able to utilise 
 them to give power to our own fleet, instead of 
 finding them turned to the destruction of our 
 commerce. Thirdly, by completing, in absolute 
 security under our own control, our telegraphic 
 communication with our distant dependencies and 
 outlying forts. Lastly, by having at home an 
 efifectivs army actually ready at any moment to 
 be made complete ; of such strength as a mercan- 
 tile marine like ours can suddenly and rapidly 
 ship, with all its stores, with all its needed land 
 transport, and can deliver in an iinknozun direction 
 — supported at home by such a force of volunteers 
 and militia as will, when actual invasion threatens, 
 in the sense in which it did in 1805, enable the 
 whole body together to take the field, and, when 
 it does not, will enable the active army to be em-
 
 36 TJie Rival Schemes 
 
 ployed for the defence of the empire and the fulfil- 
 ment of national obligation. 
 
 Of the two rival politicians who are anxious to 
 return to political power, by announcing that they 
 have each discovered the philosopher's stone — 
 Parr's Life Pills for our army and the Elixir of 
 Life for the nation — but that the patient must 
 be submitted to their hands before they will 
 announce their discoveries/ neither of them in- 
 spires us with confidence from the circumstances 
 under which their announcements are made. In 
 the first place, what is it that they both declare .'' 
 There is one nation in the world, and one only, 
 which, in consequence of its political system, has 
 hitherto submitted the management of its military 
 and naval affairs to such as they are — to politicians 
 bidding for place. In every other nation of the 
 world the administration of naval and military 
 affairs has been left to experts. The motive as- 
 signed has been a simple one. No one supposed 
 that soldiers or sailors could not, better than poli- 
 
 1 This is no longer fair as regards Sir Charles Dilke. He promises 
 us at some time or other a statement of his great plan, but as yet 
 he acts like Penelope. He will tell us his choice when he has 
 finished spinning his large web. He is always, however, ripping 
 what he had spun. To my thinking, no more clear and admirable 
 account of the German army than that contained in the January 
 1888 'Fortnightly' has hillicrto appcarctl in England. It is the 
 most complete reversal of the account given in the ' Present Position 
 of European ]\)litics' that the most severe assailant of that volume 
 could have published.
 
 and their Authors. 37 
 
 ticians, determine what would be most effective for 
 war by land or sea. But — so we have been always 
 taught — the control of the House of Commons 
 over the money was necessary, to ensure that it 
 was not misapplied or wasted. Here suddenly 
 from the ranks of the bidders for place step out 
 two men, who declare that the whole system 
 has, as a matter of mere economy, utterly broken 
 down. They both declare that those reckless 
 countries — Germany and France — which have left 
 the disbursement of the money and almost the 
 determination of its amount to soldiers, and to 
 soldiers only, have been served by them so econo- 
 mically that, for less money than we spend, they 
 have secured results with which ours cannot for one 
 moment be compared. We shall examine this 
 question more thoroughly in our next article ; but 
 we have here to remark that, apart altogether from 
 the palpable absurdity of comparing two countries 
 which take their men by compulsion, with a coun- 
 try which pays in the dearest market in the world 
 at the market rate, these gentlemen have, as we 
 hinted above, directly miscalculated the expendi- 
 ture of France and Germany by millions. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill has certainly done it more 
 recklessly and openly than Sir Charles Dilke. 
 There is just the difference between them of a siig- 
 gestio falsi as against a snpprcssio vcri. Lord Ran- 
 dolph, though in another part of his speech he shows
 
 38 Errors of Millions. 
 
 that he knows what huge sums France has borrowed 
 of late years, yet tells the men of Wolverhampton 
 that, in comparing the ordinary expenditure of 
 France and England, the complete armament of 
 the German and French fortresses is to be com- 
 pared with the deficiencies of ours.^ Does he or 
 does he not know how much of that huge debt, 
 which has rolled up since the war of 1870, has 
 been expended on placing the fortifications and 
 armament of France on a proper footing ? Fur- 
 thermore, we charge both of them with having 
 absolutely ignored the extent and nature of the 
 work which our fleet has to do ; and we refuse to 
 place confidence in financiers who begin by show- 
 ing that they cannot make estimates of expendi- 
 ture without errors in the millions, while they at 
 the same time show that they do not understand 
 in the least what the nature of the task they have 
 to undertake is. 
 
 There are grave deficiencies in the condition of 
 our defences both at home and in our distant 
 fortresses. We certainly have no wish to under- 
 rate them, or to deny that many of those defects 
 which Lord Randolph has described really exist. 
 But why is it that both these gentlemen select the 
 present moment to bring before the public these 
 defects of our condition ? From whom was it that 
 
 ^ 'Times' report, June 4, 1887, of spcecli al Wolverhampton.
 
 TJlc Moment chosen. 39 
 
 Lord Randolph Churchill learnt all those weak- 
 nesses of our condition which need to be reme- 
 died ? The answer is simple enough. It is be- 
 cause for the first time a Cabinet has courageously 
 faced them. Because his colleagues laid before 
 him these necessities of our condition, and pro- 
 posed to remedy them. Above all, because one 
 quiet, business-like, silent man, the present leader 
 of the House of Commons, has insisted in office 
 and out of office upon the all-importance of actu- 
 ally and effectively placing our coaling-stations in 
 a condition which will enable our fleet to rely 
 upon them, instead of having to defend them. As 
 General Brackenbury explained, in behalf of the 
 Secretary of State, to the United Service Institu- 
 tion, more effective steps have been taken within 
 the time of Mr Smith's tenure of the War Office 
 than during any preceding period, to arrange, as 
 far as can be done on our present expenditure, for 
 carrying out those reforms which we have laid 
 down as essential for developing to the full our 
 real power. They are steps only : but steps have 
 been taken towards providing that we shall have 
 garrisons available for our home fortresses, and for 
 our coaling-stations, and above all, for making it 
 possible for us to strike for the defence of the 
 empire, by having ready as an army two corps and 
 an effective cavalry division available to go any-
 
 40 TJie Incomplete Attempt. 
 
 where and do anything.^ That scheme has not 
 been fully carried out, and cannot be fully carried 
 out till all parties in the state are agreed as to 
 what is necessary. Why has it not gone further 
 as yet ? Sir Charles Dilke has supplied the 
 answer — " The recent fit of economy promoted by 
 Lord Randolph Churchill." That has not, indeed, 
 acted in the way he has assumed. It has not in- 
 duced the Cabinet to make reductions on their 
 estimates. We must confess that a Cabinet placed 
 in so critical a position as the present one was at 
 the moment of Lord Randolph's escapade, seems 
 to us to have displayed a patriotic courage rare in 
 our times, and to deserve from a Radical who is 
 specially anxious to appeal to those who cast aside 
 personal and partisan feeling, somewhat better 
 treatment than Sir Charles Dilke gives them in 
 his mode of dealing with Lord Randolph's boasted 
 economy. Otherwise we have nothing to object 
 to in the following argument : " With a still 
 weaker Government, a Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer of equal boldness might on this principle 
 claim credit for saving the whole amount of the 
 army and navy expenditure of the country. He 
 would indeed possibly be borne in triumph for it, 
 although also possibly afterwards hanged when the 
 country found that he had been wrong in his calcu- 
 
 ^ See General Biackcnbury's speech al United Service Institu- 
 tion, separately issued.
 
 IV/ij' Incomplete ? 41 
 
 lations " (p. 295). Neither have we any objection 
 to the statement, that some of the revelations re- 
 cently made would "justify the hanging of a few 
 ex-Secretaries of State for War" (p. 314). 
 
 But, in fact, the unfortunate effect of Lord Ran- 
 dolph's action has been this : instead of boldly 
 asking for all that was required to make our two 
 corps and our cavalry division actually available 
 for fighting in England, or for transfer abroad, and 
 for furnishing the garrison artillerymen, who are 
 sorely needed to make our fortresses of any use, 
 the order has gone forth that, at present at all 
 events, only so much should be done as could be 
 managed by robbing Peter to pay Paul. The 
 absolute necessity, if our troops are to be able to 
 fight at all, of having ammunition columns for 
 such artillery and infantry as we do send into the 
 field, has unfortunately, owing to the fact that the 
 estimates could not be increased, led to a reduction 
 in the artillery. The particular necessities which 
 it is now proposed to provide are precisely those, 
 many of them named by Sir Charles Dilke, which 
 are required to enable us to take advantage of our 
 volunteers and militia in making secure our fort- 
 resses, in providing generally for their co-operation 
 with an effective army in the field, and for enabling 
 such an army as we could at once transport from 
 England to act immediately on being landed. 
 
 Much undoubtedly remains to be done, but, for
 
 42 A '' coiiifortiiig'' Speech. 
 
 our own part, we heartily echo the words in which 
 the Earl of Wemyss, for years the most energetic 
 protestant against the neglect of those very meas- 
 ures which are at least now officially proposed, 
 declared General Brackenbury's speech to be the 
 most important, and, on the whole, comforting 
 statement that has been made in our time. 
 Money has undoubtedly been wasted in the past. 
 Sir James Fitz-James Stephen's Commission has 
 shown how and why it has been wasted. Unfor- 
 tunately, a perusal of that report does not tend to 
 confirm Lord Randolph's allegation that the con- 
 dition of the House of Commons, the strife of 
 parties, and the supremacy of talkers, or of men 
 who are political partisans first and administrators 
 afterwards, has not been the chief cause of the evil. 
 But the moment when, in a quiet business-like 
 way and for the first time, the real difficulties have 
 at least been fairly acknowledged, is not the one 
 for throwing in the face of the present men the 
 crimes of their predecessors. We heartily wish to 
 see the whole question referred to that authoritative 
 body, independent of party, for which Sir Charles 
 Dilkc and Lord Wolseley alike ask. Such a body 
 must first determine the true meaning of the pre- 
 amble of the Army Act — that is, how " the posses- 
 sions of her Majesty's crown" are to be defended. 
 We believe that they would find that the very 
 small reduction in the total force of our field-guns,
 
 Volunteer Artillery. 43 
 
 horsc-artillcry and field-artillery together, is not, as 
 Sir Charles Dilke has averred, dangerous as a 
 symptom, but that it is a part, however unfortunate 
 a part, of a response to the earnest instances of 
 those who have been for years pressing for genuine 
 efficiency. But we are bound to admit that when 
 we talk of genuine efficiency, we cannot accept 
 Sir Charles Dilke's mode of determining what 
 efficiency is. 
 
 It happens that the particular occasion on which 
 General Brackenbury's speech was delivered will 
 enable us to show one instance — we shall take 
 another as conclusive before we have done — of the 
 degree to which Sir Charles Dilke is to be de- 
 pended on as a military authority, or rather as 
 capable by his ipse dixit of erecting into decisive 
 military authorities certain people carefully kept 
 behind the veil, to whom he constantly refers as 
 the exponents of true military wisdom. 
 
 "The volunteers," says Sir Charles, "however 
 useful they may be as garrison artillery, will 
 never be able in large numbers to manage field- 
 artillery " (p. 315). And again: "Sir Edward 
 Hamley, indeed, has suggested that it is a positive 
 advantage to this country, that while the force 
 which will attack us will, by the nature of things, 
 be provided only with field-artillery, our defending 
 force will be supplied with guns of position — that 
 is, with guns of heavier weight ; as though a small
 
 44 ^^S Guns and loose Ci'itks. 
 
 trained army, making a dash on London, would be 
 likely to advance directly upon intrenched posi- 
 tions, armed with heavy guns, when it could so 
 easily march into London by twenty other different 
 routes" (p. 315). 
 
 We should have thought that a soldier who has 
 devoted his life to the subject of strategy, the 
 author of the greatest book on that matter in the 
 English language, speaking about his own arm of 
 the service, might have been treated with a little 
 more respect than this. Sir Charles Dilke evi- 
 dently does not know his man. He is himself a 
 clever writer and a clever politician. But cleverer 
 writers, some of the greatest whom our times have 
 seen, have before now cowered before the lash he 
 has provoked. Abler politicians than he have 
 winced when Sir Edward's pen has been employed 
 to expose sentences not quite so silly as this. 
 
 Sir Charles talks about Jomini, but he evidently 
 has never heard that, though big guns are ugly 
 customers, there are such things as what are known 
 to soldiers as "attractive positions," in which big 
 guns call a hostile army towards them with more 
 subtly winning voice than any siren singing from 
 her rocks. The Russian army found that out 
 when, willy-nilly, Plevna had to be tackled. 
 
 Most assuredly, "guns of position " will not sup- 
 ply the place of highly mobile field-artillery, but 
 yet there are few armies that would not rejoice in
 
 Artillery and Reserve Forces. 45 
 
 their aid if they could procure them in such num- 
 bers as we can obtain for Enghsh service by the 
 aid of the volunteers. Not rarely their effect 
 would be decisive. 
 
 As we have hinted, the discussion at the United 
 Service Institution, at which General Brackenbury 
 was authorised to explain the scheme which Mr 
 W. H. Smith had approved and Mr Stanhope has 
 accepted from him, was devoted to the discussion 
 of this very subject of volunteer field-artillery. 
 
 General Brackenbury, himself one of the most 
 distinguished of living English artillery officers, 
 pointed out the absence of any artillery to support 
 our militia and volunteer infantry. Sir Charles 
 Dilke has mentioned it in these words : " This 
 country, in the event of invasion, would put some 
 300,000 militia and volunteer infantry in line ; and 
 in order to feel secure with such a force, we ought, 
 according to the ordinary rules of war, to have 900 
 properly worked guns at home." ^ 
 
 General Brackenbury, it is true, did not talk 
 about "the ordinary rules of war." It is an ex- 
 pression which trained soldiers are rather apt to 
 avoid, because war knows few " rules," though 
 many principles ; and further, both alike are apt 
 to vary in their application, according to circum- 
 stances and the nature of the country in which war 
 is carried on. Again, few soldiers who have ever 
 
 ^ Present Position of European Politics, p. 314,
 
 46 A n Economical Budget. 
 
 carefully and practically considered the question of 
 the defence of England can fail to be aware that 
 the nature of the country restricts and modifies the 
 ordinary use of artillery in a very marked degree. 
 Further, as large numbers of the volunteers would 
 be required for garrison work, he puts our active 
 field-army for home defence at 130,000 infantry, 
 besides the two corps and cavalry division, so that 
 the deficiency in field-guns would be 390 — not 900. 
 ViWt he asked whether any possible augmentation 
 of so expensive an arm as the royal artillery or 
 royal horse-artillery, that the country could be ex- 
 pected to grant, would supply this deficiency. We 
 confess to some curiosity for a sight of that most 
 economical budget of Sir Charles Dilke's, which, in 
 addition to supplying all that we at present have 
 and an army of Continental size ready to be trans- 
 ported by sea at a moment's notice, is to furnish 
 us with an augmentation of 900 royal artillery 
 field-guns. These will, of course, consist chiefly of 
 horse-artillery on Sir Charles's principles. ^ 
 
 ^ Sir Charles has complained that I have here loo closely tied 
 him to the figure of " 900." I have simply followed the only clue 
 he had given to the numbers he proposed to supply. I cer- 
 tainly shall be delighted to get the additional security provided by 
 390 royal artillery guns, if the country will pay for theni 1 1 1 But 
 before the end of this volume I think I shall be able to show 
 that the expenditure ought not to be incurred till we are sure that 
 our fleet is all that it ought to be, and till our harbours and coaling- 
 stations arc secure, hardly even till our world-lelegrajih system is 
 complete. Certainly the thing cannot be done on the principle
 
 Nothing like Leatlier. ^y 
 
 But meantime, till wc are furnished either by 
 Sir Charles Dilke or Lord Randolph with the rival 
 philosophers' stones which are thus to coin gold 
 for us, we are content to accept the authority of 
 Sir E. Hamley and General Brackenbury. At 
 this meeting other very able artillery officers con- 
 fessed that, having had to overcome great preju- 
 dices in that matter, they had, from actual trial 
 and experience of the working of volunteer field- 
 artillery, come to the conviction that it could be 
 made most efficient. We believe, then, that the 
 decision of the Government is a sound one, that 
 they will reverse the policy of their predecessors 
 and do their utmost to encourage the development 
 of volunteer heavy field-artillery. Wc should have 
 thought that a man so anxious as Sir Charles 
 Dilke to appeal to those who cast aside " personal" 
 —-we presume, therefore, professional — prejudice, 
 might have guessed who are likely to be giving at 
 this moment the best advice, — three such artillery 
 officers as Sir Edward Hamley, General Bracken- 
 bury, and Colonel Shakespeare; or those who think- 
 that there is nothing like leather, and that volun- 
 teers must be warned off the sacred field of the 
 royal artillery. 
 
 Before leaving this question of the artillery, we 
 
 assumed by Sir Charles Dilke, when he wrote ' The Present Position 
 of European Politics,' "that it is not in expenditure that we fall 
 short " (p. 287).
 
 48 Lord Wolselcy and the Gtms. 
 
 may as well note the recklessness with which, so 
 far as English officers arc concerned, Sir Charles 
 Dilke goes out of his way to enlist against him 
 those whom most Englishmen look upon as of 
 some weight, as English soldiers go, in matters of 
 practical war. Again and again he alleges that 
 Lord Wolseley was positively in favour of the re- 
 duction of the horse-artillery /^r j-^, speaking of it 
 as the " theatrical " element in war. Now, a ref- 
 erence to Lord Wolseley's speech shows that in 
 it the horse-artillery was not mentioned. It was 
 a purely gratuitous assumption that in speaking 
 of the " theatrical " element he referred to the 
 recent reduction of that arm. We have reason 
 to know that, in Sir Charles Dilke's behalf, Lord 
 Wolseley's attention was called to Sir Charles's 
 statement, and that he replied, not only that he 
 had not said anything whatever of the kind, but 
 that he was thinking of altogether other matters ; 
 and that he added, — " No one regrets more than 
 I do the reduction of the horse-artillery ; but as 
 we had to choose between keeping guns we could 
 not use, and supplying, by their disestablishment, 
 what was indispensable to make the army we can 
 use as a whole effective, we had very reluctantly to 
 dispense with them." 
 
 Sir Charles's attention was drawn to the sub- 
 stance of these statements prior to the publication 
 of the recent article ; yet he retained the words in
 
 TJie '^ Eight Army-Corps Scheme." 49 
 
 inverted commas, as though Lord Wolseley had 
 actually spoken of the " theatrical horse-artillery." ^ 
 Sir Charles has endeavoured to pour cold water 
 on the efforts at present being made to produce 
 an effective force of two army-corps and a cavalry 
 division, by referring constantly to what, quoting 
 Mr Stanhope, he calls the " abortive scheme of 
 eight army-corps." We confess that we regret the 
 phrase. The author of that scheme, now dead 
 many years, was a soldier of first-rate ability, who 
 did very great service to the English army, and 
 we have a dislike to the process of kicking dead 
 lions. But the scheme, such as it was, was never 
 intended to do more than expose the weaknesses 
 of our condition. When Sir Charles says that 
 " the defence made for the reduction of the horse- 
 artillery has revealed that, for all practical pur- 
 poses, we may be said to have no artillery for the 
 volunteer and militia infantry," it is clear that he 
 has never looked at that scheme. Each "army- 
 corps " was shown as it would be for peace service, 
 with blanks at every point where deficiencies ex- 
 isted. If members of Parliament like Sir Charles 
 Dilke neglected to look at it, and therefore did 
 not take the hint or ask any questions about it, 
 
 1 As Sir Charles Dilke has in his recent articles quoted words 
 which show that Lord Wolseley in the abstract wishes for an in- 
 crease, not a reduction, of the artillery, I have here suppressed a long 
 extract from a speech which was given to prove that point. 
 
 D
 
 50 Our direct Force depends 
 
 what becomes of Lord Randolph's contention, 
 that the House of Commons is nowise to blame 
 for our present condition ? 
 
 The work, of which Mr Hardy spoke, on rail- 
 ways and the like, was actually done ; and though 
 changes in the units of the army involve some 
 corrections in it now, the substance of it remains 
 available, and is habitually used by all staff officers, 
 trained during the last ten years, in the considera- 
 tion of railway schemes and such matters. What 
 is now being done is of an altogether different 
 kind, and no one would have more rejoiced to see 
 it worked out than the author of that old scheme, 
 though he would be perhaps amused to find that 
 shafts aimed at his " abortive " effort have tended 
 to rebound against the very different and most 
 important scheme of to-day, to which he would 
 have looked forward as to a promised land he was 
 not permitted to see. 
 
 So far, then, as our own immediate offensive 
 strength against Russia is concerned, we hold that 
 it depends first on our navy ; and secondly, upon 
 our being able to prepare for instant action as 
 large a force as we can promptly ship from our 
 ports. We ought at least, in the first instance, to 
 work up to the standard at which the Government 
 is now aiming : that of putting two army-corps 
 and a cavalry division into a condition for effective 
 action abroad, the only true and proper defence
 
 on " Aviphibions Strengt/iT 51 
 
 of our empire. We believe firmly that no German 
 military authority would look upon the power we 
 should so possess as the equivalent only of the 
 force of Roumania. The Roumanian army in the 
 field may be considerably larger than two corps 
 d'arme^e and a cavalry division. It is one thing 
 to have such a force on land ; it is another thing 
 to be able to deliver with it a blow in any direc- 
 tion we choose, while we also possess the command 
 of the sea. Jt is almost certain that we shall never 
 have to enter into any quarrel in which we cannot 
 on the do ut des principle obtain allies. In any 
 alliance, the command of the sea, such a force so 
 capable of movement, and the financial support 
 of England, will be of priceless value. If Germany, 
 as Sir Charles Dilke alleges, in the beginning of 
 of 1887 advised Austria to reject our alliance, we 
 think we can tell him the reason. In 1882 Ger- 
 many took the greatest pains to ascertain pre- 
 cisely what power we had shown in Egypt. A 
 very short inquiry enabled Major von Hagenau, 
 the Commissioner with our army, to ascertain that 
 the force which captured Cairo was not, in the 
 European sense, a mobile army at all, and that, 
 but for the seizure of the railway and canal, trans- 
 port would for it have been an insuperable diffi- 
 culty. If Major von Hagenau had been able to 
 record the fact that, apart from the force which we 
 brought from India, which was in all respects fit
 
 52 Our Vantage in Europe 
 
 to take the field, we had had a really mobile army 
 of two corps d'armce and a cavalry division capable 
 of being transported at a moment's notice any- 
 where, his view of the question would have been 
 a very different one. 
 
 But in order that such a force, able to serve as a 
 nucleus for auxiliaries, may also be able to strike 
 effectively, it is essential to us that entry should be 
 possible for us into the Black Sea, as well as into 
 the Baltic. We shall endeavour in our final article -^ 
 to show that the nature of the alliances which it is 
 to our advantage to form is of such a kind that if 
 we do not restrict ourselves to the defence of India, 
 but meet Russian aggression where other Powers 
 have an interest in resisting it, we place ourselves 
 on a footing of vantage which we almost absolutely 
 lose if we restrict ourselves to the defence of India. 
 In India itself our whole advantage lies in forcing 
 Russia to act as far from her base as possible, and 
 in striking her line of communications through 
 Persia, as has been admirably pointed out by 
 Colonel Malleson.-^ To announce beforehand that 
 we restrict aggression to an attack upon Vladi- 
 vostock, is to abandon the most effective part of 
 our special strength — the uncertainty of the direc- 
 tion of our blow. 
 
 ^ See IV., " Italy, Turkey, and English Alliances." 
 ^ See Colonel Malleson's article, 'Blackwood's Magazine,' April 
 1887, "The Fortnightly Reviewer and Russia."
 
 and Disad'ua7itage in India. 53 
 
 It is rather remarkable that in speaking of Vladi- 
 vostock Sir Charles Dilke has not drawn attention 
 to the essentially offensive purpose with which 
 Russia is strengthening her fleet at that point. 
 Yet it is no secret that had war with Russia broken 
 out a few years ago, it was her purpose to have 
 struck thence directly upon our Australian colo- 
 nies, and that the knowledge of that fact has been 
 the great motive which has led our colonists to set 
 seriously to work to arm and prepare themselves. 
 It may, no doubt, on that account be necessary 
 that one of our earliest blows should be struck at 
 Vladivostock. 
 
 We by no means desire to underrate the danger 
 of Russian power, and of the steady purpose with 
 which she pursues her aims against us. The danger 
 with which Russia menaces us is her steady progress 
 towards our Indian frontier, extending her dominion 
 over tribes at such a distance from us that we can- 
 not with advantage to ourselves reach her during 
 her progress ; while yet she is continually more and 
 more able to employ those tribes in harassing us. 
 She can so, almost without effort, entail costly ex- 
 penditure upon us. Therefore it appears to be our 
 true policy to forbid her advance, and to enforce 
 that prohibition by attacking her where we can get 
 at her. We can only do this by European action, 
 to which we contribute our legitimate share. Hence 
 it becomes of the greatest importance to judge
 
 54 '^Jic Russian Infantry. 
 
 what the real character of the Russian army is, 
 and whether it is, as Sir Charles Dilke has alleged, 
 so overwhelmingly powerful in Europe that, even 
 with such allies as will be glad to join us in the 
 task of opposing it, we have reason to fear the 
 issue. 
 
 The Russian infantry undoubtedly has those 
 characteristics of which Sir Charles Dilke has 
 spoken. The men are ready to die silently and 
 without troublesome inquiries as to what they are 
 ordered to do. As long as it was possible to form 
 masses of them into great columns, and to push 
 them forward, regardless of loss of life, into the 
 field of battle, the power of their obstinate heroism 
 and of their numbers was enormous. But the 
 effects of the breech-loader on the character of 
 modern fighting had been felt by all Europe 
 eleven long )-ears before the Turkish war. Rus- 
 sian officers had realised them as fully as others ; 
 and it was only the impossibility of handling the 
 men under the fixed conditions of modern war, 
 that obliged them to sacrifice life with such melan- 
 choly results as attended the attempt of 1877-78 
 upon Constantinople. The national characteristics 
 of the Russian peasantry have not changed. The 
 conditions of Russian life, and the absence of the 
 men who could intelligently lead them in the sub- 
 ordinate ranks, is a fact as marked as ever. All 
 military observers who look below the surface note
 
 TJic Nczu Russian Dragoons. 5 5 
 
 it now as much as then. These factors in the 
 estimate are ignored by Sir Charles Dilke.^ 
 
 Strangely enough, he seems, in relation to the 
 cavalry, to have awakened to the fact that we are 
 in a period of war when the breech-loader counts 
 for something. He is so affected by it, that he 
 propounds a theory that cavalry can now only act 
 in war, without being destroyed, by adopting the 
 method which the Tzar has chosen for his Cossacks. 
 The Russian cavalry of all classes have recently 
 been converted into a sort of imitation of the 
 mounted rifles who constituted the cavalry of the 
 American war. The Cossacks are not trained 
 infantry soldiers, in any sense of the term. They 
 are not men accustomed from childhood to the use 
 of rifles, as were the American marksmen. They 
 are as unlike highly effective mounted infantry as 
 it is possible for men to be. Yet Sir Charles would 
 impress on his readers the belief that there is no 
 kind of doubt as to their superiority to all cavalry 
 
 1 Sir Charles Dilke, who treats Inkcrmann as ancient history, has 
 in his January iS88 article appealed to the fact that "against 
 Russian troops the veterans of Frederick the Great and of Napoleon 
 struggled in vain.'''' The French, it is needless to say, cherish a 
 curious delusion about the "sun of Austerlitz " and a few other 
 matters, such as the causes which led to the capture of Moscow and 
 the retreat from it. But apart from that, I would earnestly press 
 that Mr Kinglake's account of Inkermann should be actually studied. 
 It will there be seen that the Russians then attempted to employ 
 modern Prussian tactics and failed because of national characteristics 
 just as they did in 1877.
 
 56 German, Austrian, French, and 
 
 which trusts chiefly to the proper weapon of the 
 true cavalry soldier — the arnie blanche. There is 
 no country in Europe from which decisive authority 
 may not be quoted against him on the other side. 
 
 In the year 1882, Von Moltke's opinion, and that 
 of the German military leaders generally, was de- 
 cisively expressed on the subject, in consequence 
 of the publication of a book declaring that the day 
 of cavalry was over, and that the sooner armies got 
 rid of "this lumber" the better. Von Moltke in 
 that year, in a letter which may be read in the 
 ' Revue Militaire de I'litranger,' pronounced a 
 strong opinion that only the want of more perfect 
 handling prevented the German cavalry, during 
 the 1870 campaign, from producing even greater 
 results on the field of battle than they actually did, 
 great as those results were. The Germans continu- 
 ally, at their manoeuvres, practise their cavalry in 
 surprise charges with the arine blanche. 
 
 As to Austrian opinion, no military reader in 
 any nation of Europe shares that profound con- 
 tempt for the Archduke Albrecht which is ex- 
 pressed by Sir Charles Dilkc, when he says that the 
 Austrians have now no great leaders. Most soldiers 
 look upon Albrecht as a very skilful leader indeed, 
 and would trust his opinion on a point of this kind 
 rather than that of almost any man in Europe. 
 Now it happens that quite recently the Archduke 
 has expressed his conviction that the change which
 
 Russian View of Russian Dragoons. 57 
 
 has been made in the Russian cavalry has ruined 
 its efficiency. The Austrian cavalry leaders — and 
 they are among the best in Europe — all take that 
 view, and would like few things so well as to lead 
 their men against those motley riding footmen, who 
 are neither, in any shape, fish, flesh, nor good red- 
 herring. 
 
 French opinion, whether as expressed in the 
 masterly papers which have appeared in their 
 "conferences," in the ' Revue Militaire,' and in the 
 'Journal des Sciences Militaires,' or as shown by 
 their actual cavalry training, is on the same side. 
 
 But the most effective exposure of all of the 
 weaknesses of the present Russian cavalry has come 
 from a Russian pen. Few sounder or more able 
 papers on the modern service of cavalry have ever 
 been written than that by Colonel Baikov, which 
 has been rendered available for general reading 
 by an excellent translation in a recent number of 
 the ' Revue Militaire de I'^fctranger.' ^ 
 
 Colonel Baikov shows that not only is the 
 present system contrary to all sound principle, 
 but that it is hopelessly unsuited to the habits and 
 traditions of the Russian cavalry itself Further, 
 he takes the history of the use of the Russian 
 cavalry during the 1877 -1878 campaign, and 
 declares that they were then employed chiefly 
 
 ^ Revue Militaire de I'Etranger, vol. xxx. pp. 139-149 (issue of 
 15th Aug. 1 886).
 
 58 Cavalry and Moiiiitcd Iiifanlry. 
 
 in service on foot ; so used, he declares, that tJiey 
 zvcre not able even to stop convoys. He declares that 
 they expended, without producing an effect, a 
 million and a quarter of cartridges. 
 
 On one notable occasion a picked body of them, 
 selected expressly because of their supposed shoot- 
 ing quality, were despatched with orders to stop 
 a particular convoy in the neighbourhood of Plevna. 
 Having reached a point as near as it was thought 
 desirable for them to move as a mounted corps, 
 they left their horses behind them and advanced 
 to attack, only to be driven off by a small party 
 of Turkish soldiery, without doing the latter any 
 damage whatever. Colonel Baikov shows further 
 that all the recent changes have tended to aggravate 
 these defects. 
 
 Yet this is the cavalry of which Sir Charles 
 Dilke tells us that it is the only mounted force 
 in Europe adapted to the modern conditions of 
 Avar ! 
 
 It is on data lilce these that he determines the 
 power in Europe of the Russian army and its 
 relative condition as compared with the armies of 
 Austria and Germany.^ 
 
 ^ In his last article Sir Charles Dilkc throws out a remark which 
 touches me nearly. He says, "It ill becomes the advocates of 
 mounted infantry to speak lightly " of the new Russian cavalrj'. 
 Now I have been for at least sixteen years the enthusiastic advocate 
 of the use of "mounted infantry." Having during that time seen 
 again and again the services which our own mounted infantry has
 
 Russian Infantry. 59 
 
 So sure is he of his facts, that he is convinced 
 that this cavalry force alone will sweep away the 
 feeble resistance of the Austrians, and render their 
 mobilisation impossible. So overwhelming is the 
 force of Russia, that it is useless for us to attempt 
 to rely upon such feeble reeds as any of the other 
 Continental armies ; and therefore, such is the 
 logical conclusion, we had better fight this gigantic 
 Power alone on our own resources, and having 
 warned her where we intend to attack her, prepare 
 at home our future expedition against Vladivostock 
 by a system almost entirely dependent on a de- 
 veloped militia.^ 
 
 We certainly do not deny the numerical force of 
 the Russian artillery. But artillery is an arm ex- 
 ceptionally difficult to send in vast masses great 
 distances from home, over difficult country ; and it 
 is still more difficult under such conditions to keep 
 it supplied with the forage and the ammunition it 
 needs. If our points of attack are well chosen, 
 however great may be the numbers of the Russian 
 artillery at home, we ought not on the field of 
 
 rendered us in our own expeditions, I have no kind of doubt of the 
 services they would render us in European warfare. It is because I 
 do not think that the Russian dismounted Cossacks fulfil the con- 
 ditions required of good mounted infantiy that I disbelieve in them. 
 Cavalry and mounted infantry are each invaluable arms, but you 
 cannot mash them together without destroying them for their 
 proper work. 
 
 ^ This, the scheme apparently suggested in the " Position of 
 European Politics," has been abandoned in the more recent articles.
 
 6o IV/iat %ue get for our Money. 
 
 battle to meet with them in overwhehiiing force. 
 They certainly in 1877 ^^^ "ot do much to prepare 
 the way for the assaults of their infantry. 
 
 We do not propose to follow Sir Charles Dilkc 
 into a numerical comparison between the depot 
 forces of Russia and our own. For the reasons we 
 have alleged, the comparison appears to us to be 
 absolutely futile. It is, as Bismarck long since 
 said, a question, when the comparison is so made, 
 of a contest between an elephant and a whale. 
 There is, however, one element in our strength 
 which neither we nor Russia can safely ignore. 
 Sir Lepel Griffin has lately spoken, with an author- 
 ity almost beyond dispute, of the zeal with which 
 the feudatory princes of India would aid us to re- 
 sist a transfer of authority in the East from us to 
 Russia. That is a point on which we cannot now 
 dwell at length, but it is an element in the question 
 not to be ignored. 
 
 To sum up, then, the conclusions towards which 
 wc desire to lead. We shall find, when we come 
 to examine the conditions under which foreign 
 nations maintain their huge armies, that, though 
 our own army in proportion to numbers costs sums 
 which appear to be fabulously large in proportion 
 to theirs, yet that in mere monetary resources the 
 drain of their system is incalculably greater than 
 ours. Our own army is, as we believe, the cheapest 
 in the world for the work it has to do. Though
 
 Commej'ce — our Strength and Weakness. 6i 
 
 much money has been wasted in the past, and 
 though many reforms are needed, we are now, in 
 the main, upon the right track, provided the public 
 will so far interest itself in the matter as to see 
 that abuses, which have crept in, mainly because 
 of that very parliamentary system which Lord 
 Randolph acquits, are remedied. The navy is 
 now in hands which earnestly intend to sift its 
 weaknesses and redress what is wrong ; ^ but it has 
 a gigantic task in defending a commerce, the ex- 
 tent and the weakness of which, before attack, is 
 never realised by Englishmen. On the other hand, 
 that commerce supplies to us a special power for 
 striking effective blows at a distance from home, 
 which of its kind is unrivalled. 
 
 We are beyond question in the main, as both 
 Sir Charles Dilke and Colonel Malleson are agreed, 
 within India itself restricted to an essentially de- 
 fensive position. Any contest with Russia in 
 which Russia should be able to strike, and we only 
 to defend, would be a disastrous one. Therefore 
 we need to develop our power for striking rapidly 
 as far as we reasonably may. The inexorable con- 
 ditions of sea transport impose a limit which can- 
 not be passed to the force that can so be used for 
 striking rapidly. 
 
 If we believed — which we do not — that Vladivos- 
 tock was the one vulnerable point in the Russian 
 
 ^ Written whilst Lord Charles Beresford was at the Admiralty.
 
 62 Future Scope of A7'ticles. 
 
 dominions at which we could strike, we should 
 hold Sir Charles Dilke to be a traitor for disclosing 
 our purpose of going there, seeing that all effective 
 strokes depend on their being delivered after the 
 fashion of our movement in 1882 from Alexandria 
 to Ismailia, of which Arabi never heard till he was 
 a prisoner in Ceylon.^ Therefore w^e do not pro- 
 pose to discuss the exact direction in which our 
 blow should be delivered, but in our final article 
 w^e shall show cause why the power of entering the 
 Black Sea is vitally important to us. 
 
 The efforts which are being made at the present 
 moment by the Government to put matters on a 
 right footing, and to face facts, deserve the support 
 of every patriotic Englishman. They only need 
 to be supported against the purveyors of nostrums 
 on the right hand and on the left, and to be en- 
 couraged to ask for what they ought to have, con- 
 cealing nothing. 
 
 Lastly, we propose to show that the present con- 
 dition of the Continent offers us the opportunity, 
 on the do iit des principle, of alliance, which is vital 
 to us if we are to defend our empire without ruin- 
 ous strain on our people. 
 
 ^ Here, as in several instances where the case of the Egyptian 
 campaign of 1882 is mentioned, I may now refer to the official 
 history of that war, which has been published since the articles 
 were written.
 
 II. 
 
 GERMANY, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM
 
 GERMANY, FRANCE, AND 
 BELGIUM. 
 
 We propose now to take in order the following 
 questions, which were raised in our last article 
 under the general heading : — 
 
 I. We intend, by comparing the methods which 
 are employed by Germany for raising her forces 
 with our own methods, to maintain our thesis — 
 that our own army is the cheapest in the world, in 
 proportion to the work it has to do. It will be 
 seen that our contention is that our army pay- 
 ments represent a money sacrifice to the country 
 so incomparably less than the monetary sacrifice 
 which her methods oblige Germany to make, that 
 no subsequent care and economy on the part of 
 German officials in the expenditure of cash, when 
 it has once been obtained, can prevent ours from 
 being, as a question of money, the more econom- 
 ical method of the two. We wish clearly at the 
 
 E
 
 66 Questions to he . 
 
 outset to separate this question from tliat of the 
 expenditure of the money, in which we have 
 everything to learn from Germany, and Germany 
 has httle or nothing to learn from us. We shall 
 therefore, in the first instance, deal with Lord 
 Randolph's notions of economy, and show that 
 neither English nor German experience supports 
 them. We shall then endeavour to make good 
 our case as to the enormous sacrifices which Ger- 
 many is making as compared with ourselves. We 
 shall be content to establish this in the case of 
 Germany alone, because the whole administration 
 of Germany is in its expenditure so notoriously 
 wise and economical, that, if Germany cannot 
 make a compulsory service and a state manipula- 
 tion of huge funds of money economical, it is cer- 
 tain that no other Power can do so. 
 
 II. We propose next to discuss the relative 
 strength of the present French and German mili- 
 tary frontiers — as to which we directly challenged 
 Sir Charles Dilke's statement that the French 
 frontier is now the stronger of the two. It will be 
 seen, when we come to describe the two frontiers, 
 that there are most plausible grounds for Sir 
 Charles Dilke's belief; that it is well that the 
 question should have been raised ; that the views 
 and principles which induce the German strategists 
 to prefer a method of defence altogether different 
 from that of France, do not lie on the surface.
 
 discussed in this Article. 6y 
 
 Nevertheless we believe that wc shall be able to 
 show that they are sound and true. In any case, 
 the views of the two great military Powers are so 
 startlingly different, that we think a statement of 
 them, intelligible to non-military readers, cannot 
 fail to be of interest. It will prepare such readers, 
 at least, to study the events which will occur on 
 the outbreak of war whenever it takes place. 
 
 III. The third point in relation to France and 
 Germany, on which we challenged Sir Charles's 
 statements, is this. He assumes that, as a neces- 
 sary consequence of the enormous strength of the 
 new French frontier, Germany will certainly be 
 disposed to march through Belgium. We propose 
 to show that there are strong military reasons, in- 
 volved in the nature of the case, which tend to turn 
 the balance the other way. At the same time, we 
 must at once admit that, though we differ from 
 Sir Charles as to the extent to which the military 
 balance tends to sway in this direction, we do not 
 differ from him in thinking that if Belgium would 
 ensure her liberties she must effectually arm. 
 
 IV. Connected with this is the next question, 
 which immediately concerns ourselves, whether we 
 have abandoned all purpose of fulfilling the inter- 
 national obligations we have undertaken, provided 
 that Belgium performs her part. On this matter 
 we protested that Sir Charles Dilke had no ade- 
 quate grounds for the conclusion he had arrived
 
 68 Summary continued. 
 
 at. We intend therefore to show, in the first 
 place, to what extent it is probable that we should 
 be able to make good our support of Belgian 
 neutrality in the event of a war between France 
 and Germany. In the second, we shall quote the 
 words of our statesmen, at the time when the 
 question last arose, to show how clear and certain 
 our responsibility is. We shall declare our dis- 
 belief that Englishmen intend to abandon an 
 acknowledged duty. 
 
 V. We shall next discuss in general terms the 
 present efficiency of the two opposing armies. It 
 seems to us essential to enter, so far as we may, 
 into these matters, if the mere numerical figures 
 which Sir Charles Dilke has supplied are to have 
 any practical value. 
 
 This will occupy all the space we can afford for 
 the present. In our third article we shall first 
 discuss, in a similar manner, the frontiers opposed 
 to one another of Russia and Germany, and the 
 relative advantages for offence and defence pre- 
 sented by them to each Power ; secondly, the 
 position of Germany, in alliance with Austria, in 
 a war against Russia and France, and the general 
 character of Austria as a military Power ; thirdly, 
 we shall have to reply to the statements made in 
 Sir Charles Dilke's now published volume on that 
 matter, which is for us always the central " couple," 
 as the mathematicians would call it, of the Euro-
 
 Econo7ny and Efficiency. 69 
 
 pean balance — Russia and England — in relation to 
 European war. In every instance this is the point 
 towards which we desire to lead up ; but we shall 
 not be able to complete our statement in regard to 
 it until our final article, after we have completed 
 our survey of the other Powers involved in the 
 present conditions of most unstable equilibrium. 
 
 I. German and EnglisJi Economy. — Economy, 
 says Lord Randolph Churchill, and efficiency go 
 hand in hand. We agree with him. We believe 
 that efficiency is always economical, provided you 
 can afford to pay for it. That is the secret of the 
 true German economy. Lord Randolph has well 
 illustrated the meaning which he attaches to the 
 phrase by the questions which he put to witnesses 
 in the Parliamentary Committee of which he is 
 chairman. He did not leave much doubt of his 
 meaning in the Wolverhampton speech. Let us 
 illustrate Lord Randolph's philosophy, and show 
 its universal soundness and applicability to the 
 current experience of English life : " Pay for 
 shoddy, and you are sure to get good English 
 broadcloth. Pay for butterine, and you are sure 
 to get the best Dorsetshire butter. Pay for cheap 
 clothes, and you are sure not to get nasty. Mark 
 your lawyer's brief with the lowest of known fees ; 
 you are sure to secure the services of the most 
 leading counsel and their constant attendance on
 
 70 Clives Economy. 
 
 your suit. Seek out where you can consult a 
 physician for a ten-shiUing fee, and you are sure to 
 get the advice of the best specialists in London." 
 Such is Lord Randolph's knowledge of the world. 
 Is it really possible that, apart from all German 
 experience, of which he manifestly knows nothing, 
 Lord Randolph never read the masterly essay on 
 Lord Clive, which describes how that Indian 
 administration was created, the efficiency of which 
 has been the standing admiration of all foreign 
 critics .^ Lord Randolph should, at least, know 
 something of India. 
 
 " Clive saw clearly that it was absurd to give 
 men power and to require them to live in penury. 
 He justly concluded that no reform could be 
 effectual which should not be coupled with a plan 
 for liberally remunerating the civil servants of the 
 Company." That is Lord Macaulay's account of 
 economical administration. Again, if Lord Ran- 
 dolph chooses to call before his Committee those 
 who know the present administration of the War 
 Office, we venture to predict this : that he will find 
 there is one conviction shared by them all, be they 
 who they may — soldier, clerk, those who wish 
 to see a stronger military element infused into 
 the department, those who wish for some other 
 reforms, and those who wish to keep things as 
 they are, — all, we say, have alike one conviction 
 on one subject connected with that Office. It is
 
 Cheap and dear Services. 7 1 
 
 this : that the cheapest service for which the coun- 
 try has at this moment to pay, done by any of the 
 civil staff, is that of the most highly paid perman- 
 ent civil servant within it. Many private jealousies 
 and personal piques are engendered by sedentary 
 work ; yet within the walls of the War Office, and 
 among those who have business relations with it, 
 all will agree that every pound of money that is 
 paid for Sir Ralph Thompson's salary is more eco- 
 nomically expended than most other two pounds 
 that go out of her Majesty's Exchequer. 
 
 We say, then, that on English evidence alone 
 Lord Randolph's notions of economy by cheese- 
 paring cutting down of salaries is a false one. Wc 
 say further, that if, ignoring our own experience, 
 the experience of America, and the experience of 
 Germany, with which we are now about to deal, he 
 appeals simply to the prejudices which induce 
 working men to believe that any one who gets 
 higher pay than they do must be overpaid, he will 
 be the deadliest enemy that his country has had 
 to encounter for years. He will bring about a 
 costly collapse of our administration as well as of 
 our army, such as it would not be possible for any 
 one, who has not an influence over the democracy 
 so powerful for good and evil as his own, to cause. 
 
 As a question of the factors that must go to 
 determine the propriety of the salaries paid in 
 Germany and England, we ask our readers to con-
 
 72 A lucky " Von:' 
 
 sider this report of an actual conversation which 
 took place a year or two ago in German society, 
 not certainly in Berlin, but as it happens in Dres- 
 den. We change only the names. 
 
 "What extraordinarily lucky people those Von 
 Cobos are ! " 
 
 " Why, what has happened .'' " 
 
 " Haven't you heard ? " 
 
 " No ; tell me." 
 
 " Why, Fraulein von Cobo is engaged to be 
 married to a man with ^300 a-year ! " 
 
 Literally that took place, and represented the 
 general feeling of society: ;^300 a-year — all told 
 — was looked upon as an independent fortune on 
 which a "Von" was to be congratulated as a quite 
 exceptional piece of luck. 
 
 How can you compare, by merely citing figures, 
 salaries under such circumstances in London and 
 in Dresden or in most parts of Germany.'^ It does 
 not matter a bit whether the difference results from 
 a more economical style of living or from money 
 actually purchasing more. The man in office has 
 to live in England as it is. 
 
 Let us take another illustration to make this 
 point clear. A few years ago it was necessary to 
 send a distinguished English officer to command 
 the native Egyptian army. He found that, tempt- 
 ing to an able soldier as that position was, he 
 would have been oblifrcd to refuse it unless there
 
 Civil Salaries. 73 
 
 had been attached to it an income of several 
 thousands a-year. For, living in the society of 
 the Pashas of Cairo, a grandee among them, he 
 must either have beggared his own family or 
 have put himself in a false position if he had 
 not received an adequate salary. 
 
 Lord Randolph says that the point of a Secre- 
 tary of State in England receiving about double 
 the pay of a similar official in Berlin is irrelevant. 
 It may be convenient to him for his own purposes 
 to allege that that is so, but he either ignores or 
 forgets an important historical discussion. When 
 last the salaries of our great State officials were 
 publicly attacked, the strongest and most con- 
 vincing argument by which they were defended 
 was this from the then Lord John Russell : " I 
 have been a poor man all my life, but I never 
 knew what it was to be in debt till I became a 
 Secretary of State." 
 
 Thus it is especially on poor men that the strain 
 falls of positions of power to which no adequate 
 salary is attached ; the State instantly suffers, 
 since the choice necessarily falls on men of in- 
 ferior capacity and character, who are rich enough 
 to take the office. That is the most foolish of all 
 unwise economies. 
 
 In Prussia there is not a rich class, independent 
 of its pay, from which fairly efficient officers might 
 be drawn. So thoroughly is the necessity of pay-
 
 74 Officers Pay in Germany. 
 
 ing for efficient services, if you desire economy, 
 understood in Germany, that a few years ago a 
 somewhat startling surprise disturbed an arrange- 
 ment of Mr Gladstone's. Thinking that the 
 economical conditions of Prussia must involve 
 lower rates of pay for her officers, which would 
 enable him to propose curtailment of expense in 
 the pay of the English army, he called for a return 
 of the pay of all ranks of the officers of the German 
 army. The return brought out facts so little to 
 Mr Gladstone's taste, that the document was never 
 presented to the House of Commons, for whom it 
 was originally intended. 
 
 General Brackenbury, in his evidence before 
 Lord Randolph's Committee, has given such full 
 particulars on this subject that we need not en- 
 large on them here. He has shown that, while 
 the junior officers of the German army receive, in 
 comparison with the conditions of civil life and 
 with civil salaries, very much higher pay than 
 our own, some of our higher grades receive much 
 larger pay than the German. But we could easily 
 prove that Lord Russell's speech applies strictly to 
 these cases. As an instance, the expenses of the 
 Portsmouth command are so great that it is im- 
 possible to appoint any officer to it who has not a 
 private income of several thousands a-year. A 
 distinguished cavalry officer, who has no children, 
 and is certainly not a poor man, told the present
 
 Pay in England. 75 
 
 writer that, much as he should Hke to accept the 
 command of the cavalry at Aldershot, he feared he 
 should not be able to afford to do so. The nominal 
 pay of a full " general " in England only obtains 
 for a man in actual command in the field. In that 
 position he is a much poorer man than the German 
 " general " with half his salary. The English general 
 has necessarily to incur the expenses of the politi- 
 cal hospitalities of England. He has to entertain 
 princes. All such expenses fall on the German 
 Emperor. High as is the nominal pay of an 
 English Commander-in-Chief in the field, the com- 
 mand in most of our recent expeditions has been 
 in each instance almost pecuniarily ruinous to the 
 actual leader. We challenge Lord Randolph to 
 investigate the exact accuracy of every one of 
 these statements. If he really desires the good of 
 his country, he can hardly refuse to test them 
 when thus laid before him. If not, perhaps some 
 other member of the Committee will keep the 
 matter in mind. 
 
 We may take, as an illustration of the German 
 views of wise expenditure, the fact that when, 
 during the Revolutionary period of 1848, the 
 Prussian Reds broke into the Government arsenal, 
 they found there a complete store of rifled small- 
 arms, ready for issue to the whole army, at a time 
 when none of the wealthy Powers of Europe, not 
 even England, had ventured to incur the outlay of
 
 ^6 Economy — German and other. 
 
 purchasing rifles for the rank and file. Again, in 
 1864, Prussia had completely re-armed her soldiers 
 with breech-loaders before any of the wealthier 
 Powers had done so. For the third time now she 
 has just completed, or is just completing, the issue 
 to all her troops of magazine rifled small-arms. 
 For the third time, in this expenditure on what 
 she has decided to be the best weapon, she antici- 
 pates England and France. 
 
 In other words, her economical principle is the 
 exact reverse of Lord Randolph's. She does not 
 believe in the theory he practically laid down at 
 Wolverhampton : " Advertise for the cheapest 
 article ; you are sure to get the best." 
 
 When, however, the question arises how the 
 money or money's worth is originally procured 
 from the country, we must declare that ours is by 
 far the most economical system. 
 
 Let us take first our enormous non-effective 
 charge, the one that has excited most the wrath of 
 Lord Randolph and of other critics. What that 
 charge does for us is this : it keeps all the ranks of 
 our army from dropping into the condition of senil- 
 ity which attended the Royal Artillery and Royal 
 Engineers — the only two pure seniority corps we 
 then had — shortly before the Crimean war. How 
 hopeless the inefficiency produced by that senility 
 was, may be judged by any one who looks at the 
 pathetic pictures of what a Woolwich parade was
 
 The German Pension List. yy 
 
 in those days. From all we have seen of the 
 German army of late years, wc much doubt 
 whether their equivalent of our system has done 
 as much for them. We have seen pictures of the 
 senior officers of German messes, that might have 
 passed for sketches taken of our officers at the 
 worst period of our post-1815 peace-time. 
 
 But what is the German equivalent of our non- 
 effective return ? In many respects, like all other 
 parts of the German system, it is excellent, and 
 utilises in a very effective way the services of 
 officers and non-commissioned officers. The State 
 is the proprietor of all the Prussian railways, of all 
 the Elsass-Lothringen railways, and of many more 
 throughout the empire. Officers and non-com- 
 missioned officers, after they have retired from the 
 army, are provided, in connection with these and 
 other State properties, with appointments which 
 serve as excellent substitutes for heavy pensions. 
 
 But how came the Government to be proprietor 
 of so many railways, most of them originally 
 started as private companies ? The answer is easy, 
 and happily illustrates the nature, on this its ex- 
 pensive side, of Prussian economy. The command 
 of capital due to the French indemnity greatly 
 facilitated the process. That vast sum was well 
 turned over at interest, whilst it was accumulating 
 for military purposes. The process consisted in 
 purchasing at first a moderate number of railways
 
 78 Methods of Taxation. 
 
 that could, with the advantage of State support, be 
 worked so sharply in competition with others that 
 the latter no longer paid. Their proprietors were 
 therefore glad to dispose of them at a moderate 
 rate to the Government. The new purchase was 
 soon turned to good account, both as a profitable 
 investment and as a means of extending the system 
 by competition with other railways. 
 
 In this way, no doubt, as a holder of funds, the 
 State had arranged for their disposal at great 
 advantage. But what about the relative cost to 
 individuals of their system and of ours ? Which 
 would be cheaper in the long-run for English tax- 
 payers ; to pay the 2d. on the income-tax which 
 about represents the equivalent of the cost of the 
 non-effective return — or to have the whole railway 
 property of the country run down by Government 
 competition and bought up below par ? 
 
 It must be remembered, in comparing the Budget 
 of Germany with our own, that all the pensions 
 that are paid arc entirely struck off the Army 
 Budget. So that to institute any comparison, the 
 three millions which our non-effective vote costs 
 must be deducted from army expenditure. The 
 railways arc only an example of the method 
 pursued. All the offices of the State are filled 
 with retired officers and non-commissioned officers, 
 whose pensions are thus saved. Yet the actual 
 monetary cost of the non-effective service of Ger-
 
 Another German Tax. 79 
 
 many is, according to General Brackenbury's evi- 
 dence, ^2,250,000 sterling, in addition to these 
 salaries. 
 
 Let us take another illustration of the point we 
 are anxious to drive home. During one of the 
 cavalry attacks at Mars la Tour, two sons of 
 Prince Bismarck's were riding as privates in the 
 ranks of the 2d Dragoons of the Guards. They 
 played their part as troopers gallantly. One was 
 severely wounded, one carried a comrade out of 
 fatal danger. Heaven forbid that we should dis- 
 parage the moral and national advantage of such 
 association of the highest with the lowest in the 
 performance of simple patriotic duty ! But as a 
 question of monetary resources expended on war 
 what does it represent ? Doubtless, as far as these 
 two young men are concerned personally, very 
 little. It was no monetary loss to the country 
 that they should be doing humble duty well, at a 
 time when they were not ready for such work as 
 has since then been given them. But as regards 
 the number of classes between them and that which 
 fills our ranks, what does not that simple statement 
 imply ? The agents of great mercantile houses, 
 the eye-doctor on the Rhine with a practice of 
 many thousands a-year, all those on whose skill 
 and knowledge the accumulation of wealth through- 
 out the country depended — these men were every- 
 where present in the ranks. Hardly any rate of
 
 So Money Cost of Universal Service. 
 
 taxation could extract from the country such sums 
 of money as this complete dislocation of trade and 
 professional work involved. Again we say, we by 
 no means deny the gain which balanced the loss ; 
 but it was not a money gain. 
 
 We are not now dealing with that particular aspect 
 of the case, of which Sir A. Malet, in the book we 
 quoted in our last article, speaks when he says that 
 the German system involves the sacrifice for al- 
 most every healthy man throughout the country 
 of twenty years of personal independence. What 
 we urge is, that when politicians go down among 
 our working men, who trust them, and tell them 
 that we are spending too much of our money, be- 
 cause foreign Governments do not show in their 
 budgets sums much larger than our own, it is 
 not enough to reply, " You forget how cheaply 
 foreign Governments fill their ranks." It is not 
 true that they fill them as cheaply as we do ; 
 though the cost to them appears in no budget. 
 In no country in the world would the mere mone- 
 tary loss of substituting a universal for a voluntary 
 and highly paid service be so great as in our own. 
 
 To tell a nation that it is making prodigious 
 monetary sacrifices at a time when it is in fact 
 saving its wealth by paying those to serve whom it 
 can best afford to employ, is to deceive it. Foreign 
 nations sacrifice to the protection and security of 
 national interests much more than money. They
 
 True and false Comparisons. 8 1 
 
 sacrifice personal ease, social privilege, individual 
 independence. But in addition to that, they sacri- 
 fice for the whole country a power of accumulating 
 wealth by devoting their young men to that pur- 
 pose, which represents an additional monetary loss 
 of a magnitude so enormous that the money that 
 would be taken out of England if we adopted their 
 methods would stand to that which we now spend 
 in a proportion that no man can measure, but that 
 would at least be represented by a high multiple of 
 our present figure. This is the only fair method of 
 comparison as to the money rate they are paying 
 and the money rate we are paying for national 
 defence. 
 
 We have spoken of the conditions of English 
 social life as elements that must be taken into 
 account when we try to estimate the kind of rate 
 that must be paid if we would have economical 
 service from those classes of which we have taken 
 the present permanent Under-Secretary of State for 
 War as an example. Does the same thing apply 
 or does it not apply to our working classes } 
 
 Listen to this. Doubtless many of our readers 
 are accustomed to read, or at least to take in, 
 some of the agricultural journals of the country. 
 If they do, they will bear us out when we say that 
 a phenomenon has lately been noticed by careful 
 observers which, like many other humble matters, 
 has a deep significance. The markets of the 
 
 F
 
 82 Soldiers from a dear Market. 
 
 country have changed in a very curious way. A 
 few years ago, fat pigs, fat bacon, even fat mutton 
 and fat beef, were in great demand. But farmers 
 find that the production of fat no longer pays as it 
 did. Why so ? The answer which those give 
 who best understand such matters is this. The 
 vast mass of the population of these islands has 
 acquired tastes, engendered by increasing pros- 
 perity, which make them prefer more costly ways 
 of obtaining that necessary part of human food, 
 of which fat is the cheapest form. Butter, butter- 
 ine, and the like, are now eaten by them instead 
 of the fat of bacon. Their very habits of cooking 
 have changed. Moreover, though the production 
 of fat no longer pays as it did, the consumption 
 of bacon has increased more largely than that of 
 any other article of commerce, because of the 
 increased purchasing power of those who make it 
 their chief form of meat-food. 
 
 You are thus competing for your soldiers in 
 a market yearly offering more and more oppor- 
 tunities to the class from which they come of 
 acquiring wealth, and the habits which wealth 
 engenders. Whether, from all points of view, it 
 is purely national gain that the population should 
 crowd in to the work of highly paid factories, is 
 a question beside our present purpose. What we 
 earnestly urge upon the consideration of such 
 politicians as Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir
 
 Getting your Money's Worth. 83 
 
 Charles Dilke is this. You arc actually getting 
 your army on a system which subtracts from the 
 general wealth of the country sums so immeasur- 
 ably less than the Continental system would sub- 
 tract from it, that all monetary comparisons be- 
 tween their budgets and ours tend to deceive us as 
 to the sacrifices we are making. 
 
 You cannot both have your pie and eat it too. 
 You cannot save the national purse by adopting 
 methods which, in their direct payment for what 
 we want, are, commercially speaking, immeasur- 
 ably sounder than the Continental system of taking 
 wealth by other means than by direct payment, 
 and yet have an adequate defence for your vast 
 empire by paying what they pay in hard cash. 
 
 The constant cries that ours is a most costly 
 system are most dangerous and most deceptive. 
 Our whole national economy is based upon com- 
 mercial wisdom ; and, as a mere matter of such 
 calculation, we have been far wiser in our gener- 
 ation than our neighbours. But we are living in 
 a fool's paradise. " Cut it down ! cut it down ! " 
 were the cries which greeted Lord Randolph's 
 absolutely deceptive comparison of our Army 
 Budget and that of Germany. If you do cut it 
 down, you can by no manner of means supply those 
 terrible deficiencies in our needed preparation for 
 possible war which Lord Randolph himself pointed 
 out. Those deficiencies exist because our states-
 
 84 A Ring-fenced v. a World-wide 
 
 men have been attempting an impossible prob- 
 lem. They have tried to adopt principles for sav- 
 ing the wealth of the country which do save that 
 wealth ; and yet, in comparing their doings with 
 those of Continental statesmen, they have given 
 themselves no credit for the saving, but have gone 
 on to act as if they ought to get what they do 
 not pay for. 
 
 To turn to the other side of the comparison. 
 What has Germany to do with the army and navy 
 which she employs ? What have we with ours ? 
 The German empire lies within a ring-fence. Her 
 system of localisation and all the cheap service 
 which it represents is easy, because her army has, 
 during peace-time, never to stir from home. We 
 have an empire which occupies in mere extent one- 
 fifth of the habitable globe, a population which is 
 reckoned by the loo million. But that is not all 
 or nearly all. It is scarcely too much to say that 
 every square mile of water which connects the out- 
 lying portions of our dominions is for us a territory 
 needing defence as much as does Elsass-Lothringen 
 or Pomcrania. It is a defence which to be ade- 
 quate needs the work alike of army and of navy ; 
 of navy first — of army, that the navy may be free 
 to do its proper work. Everywhere over it we 
 have harbours and fortresses, which must be held 
 by our army unless our vast resources, dispersed 
 over that watery dominion, are to be open to far
 
 Empire and Commerce. 85 
 
 more easy attack than any of those German vil- 
 lages which now sleep so securely behind the men 
 who guard the Rhine. 
 
 Lord Randolph makes a great point of the fact 
 that India pays for the army which we keep there, 
 and that this is an additional proof of our extra- 
 vagance. Perhaps an American general, a mili- 
 tary Lycurgus in his own country, may be allowed 
 the weight of an unprejudiced onlooker, so far as 
 our Indian system is concerned. General Upton ^ 
 has unhesitatingly declared that nowhere in all 
 history have such results been obtained as we have 
 secured from our native army in India. He has 
 given all the figures of our high payments for local 
 service, and, like Macaulay, he has declared that, 
 judged by its results, it has been the most econo- 
 mical system known on earth. Those of us who 
 know its present weaknesses know also that they 
 all lie on the side exactly opposite to that on which 
 Lord Randolph tries to lay his finger. If he is 
 going to apply to India the manifold meanness 
 suggested by his questions as chairman of his 
 Committee, the day of the collapse of our Indian 
 empire will date from that on which he gains power 
 to carry out his will. 
 
 But, though our native army in India has been 
 a marvellous and most economical accession to our 
 imperial strength in India, and though for the 
 ^ See ' The Armies of Asia and Europe,' p. 75.
 
 86 Difficulties of English Mobilisation. 
 
 actual service of our European army in India that 
 empire pays, that does not close the question as a 
 comparison between our army and the German. 
 
 Mr Knox has perhaps by this time brought 
 home to Lord Randolph the fact that at present 
 the whole conditions of our service at home are 
 determined by the necessities of our Indian and 
 colonial empire. Even in the scheme which is 
 now proposed for carrying out, as perfectly as may 
 be, that sudden mobilisation the success of which 
 in 1870, brought France down on her knees before 
 Germany at the very opening of the campaign, the 
 fact that our army has primarily to hold a world- 
 wide empire must be taken into account. 
 
 We cannot have the same simple system of mo- 
 bilisation as a country which keeps all its army in 
 the neighbourhood of their homes. The continual 
 transfer of regiments from England to India and 
 the colonies involves, in a vast variety of ways, 
 costs which Germany never incurs. The necessi- 
 ties of a voluntary service in themselves prevent 
 its being possible to keep regiments from year to 
 year in an unpopular station. An army which can 
 only have to be moved by rail or road, on the out- 
 break of war, is on a very different footing. 
 
 We can arrange, and we are arranging, if Lord 
 Randolph and Sir Charles Dilkc will allow us to 
 do so, to have the ports of embarkation told off 
 for our troops, and all those conditions provided
 
 The present Scheme. 8y 
 
 beforehand which facihtate sea-transport. The 
 actual numbers of troops, the particular regiments 
 the weight of their stores, will all be fixed, so that 
 the Admiralty can at any moment know what 
 ships will be required and what accommodation 
 must be prepared. The stores to go on board 
 those ships will be ready at the ports. Every re- 
 serve man will know, long beforehand, where he is 
 to join his old regiment, and will find his clothing 
 and equipment waiting for him on the spot. The 
 quartering of regiments will, for the first time in 
 our history, be arranged with a view to making 
 easy a mobilisation either for home service or em- 
 barkation. Every item of the departments which 
 enable an army to march and fight, which we do 
 possess, will be turned to account. But it must 
 be realised by Englishmen that hitherto in the 
 hopeless attempt we have described to buy with 
 hard cash what foreigners take by a more costly 
 method, and yet to pay as little as they do, the 
 English army has been hitherto always stinted of 
 those very things on which the power of the Ger- 
 man army depends. It was because the German 
 army consisted, not of a number of regiments, but 
 of corps d'armee, complete in all their parts, that 
 Germany in 1870 struck dov/n Imperial France 
 within a month. 
 
 For though we get our money on the cheapest 
 system we can, the Germans understand, and we
 
 88 Causes of Waste. 
 
 do not, how to spend it when we get it. Lord 
 Randolph and Sir Charles Dilke are agreed that 
 they and their class have made the most hopeless 
 mess of the process that was humanly possible. 
 We are of the same mind. In Germany, among 
 all the fierce attacks that have been made against 
 Prince Bismarck and the other members of the 
 Prussian Government, no hint has been ever 
 dropped of a doubt that the money, once voted, 
 has been expended in the most economical manner 
 possible. Any one who will be at the trouble to 
 read the questions that some of the members of 
 the House of Commons on Lord Randolph's Com- 
 mittee have been asking will have no difficulty in 
 seeing the reason why we have been in so different 
 a condition. We have been told that the selection 
 of the Committee has excited general dissatisfac- 
 tion in the House itself. For the credit of the 
 House of Commons, we hope that that is true. 
 There are of course some members who always 
 ask most business-like and excellent questions ; 
 but really others appal one. One does not expect 
 a member of the House necessarily to know very 
 much, but he ought at least to know where to get 
 information. He ought to be man of the world 
 enough not to ask a soap-manufacturer details as to 
 the manufacture of cheese, when he is appointed 
 to arrive at truth. Yet that is the principle on 
 which the inquiry is being conducted.
 
 Economy {?) in Education. 89 
 
 Wc heartily thank Lord Randolph for having 
 insisted upon making public these questions as 
 they proceed. They will supply admirable mate- 
 rial for heckling. We commend them to the at- 
 tention of constituents who have reasons of their 
 own for wishing to make their members ridiculous 
 when they next have to face them. Let us take 
 an instance. Mr Knox is a most able accountant, 
 and a most hard-working man. We suspect even 
 Lord Randolph, if he knew nothing of him before, 
 is a little sorry that he committed himself to the 
 statement at Wolverhampton that the copyists did 
 all the work at the War Office, Mr Knox and his 
 fellows doing nothing. But Mr Knox is neces- 
 sarily, like other men who achieve much in their 
 own line, obliged to stick to his last. He does 
 not travel far beyond the walls of the dingy, in- 
 convenient, and poisonous office in Pall Mall, to 
 which Lord Randolph boasts that he has confined 
 the men on whose health and clear-headedness the 
 efficiency of our army depends. Just imagine, 
 then, the selecting of Mr Knox for examination on 
 the details of the educational arrangements of the 
 Civil Service Commissioners ; on the wisdom of 
 the arrangements of foreign armies ; on the reasons 
 why a regiment which moves from Mullingar to 
 Stirling, then to an out-station of Plymouth, miles 
 from any board-school, and thence to Pembroke 
 docks, should not have its unfortunate children
 
 90 Recruits, N.-C. Officers, and Education. 
 
 shunted from one board-school to another, from 
 one absolutely different system of education to 
 another, every time that it moves. Again, it is a 
 tolerably familiar fact to most men who have even 
 a little studied modern war, that the general edu- 
 cation of the German army has been one of its 
 greatest powers. Our own conviction of the rela- 
 tive weakness of the Russian army is based on the 
 stolid ignorance of the Russian peasantry. Noth- 
 ing has so much tended of late years to increase 
 the practical power of our own army as its enforced 
 education. No one who knows what a young 
 soldier is when he first joins would dream of sub- 
 mitting to him the question whether he would like 
 to learn. A greater cruelty could not be done 
 him. Every temptation is thrown in his way not 
 to learn. If the option is nominally left to him, 
 it will be no option at all. All weak young fellows 
 will yield to the pressure of their comrades, and 
 will avoid learning. In most regiments the ques- 
 tion — the vital question — of whether they can or 
 can not get good non-commissioned officers is 
 almost absolutely a question of whether their 
 commanding officers have or have not taken pains 
 to encourage the general education of their recruits. 
 Yet these gentlemen select Mr Knox, who can 
 by no accident have had either the experience or 
 the special knowledge of the conditions of modern 
 war, required to answer such a question, as the man
 
 Costly Economy. 91 
 
 whose opinion they take on the point whether 
 money may not be saved by making optional the 
 regimental schools for the privates, as well as of 
 doing away with the other educational establish- 
 ments of the army. There are numbers of Eng- 
 lish soldiers whose special business it has been to 
 make themselves acquainted with the conditions of 
 foreign armies. If their own evidence is to be dis- 
 trusted because they are soldiers, they at least 
 know to what unanswerable and authoritative 
 documents the Committee ought to be referred. 
 But if the soldiers are to be examined on the 
 technical details of army accounts as carried on in 
 the War Office, and the accountants on questions 
 of pure military experience, what result but miser- 
 able failure can come of this wretched system of 
 inquiry .-* 
 
 This is the sort of economy which in the past 
 has been so costly. " Happy thought," says some 
 one who knows nothing about it. " Let us do 
 away with the expense of the education of the 
 army. Soldiers want to fight, not to learn. They 
 would like it ever so much better themselves.' 
 Slap goes the vote. Two years after appear some 
 powerful letters from a newspaper correspondent, 
 pointing out how all-important in modern war the 
 education of some foreign army has proved in a 
 decisive campaign, in which public interest at the 
 time is absorbed. Everything must then be sacri-
 
 92 A rmy Efficiency : 
 
 ficed to the one object of educating the soldier. 
 Money is voted to repurchase land and buildings, 
 and to re-establish a machinery which cannot be 
 made as efficient as the old one that was destroyed. 
 Everything is at high pressure and double cost. 
 
 We take this as an illustration. Hitherto, we 
 must admit, education has not been assailed. But 
 Lord Randolph will, no doubt, easily persuade the 
 men of Wolverhampton that no one ought to 
 know anything that they do not ; so that now the 
 special turn of education has come. In other 
 matters — in those on which the military power, 
 the sudden striking power more especially of Ger- 
 many and now of France too depend — we have 
 been doomed to impotence by the hopelessness of 
 attempting to make the House of Commons in- 
 terested in army efficiency. Whatever attracted 
 attention — the talk of ladies looking on from the 
 House of Commons' stand at a great review — has 
 had its due favour. Those things, the value of 
 which the experience of war alone can teach, have 
 been left to take their chance. 
 
 Hence it happens that while we have for our 
 army the infantry, cavalry, and artillery, for those 
 two corps of which we have spoken we are without 
 any adequate supply of the needed transport, of 
 the needed medical staff, of the needed engineers 
 for bridging, for telegraph work, and for other 
 engineer duties. We have no supply ready of the
 
 German and English. 93 
 
 field-bakeries, of " artillery ammunition columns," 
 or "infantry ammunition columns," or "provision 
 columns." 
 
 Now, in the German army all these bodies in 
 their due proportion are embodied in, and form 
 part of, the mobilisation of each corps darmee. 
 
 This is the great contrast which must strike any 
 one who will be at the trouble of turning to the 
 Appendix of the Prussian official history of the 
 war of 1870 and comparing the tabular statement 
 of the German army with our own army esti- 
 mates, or with any other complete record of our 
 army as it exists. If the various portions of the 
 force which are there given had ever existed in our 
 army, they would long since have been abolished, 
 because some one would have asked Mr Knox 
 why such unwarlike agents should be kept up in 
 peace-time ? It is not Mr Knox's business to 
 know the answer ; but Mr Knox's authority would 
 have been sufficient for their abolition. 
 
 Now, from the German point of view, economy 
 consists in providing those things which make an 
 army efficient. Our own army is not efficient for 
 war, and cannot be ready to take the field with 
 that rapidity which is of the essence of the ques- 
 tion, until we can, on the word " mobilise " being 
 issued from headquarters, instantly prepare what- 
 ever force we have complete in all these respects. 
 
 To send an army into the field unprovided with
 
 94 More Men ? or means of Fighting ? 
 
 those auxiliary aids, without which an army cannot 
 move, without which it cannot fight, is as reason- 
 able as to send a regiment into the field without 
 its arms. If the question were whether we should 
 send to war one regiment armed with the best 
 breech-loaders or two unarmed at all, no one would 
 hesitate as to the answer. Yet to any one who has 
 studied modern war it is just as wise, it amounts 
 to the same thing, to send an army into the field 
 without its proper auxiliary services, thinking that 
 you add more to its force by increasing its cavalry, 
 infantry, and artillery without supplying what you 
 have with what is required to enable them to fight, 
 as to keep on adding to an army men whom you 
 cannot arm. 
 
 The central cause of this enormous difterence 
 between the wisdom with which the German money 
 once obtained for war is administered, and the folly 
 with which we expend ours, lies in the existence in 
 Berlin of that " great staff," of which Von Moltke 
 is the head. Until quite lately we have had no 
 body whatever in London which supplied the place 
 of that " great staff." The " Horse Guards " and 
 " War Office " are employed on matters of daily 
 routine and petty detail — very largely, indeed, in 
 preparing answers for questions put forward in the 
 House of Commons to embarrass a Government 
 for party purposes. Von Moltke's staff does not 
 concern itself at all with the innumerable matters
 
 TJie " Great General Staff." 95 
 
 of minor regimental discipline the solution of which 
 is the chief duty of the Adjutant-General's Depart- 
 ment of our army. It is absorbed entirely in the 
 consideration of those matters on which the effec- 
 tive fighting power of the army depends. Of late 
 these have with us been undertaken by the Intel- 
 ligence Department, That department is a kind 
 of parasite. Its absolute necessity and its value 
 has made itself so felt by all other departments, not 
 only of the War Office but of the Government, 
 that it has gradually been absorbing duties almost 
 analogous to those of the " great staff" ; but it is 
 in its wrong place. It ought to be the thinking 
 head of the army — that which deals under the im- 
 mediate responsibility of the chief of the army with 
 all the questions of the mode in which the money 
 vote by Parliament can be most economically and 
 efficiently used — the questions of organisation, the 
 questions of preparedness for war. The mighty 
 questions whether a private in an infantry regiment 
 ought or ought not to have been punished for going 
 to sleep in church, whether a corporal's guard 
 should or should not have been relieved at two 
 o'clock, and the like, with which actually now the 
 time of a man like Lord Wolseley is not unfre- 
 quently occupied, ought to be dealt with, on their 
 own responsibility and finally, long before the 
 Horse Guards is reached. 
 
 Our present system of centralisation does not
 
 g6 FrencJi and Gervian Frontiers. 
 
 confer power on the headquarters of the army. It 
 deprives them of all real power by burying them 
 under detail. We have a congress of departments 
 at headquarters ; we have a congress of regiments 
 and of local staffs about the country. We have no 
 " great general staff ; " we have no corps (Tarmce, 
 
 11. TJie New Military Frontiers of Germany and 
 of France. — We turn now to the second question 
 with which we proposed to deal : The relative 
 military power of Germany and of France, and 
 more especially the respective strength of their two 
 frontiers. Simultaneously with our last article, 
 whilst we were expressing our conviction that Sir 
 Charles Dilke was in error in maintaining the 
 superior strength for practical purposes of the 
 French and Russian frontiers over the German, an 
 article appeared in the ' Contemporary Review,' 
 written by a German officer, which, so far as the 
 actual fortifications of France against Germany 
 and of Germany against France are concerned, 
 leaves nothing to be desired. W^e are the better 
 pleased that that should be so, because we are 
 anxious to avoid a vast body of detailed geograph- 
 ical description, and a catalogue of names, which, 
 for all but a limited class of readers, would possess 
 neither meaning nor interest. For all details, 
 therefore, of the most elaborate system of French 
 defence, we may refer our readers to that article.
 
 The French Defence Scheme. 97 
 
 What wc desire to do is to explain the broad 
 principles on which the two most opposite systems 
 of defence, carried out by the two nations, have 
 been designed, and to give our reasons for preferring 
 to believe in the German. After the war of 1870, 
 the French engineers found that, with the exception 
 of a very small strip of the frontier, the Germans 
 had possessed themselves of the old natural moun- 
 tain-barrier on which France had for generations 
 relied for her defence. They had to deal with a 
 country not in itself strongly defensible. They had 
 virtually a tabula rasa on which to exercise their 
 skill. They have worked with the greatest ability, 
 backed by an unstinted supply of money. Incred- 
 ible as the sum appears, France is reputed to have 
 expended since 1870 on her re-armament and for- 
 tification 135 million pounds sterling. Such a sum 
 skilfully expended could not fail to produce a for- 
 midable result. They have piled fortification upon 
 fortification all along the frontier. Certainly he 
 would be a rash man who would venture to speak 
 confidently as to the result, should the German 
 armies have to attack this continuous belt of fortifi- 
 cation, adequately garrisoned by formidable troops. 
 
 Belfort itself has been girdled with forts. Epinal 
 has been similarly strengthened, so has Toul, so 
 has Verdun. A great defensive position has been 
 prepared on the " Plateau de Haye," between 
 Frouard and Pont St Vincent. Then curtains of 
 
 G
 
 gS TJie Forest of Fortresses. 
 
 forts (Varrct close all the chief roads between these 
 great places of defence. An elaborate series of 
 defences cover the Cotes de Meuse between Toul 
 and Verdun, In second line Langres, Besancon, 
 and Dijon have been converted into vast in- 
 trenched camps. In fact, as Major Wachs says, 
 Epinal, Belfort, Besangon, Dijon, and Langres 
 form a large strategic pentagon, in which every 
 angle is filled with a fortified place of the first 
 rank. Reims, La-Fere, and Laon have all been 
 converted into intrenched camps. So numerous 
 are the forts which connect these various greater 
 places that only two gaps of any extent remain, 
 one between Verdun and the Belgian frontier, one 
 between Toul and Epinal. These have been de- 
 liberately left in order to tempt an invader to 
 advance by lines which would be disadvantageous 
 to him. Nor is this all ; the network of railways 
 in rear of these fortresses, and connecting them, 
 is most elaborate and complete. 
 
 The enormous size of the works may be judged 
 by the fact that Verdun will require a garrison of 
 25,000 men to hold it ; it has for its external forts 
 a perimeter of 27^ miles, Epinal has similarly a 
 perimeter of 28 miles, Belfort of 30 miles — and 
 so on. 
 
 Before discussing what appears to us to be the 
 weak point in this magnificent scheme, let us con- 
 sider what Germany has done on the other side.
 
 TJic German Action in Reply. 99 
 
 First, she has demolished nearly all the smaller forts 
 and fortresses in Elsass-Lothringen. Secondly, 
 she has everywhere elaborated her facilities for 
 detraining and entraining troops. She has per- 
 fected her railway communication between all 
 parts of Germany where corps assemble, and 
 Strasbourg and Metz. She has also perfected 
 the railway system north and south, as well as 
 east and west, within the newly conquered terri- 
 tory. Thirdly, she has made of Strasbourg with 
 Kehl an intrenched camp so vast, that Major 
 Wachs declares — and we believe that it is true 
 though others scarcely put the figures so high — 
 that it would cover and supply an army of 280,000 
 men. It can be protected by a belt of water from 
 the 111, the Rhone Canal, and the Rhine. Three 
 of the forts are similarly protected by wet ditches. 
 The forts communicate by subterranean telegraph 
 wires, and a railway circuit connects them with the 
 great system of railway which converges on Stras- 
 bourg. We rather doubt Major Wachs' statement 
 that this circular railway is now in order, but the 
 roadway is there, and the rails could easily be laid 
 down. Germany has enormously improved and 
 strengthened the forts round Metz. She has 
 treated with a sort of careless indifference three 
 other fortresses which she has not actually dis- 
 mantled, Thionville, Bitsch, and Saarlouis. 
 
 By the treaty after the war, she obtained pos-
 
 lOO TJie Command of tJie RJiinc. 
 
 session also of Neu Breisach, and this she has 
 retained in its old form, as it covers an important 
 bridge over the Rhine. Here, as elsewhere, she 
 has greatly improved the facilities for detraining 
 troops. Breisach will serve to bring into the 
 Southern Vosges the Bavarian corps. But, with 
 the exceptions we have named, no other fortresses 
 have been left standing on the French side beyond 
 the line of the Rhine. Germany has, however, still 
 her old line of great intrenched camps, giving her 
 command of rivers — Ulm, Rastatt, Mayence, Co- 
 blentz, Cologne, and Wesel. 
 
 She has over the Rhine itself no fewer than six- 
 teen railway bridges, besides four steam ferries, 
 capable of carrying entire trains, and also twenty 
 bridges of boats for wheeled carriages. Most of 
 these passages are fortified. All can be rapidly 
 destroyed. Double lines of railway run along 
 either bank of the Rhine throughout its entire 
 length. 
 
 Now what does this mean .'' It means that Ger- 
 many relics for the defence of her territory against 
 France upon facilitating in every way the gather- 
 ing of her forces upon the French frontier, and 
 upon striking in the field rapid blows against any 
 French force that shall attempt to pass the Rhine 
 to invade her. It means that every topographical 
 condition which will hamper the movement of an 
 army attempting rapid offence against her has
 
 TJic Use of IntrencJied Camps. loi 
 
 been studied ; that she will have the most telling 
 bases and pivots of manoeuvre for supplying her 
 forces. The Germans will be able to mancEUvre 
 in concentrated masses against an enemy who must 
 expose himself to blows in such fashion that the 
 German army can strike on flanks or rear. The 
 blow may be delivered when the French army is 
 divided by the necessities of movement in difiicult 
 country or across a great river, of which the Ger- 
 mans hold all the bridges, so that they can forbid 
 its passage to the French and pass it themselves 
 when and where they please. That is the nature of 
 the defence manifestly designed. 
 
 It is as auxiliary to this purpose that the great 
 camps exist. Her army is not swallowed up by 
 many fortresses. The great mass of the fortresses 
 which we have named, which hold the rivers, are 
 far to the rear, so that, whilst the active army 
 moves forward to the frontier, there can gather 
 securely behind them the great territorial army, 
 which will fill these camps, and be daily gaining 
 cohesion and discipline. 
 
 And now as to what she will do for offence. 
 That clearly depends on the weak spot she has the 
 opportunity to assail. In all that vast and won- 
 derful mass of fortification which confronts her, is 
 there one } Not in the fortresses, perhaps, as yet ; 
 but, unless all that we have gathered from the dis- 
 cussions which have of late been sufficiently ample
 
 I02 TJic Frcncli Weak Point. 
 
 in France, and from some other sources, be decep- 
 tive, there will be one most serious weakness in- 
 volved in the French system of defence. 
 
 Among the literature which poured from the 
 French press after the war of 1870-71, there was 
 one pathetic little pamphlet, written by the Em- 
 peror of the French himself, describing the causes 
 of the French disasters. He emphatically declared 
 that the great cause of all his trouble was that 
 neither he nor any one else understood that the 
 movement of troops by railway for a great cam- 
 paign was an art in itself, till the bitter experience 
 of war taught him how little he knew about it. 
 The statement was certainly an exaggerated one. 
 The causes of the woes of France lay much deeper 
 than that. But this much is certain, that every- 
 thing for France in the next war with Germany 
 will at first depend on the question whether her 
 soldiers have or have not practically mastered the 
 difficulty which the methodic movement to the 
 frontier of both her active and territorial army will 
 entail upon her. 
 
 For the defect of that vast agglomeration of 
 works which she has piled together is, that it will 
 take an army to defend it. Germany, with her 
 one strong place of Metz, fronts ten first-class 
 fortresses alone, independent of all the minor forts 
 which jostle one another along that mighty line. If 
 the French proposed to employ their regular army
 
 Not ''Shield v. Speaj^" but 103 
 
 in these works, well might Major Wachs exclaim, 
 as he does : " Now, this riveting of an army to a 
 fixed immovable spot is difficult to combine with 
 the offensive, and the year 1870 showed that a 
 French army could be brought rapidly behind 
 walls, but not easily before them ; so that we may 
 be permitted to ask the question. Whether the 
 nation which leads so excited a life to the west of 
 the Vosges is still the same that in former times 
 used to be so eager to advance and attack the ene- 
 my, and which, indeed, always showed a rapture for 
 open battle and swift decision, and the profoundest 
 aversion to merely standing and exchanging fire, 
 or to remaining long behind wall and trench ? 
 . . . Dead walls are the grave-stones of the mili- 
 tary self-confidence of the French, and the ' not- 
 withstanding their presence,' may very soon be 
 converted into ' because of their presence.' France 
 prefers to put her trust in the shield rather than 
 in the hand that wields the spear." 
 
 But Major Wachs, carefully as he has studied 
 the French frontier, evidently does not know the 
 French views as to the mode in which these fort- 
 resses are to be held. The idea is that, whilst the 
 active army takes the field, these fortresses are to be 
 occupied by the territorial army. There seems to 
 us to lie the weakness of the whole scheme. It 
 appears to have escaped notice in England that 
 France has never ventured to adopt the system of
 
 1 04 TJie vast Movement required. 
 
 localisation and territorial mobilisation of the Ger- 
 mans. When the word " mobilise " goes forth 
 from the French headquarters, the reserves which 
 will join the nearest troops will not be the men 
 who have been trained with the regiments they 
 join. It is extremely difficult to believe that such 
 an operation can be conducted with the rapidity, 
 case, and certainty with which a German village, 
 in which all the men belong to one company, falls 
 in and joins the men of the next village or two in 
 making up the total reserves of the battalion whose 
 headquarters lie close to them. It is very difficult 
 not to believe that the French will suffer as we 
 have done ourselves from the want of cohesion, 
 due to vast numbers of men being placed with 
 officers they have not known before. Then the 
 whole mass of men, both of the active and territorial 
 army, will have to move eastwards. The army will 
 have to take up its position ; the territorial force to 
 occupy the forts. It is the most enormous problem 
 of military railway transport under the most difficult 
 conditions that has been ever attempted. It may 
 succeed, of course ; but, during all the earlier years 
 which followed 1870, if not since then, there was 
 an irregularity and uncertainty about the way in 
 which men were passed into the reserves and 
 about the way in which the training was given, 
 which makes us gravely doubt whether the mobil- 
 isation will not be much more like that which
 
 German Alohilisatiou z« 1888. 105 
 
 Prussia attempted in 1849 '^"^ in 1859, which 
 collapsed, rather than like that of 1866 or 1870. 
 Practice makes perfect rather in such matters as 
 these than in most others. It was no bellicose 
 wish which induced General Boulanger to desire 
 the experimental mobilisation of two corps. At all 
 events, whatever may have been his private views, 
 there was grave reason why France should make 
 the experiment. We have solid grounds for be- 
 lieving that, shortly prior to his proposal for the 
 mobilisation of the corps, General Boulanger had 
 specifically ascertained that all arrangements for 
 the movements by railway of the French army on 
 a large scale were in a condition as chaotic as they 
 had been prior to the war of 1870. If that is true, 
 we would give very little for the value to France of 
 the 135 millions spent on the fortifications.^ 
 
 For what, meantime, has Germany been doing 
 as regards her own mobilisation ? The one arm of 
 the service which in 1870 was relatively slow in 
 being ready was the one whose services were 
 needed first — the cavalry. If we are rightly in- 
 formed, such vigorous steps have been taken to 
 remedy that inconvenience, that, thirty-six hours 
 after the magic word " mobilise " has arrived, each 
 cavalry regiment will be ready to take the field. 
 
 ^ I do not think that the mobilisation actually dispelled these 
 causes for suspicion. It was known too long beforehand which 
 corps was to be mobilised, and the difficulties described above 
 could not in the experiment have occurred.
 
 io6 GcvDian Silent ]Vo)'k. 
 
 Everything is done in Germany with a silence 
 which contrasts notably with the chatter and the 
 fussy efforts at secrecy which were characteristic of 
 General Boulanger's administration. It is there- 
 fore not easy to be certain to what point the time 
 required for mobilisation has been actually re- 
 duced. It is put sometimes now as low as four 
 days. The maximum time is, we believe, at all 
 events, six days. After that, it will be simply a 
 question of extremely rapid railway transport upon 
 fortified places for large portions, at least, of the 
 army. Without knowing the total number of en- 
 training and detraining stations available for each 
 corps, it would be impossible to estimate the time 
 within which the German army may be reckoned 
 upon to arrive within striking distance of the 
 French line. It is upon such points as these, the 
 amount of rolling-stock and the multiplication of 
 railway lines, and not upon mere distance, that the 
 rate of transfer of large bodies of troops depends. 
 Seeing that the German Government has been 
 bending all its energies to facilitate movement by 
 these means ever since the war, we confess that we 
 anticipate a rapidity of concentration on the fron- 
 tier or on the Rhine that will startle the world 
 almost as much as the earlier successes of 1870 
 surprised it. If that confusion reigns over the 
 French mobilisation which we anticipate, so that, 
 at the moment when the German forces are ready
 
 TJic German Opportunity. 107 
 
 on their frontier, the occupation of the French 
 frontier forts is in progress, or if the forts are occu- 
 pied by inferior troops hurriedly brought together, 
 that will be the moment of the German stroke. 
 The two forts which must be taken in order to 
 enable a German army to advance will be suddenly 
 attacked and overwhelmed with fire. That their 
 capture will cost the Germans severe loss in men 
 cannot be doubted. But it must be remembered 
 that under all conditions of warfare that we have 
 ever known, the weakness of a practically continu- 
 ous and greatly extended system of fortification 
 lies in this, that broken in one point it is broken 
 in all. Mutatis vintandis, the example of Marl- 
 borough's success against the very same system 
 when adopted by the French of his day will apply 
 now. The danger to the French lies in the temp- 
 tation which Mr Hooper, in his lately published 
 history of the Sedan campaign, very ably discusses 
 as that which will be held out to weak command- 
 ers of an exaggerated reliance on great intrenched 
 camps. We agree with his critic in the ' Spectator ' 
 that the case of Metz and Bazaine is not fairly in 
 point; because Metz, as it existed in 1870, did not 
 fulfil any of the conditions which obtain in either 
 the French or German camps of to-day. But, 
 nevertheless, the danger is a real one. No one 
 who has followed our statement will fail to see how 
 anxiously the Germans have endeavoured to avoid
 
 io8 TJic Chinese Wall. 
 
 it. There is no mistaking the significance of their 
 careful dcmoHtion of Schlettstadt, Marsal, Phals- 
 bourg, La Petite Pierre, Lichtenberg, and Landau. 
 As Major Wachs has put it in the passage we 
 have quoted, the danger is lest an army " brought 
 rapidly behind walls " will not be brought " easily 
 before them." For our own part, we have the 
 most profound belief in the strength of a de- 
 fensive position under the modern conditions of 
 war ; provided always that an army knows how, 
 when needed, to use it, and when to dispense with 
 it. But that local power of the defensive is one 
 which a skilful assailant may turn to his own profit, 
 as the Germans showed alike before Metz, Sedan, 
 and Paris. The French method is, as Major Wachs 
 has well said, a recurrence to the " cordon system 
 of the last century." Beyond doubt the complete- 
 ness in itself of each separate fortification is a 
 matter of the greatest importance; but we confess 
 to thinking that there is risk lest these fortifications 
 should be only too comfortable for the generals of 
 the French army. Victory will now, as ever, be 
 ultimately decided in the open field. Fortifications 
 are of importance in so far as they assist an army 
 in its operations in the field. They become dan- 
 gerous when, instead of being used as pivots of 
 manoeuvre, they are erected, like the stone wall 
 of China, themselves to bar the progress of the 
 invader.
 
 Belgian Neutrality. 109 
 
 We think that, in what we have said, we have 
 supplied an explanation, and to some extent even 
 a justification, of Sir Charles Dilke's statement, 
 though we have given our reasons for differing 
 from him. To any one looking merely at the elab- 
 oration, the cost, the completeness of the French 
 defence, it must seem that the Germans have on 
 their side done nothing comparable to it. The 
 German behaves like the master of fence who 
 apparently drops his point, and lays his breast 
 open to be stabbed. Woe betide the unskilful 
 fencer who thinks that he has also dropped his 
 eye ! 
 
 III. Will the Germans violate Belgian territory? 
 — It will, perhaps, now be apparent why we do not 
 ourselves believe that Germany will make her 
 great attempt upon France by violating Belgian 
 territory. We have no wish to speak dogmatically 
 on the subject. We are quite aware that others, 
 whose judgment is entitled to the greatest weight, 
 think differently. For our own part we believe 
 distinctly that Sir Charles Dilke has done the 
 greatest service to Belgium in drawing her atten- 
 tion to the necessity that, 
 
 "Would she be free, herself should strike the blow." 
 
 But, as it seems to us, the balance of advantage to 
 Germany in moving by that line is so nice a one,
 
 no Bclgiuvi and Engln)id. 
 
 that a conviction that Belgium and England would 
 act together to resist any such attempt would be 
 amply sufficient to turn the scale. If Belgium re- 
 fuses to play her part in maintaining her neutrality, 
 the case falls of course. We are under no obliga- 
 tion to assist her if she will spend nothing on the 
 armaments and the men that are needed to fulfil 
 her international contract. We certainly should 
 be most unwilling to say anything that may tend 
 to prevent Belgium from setting her house in 
 order. But if we are right as to the weak point 
 in the French defence at which it is the policy 
 of Germany to strike, it is obvious that the blow 
 must be struck rapidly and in an unknown direc- 
 tion. Time is of the essence of the question. 
 Now for Germany to choose the road by Belgium 
 is to abandon all the advantages of time. 
 
 It is as well to remember that during the war of 
 1870 and in the advance on Sedan, subsequent 
 that is to the negotiation of our common treaty 
 with Germany and France for the protection of 
 Belgium during August of that year, orders were 
 given to the German army that " should the enemy 
 enter Belgian territory and not be disarmed at 
 once, he is to be followed thither without delay." ^ 
 Obviously we should in that case have had even 
 under that treaty no casus belli against Germany. 
 The case is analogous to that of a blockade, which, 
 ^ Prassian Official History, vol. ii. p. 291.
 
 Time v. Violation of Bc/giinn. 1 1 1 
 
 to be respected, must be effective. In speaking, 
 therefore, of German violation of Belgian territory, 
 we speak of direct invasion intended to attack the 
 northern frontier of France, so as to avoid the 
 necessity of dealing with the great fortress barrier 
 between Verdun and Belfort. We do not speak of 
 such chance violation of territory as may occur in 
 any marches made to the north of Verdun in the 
 course of a westerly movement. If that frontier 
 of Belgium be not properly guarded, it will no 
 doubt be casually or deliberately violated by parties 
 on both sides. We doubt, in that case, if anything 
 but diplomatic apologies, more or less sincere, 
 could be expected to follow. 
 
 When we speak of the element of time being 
 against a German invasion of France by way of 
 Belgium, we speak of an advance from Cologne 
 across Belgian territory, directed upon Mezieres 
 and Maubeuge, either to turn the line of the 
 fortresses or to carry the army immediately upon 
 Paris. At Metz, and in the general concentration 
 in Elsass-Lothringen, the German armies can, 
 within their own territory, concentrate by railway 
 without its being possible for any but the vaguest 
 reports to reach the French as to the direction of 
 the impending blow. They arrive at once without 
 difficulty within striking distance, and with all the 
 facilities so necessary to a railway concentration 
 afforded by terminal stations elaborately prepared
 
 1 1 2 Tlie Move through Belgium. 
 
 for the purpose. The nearest point at which con- 
 centration can take place on similar terms on the 
 Belgian frontier is at Aix-la-Chapelle. From Aix 
 only a single railway runs across the frontier of 
 Belgium. Obviously, if force were attempted on 
 this side, it would be the duty of the Belgian 
 Government to destroy this line. As the crow 
 flies, the distance from Aix to Mezieres is ninety 
 miles ; and as the railway runs through Liege, and 
 makes a considerable detour, it would be impos- 
 sible for any Prussian force to secure it throughout 
 its length without deliberate connivance or scan- 
 dalous neglect on the part of the Belgians. Even 
 were the line in the hands of the Germans it would 
 furnish a most insecure dependence for supply. 
 At best the army must march by road through 
 Belgium, so that at least six or seven days must 
 elapse between the departure from Aix and the 
 arrival within striking distance of the French fron- 
 tier. Six or seven days of clear warning would 
 thus be given to the French before their first line 
 of defence could be reached. 
 
 Though the defences of the northern frontier of 
 France are not like those of the eastern, they are 
 not to be despised. Here the character of the 
 French defence much more nearly approaches to 
 that of the German, as we have already discussed 
 it. The railways would facilitate the rapid gather- 
 ing of the armies from all parts of France. Their
 
 Raihvay Difficulty of Violation. 1 1 3 
 
 movement thither would not interfere with the 
 concentration eastwards of the territorial army 
 into the great fortress belt The main line of 
 supply for the German armies would still be inter- 
 cepted by the Verdun-Belfort forest of fortresses. 
 It seems to us inconceivable that, if this Belgian 
 line alone were taken, the French armies should 
 not be able to meet the German in superior num- 
 bers, in more perfect concentration, and with 
 every advantage of position in their favour. 
 
 Of course the case would present fresh com- 
 plications if the neutrality of Luxembourg were 
 violated as well as that of Belgium. Again here 
 we must say that the question mainly turns upon 
 the sincere desire of the King of Holland to fulfil 
 international obligation. By an agreement with 
 the King of Holland, no doubt the railway from 
 Treves by Luxembourg and Arlon could be made 
 to assist ; but to any one who realises what the 
 nature of a great railway movement of thousands 
 of men and their stores is, it will, we think, be 
 evident that the mere fact of this violation of 
 territory would at once and necessarily substitute 
 marching by road for railway shipment, at least 
 for the first advance of the troops. Probably, in 
 any case, in order to relieve the railways, parts of 
 the German army from the nearer distances will 
 march. But the developed facilities for railway 
 transport since the war are now so great that it 
 
 H
 
 1 14 Voii Moltke's viczv in 1870 
 
 does not look as if, for the first line of their main 
 army, that were the German purpose. 
 
 By no manner of means that we can see would 
 it be possible for a German army to maintain itself 
 in France and to carry out successfully an offensive 
 campaign, unless some part of the great fortress 
 barrier is by one means or another broken down, 
 Certainly it would be impossible without a prelim- 
 inary complete and absolute conquest of Belgium 
 and possession of Luxembourg, unless the barrier 
 be broken. Therefore, as it seems to us that the 
 easiest time for breaking that barrier will be the 
 earliest possible moment at which it can be at- 
 tempted, and as it cannot be done so quickly by 
 moving on the northern frontier as by striking 
 boldly at the eastern, we do not believe that the 
 tendency of the military situation lies in the direc- 
 tion of invasion of France by Germany through 
 Belgium. Either the condition of a preliminary 
 attempt of France to adopt that line, or absolute 
 quiescence and indifference to her liberties on the 
 part of Belgium, would no doubt materially alter 
 the whole aspect of the case. 
 
 As long ago as in 1868-69, Von Moltke pro- 
 nounced decisively as to the advantages to the 
 French of not violating Swiss or Belgian territory. 
 To any one who reads his words now, it will, we 
 think, be tolerably evident that with very little 
 modification the same argument applies both to
 
 of Neutrality Question. 1 1 5 
 
 French and German action under present con- 
 ditions : — 
 
 " The neutrality of Belgium, Holland, and Swit- 
 zerland limits the theatre of war to the area 
 between Luxemburg and Basle. Should France 
 disregard the neutrality of one of these States — 
 say Belgium — her army must weaken itself consider- 
 ably in Brussels and before Antwerp. Her further 
 advance over the Meuse can be more effectively 
 met from the Moselle than from Cologne, as we 
 should compel the enemy to form front to the 
 south, and whilst threatening his communications, 
 give him decisive battle. As the distance from 
 Brussels to Cologne is greater than from either 
 Maintz, Kaiserslautern, or Trier, we should, in 
 such an eventuality, still be in time to take up 
 a position on our lower Rhine front. 
 
 "No less difficulties would ensue were France 
 to violate the neutrality of Switzerland, in which 
 country she would have to encounter a strong 
 and well-organised militia. 
 
 " Now, the concentration of considerable forces 
 on the Moselle would so immediately threaten 
 France and her capital, that she could hardly 
 embark in such very remote enterprises." ^ 
 
 Of all possible violations of territory, that which 
 appears to us to be by far the most probable, if 
 any is attempted, is that of Switzerland by France 
 
 ^ Prussian Official History, Part I., vol. i. p. 51.
 
 1 1 6 Is Switzerland safe ? 
 
 in the event of a war in which, from the fact of 
 Germany being engaged against another powerful 
 enemy, France became the invader. Von Moltke 
 has given the reasons which make even that 
 improbable ; but certainly our experience during 
 the last fifty years does not tend to show that 
 Swiss neutrality has been much respected. Never- 
 theless, though the southern frontier of Germany 
 lies almost absolutely unguarded, though few 
 troops are quartered there, and the railway sys- 
 tem is most incomplete, Germany looks upon the 
 danger to France of throwing into the scale against 
 herself the hostility of Switzerland, as a point 
 sufficiently important to enable Germany to dis- 
 regard the menace of the many fortresses and the 
 accumulation of men ready for action which, on 
 the French side, front Switzerland. We say this 
 only to point out how, when forces are so nicely 
 balanced as they are at present on the Continent, 
 politics must determine the course of war rather 
 than the necessities of war determine the course of 
 politics. The Germans boast that with them it is 
 for the soldiers to tackle the problem, subject to 
 the necessary political conditions. They will not 
 draw into the scale against Germany one little 
 State, whose hostility might be inconvenient, in 
 order to ease the military problem, or to seem to 
 ease it. 
 
 Therefore we say boldly, that if the question
 
 Our Relation to Belgiuui. 1 1 7 
 
 remains doubtful whether Belgium, doing her duty 
 to Europe, shall be abandoned to the strong arm 
 of violence, it is within the power of England, if 
 she possesses the strength, without which she can- 
 not guard her own empire, to decide the issue. 
 The Netherlands, Belgium, and England together, 
 would certainly not be " ime quantite negligible " ^ 
 for either France or Germany. Neither Power 
 would attempt, during a war with the other, to 
 place on their direct line of communication such 
 forces as could thus be thrown against them. The 
 risk, in a military sense, would be far too serious. 
 If Belgium arms, and England forbids violation 
 of her territory, the territory of Belgium will not 
 be violated. 
 
 IV. Has England abandoned Belgnun ? — There- 
 fore it is important to examine the grounds on 
 which Sir Charles Dilke expresses his conviction 
 that all England has changed its mind since 1870. 
 
 There was a letter of " Diplomaticus " in the 
 ' Standard,' there was an article in the ' Standard,' 
 and we know not what other anonymous paper or 
 two, written by some, we do not use the word in 
 any offensive sense, literary hack or other perform- 
 ing his morning's task. This is Sir Charles Dilke's 
 
 ^ The phrase, it will be remembered, used by French statesmen in 
 reference to the power of China, before Tonquin taught a different 
 lesson.
 
 1 1 8 Mr Kinglahe and Lord Salisbury. 
 
 view of public opinion. There are two authorities 
 to whom we at present and in the first instance 
 propose to appeal against him. The first is that 
 masterly statement in the first volume of King- 
 lake's ' Crimea,' of the way in which action and 
 reaction set in, in public opinion in England. 
 Such nothings as those of which Sir Charles speaks 
 almost always catch some back current of the un- 
 informed public mind. We cannot believe that 
 the influence of a man, no matter how able he may 
 be, writing anonymously, as Sir Charles Dilke did, 
 in a magazine, is so great that he has power to 
 evoke immediately an informed and final expres- 
 sion of the purpose and will of England. England 
 is a great country, and before its mind is defin- 
 itely declared, some precedent thrashing out of a 
 question is needed. The materials for forming 
 its judgment must be laid before it. We feel very 
 little doubt that Sir Charles Dilke did good ser- 
 vice in raising the question. We disbelieve that 
 he has received the final answer, which will be 
 given when all the data have been laid before 
 those from whom England learns to judge of war 
 and politics. We prefer to believe with Lord 
 Salisbury that the determination of what England 
 will do in the future is to be judged rather by 
 the whole course of past English history and poli- 
 tics than by the chance opinions of a particular 
 politician.
 
 TJie latest Pledge to Belgium. 1 19 
 
 Let us then hear how English feeling was ac- 
 tually expressed when the question last came 
 before it. Lord Granville was at the time our 
 Foreign Minister. It happened, therefore, that 
 the following scene took place in the House of 
 Lords. It would not have mattered at the time 
 in what assembly of Englishmen the question had 
 been raised, the result would have been the same. 
 
 Lord Russell had just declared in relation to the 
 defence of Belgium, "that it was impossible to 
 conceive a more specific and defined obligation 
 than ours. We are bound to defend Belgium." 
 Other speakers on both sides of the House had 
 spoken in the same tone. In reply: "With the 
 general and enthusiastic cheers of the House, Lord 
 Granville made the required declaration. ' I ven- 
 ture,' he said, 'to state most positively, that her 
 Majesty's Government are not unaware of the duty 
 which this country owes to the independence and 
 the neutrality of Belgium ; ' and, ' I trust that, 
 whatever may be the opinion of individual mem- 
 bers of this House, your lordships will not believe 
 that when once we have made a clear intimation 
 of our intentions in any respect, anything will 
 prevent us from adhering scrupulously to the 
 position we have taken.' " 
 
 Wc confess that the wording of Lord Granville's 
 speech seems to us to put the matter on grounds 
 which would make us very unwilling to believe
 
 1 20 Need wc be base again ? 
 
 that England would easily abandon a duty of such 
 distinct obligation as this. Observe the indignant 
 repudiation of the idea that an English Govern- 
 ment could be supposed to be guilty of such 
 treachery ; the implied sense not only of the entire 
 House, but of the entire country, that, however 
 unpleasant the duty, it was one that we could not 
 shirk.i We can only suppose that the sense of 
 helplessness in presence of the great forces of the 
 Continent has in the minds of some writers en- 
 gendered the idea that we cannot attempt to fulfil 
 a plain international duty. For our own part we 
 believe that the Sibyl will be inexorable, and will 
 demand a higher price, and offer less for it, every 
 time that we refuse to pay what she asks as the 
 condition of empire. Both France and Germany 
 are only too anxious that they should have data 
 on which they can depend, and would welcome our 
 boldly insisting on the sacredness of the soil of 
 Belgium. Indeed, according to the " conclusion " 
 of Sir Charles Dilke's now published volume, he 
 
 ^ As a study of controversial method, it is worth noting that Sir 
 Charles Dilke's reference to this passage is to say that I " quoted 
 Lord Russell against him." It will be seen that the reference to 
 Lord Russell is most casual, merely in order to lead up to Lord 
 Granville's speech in behalf of Mr Gladstone's Cabinet, given " with 
 the general and enthusiastic cheers of the House," and expressly 
 cited as an illustration of the universal feeling of the country. 
 Sir Charles Dilke, however, could, under present circumstances, 
 afford to sneer at Lord Russell, not at Lord Granville, hence this 
 method of citation.
 
 Time and Armies. 121 
 
 has been severely handled in France, because of 
 the curiously false reading of his articles that he 
 himself advocated the abandonment of Belgium. 
 Certainly a previous announcement of our intention 
 to play so paltry a part would help to bring about 
 the evil. 
 
 V. TJie French and German Armies of to-day. — 
 When, apart from the mere question of frontier, we 
 balance or attempt to balance the present forces of 
 Germany and France, the problem is a far more 
 difficult and more complex one. On the one hand, 
 seventeen years is a long period in the history of 
 armies. It is the period between the Napoleon of 
 1798 and the Napoleon of Waterloo. It is the 
 period between the Prussia of the " Political Capit- 
 ulation of Olmiitz " and the Prussia of Sadowa. 
 It is ten years more than the period between 
 the collapse of the Prussian mobilisation of 1859 
 and the mobilisation which overthrew the German 
 Confederation. As far, therefore, as time is con- 
 cerned, there is no reason whatever why the 
 weights should not have changed in the scales. 
 The power of armies is a thing which cannot be 
 gauged by any sight. Moreover, the seventeen 
 years that have passed have strangely enough 
 just added those years to the age of the elderly 
 men who commanded the German armies in 1870, 
 and have left them still in authority. Unless
 
 122 TJic German Army in 1870 
 
 we are much misinformed, a tendency of this 
 kind towards a too great senihty has to some ex- 
 tent tended to invade all ranks of officers. Few 
 things are more ruinous to the efficiency of an 
 army. Indeed, if the German army had been like 
 the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or the France 
 of Napoleon, or even the English army of Welling- 
 ton, resting on the traditions of a great name, we 
 should, from analogy, incline to suspect that the 
 chances of its having suffered very seriously in 
 efficiency from the lapse of time were very strong 
 indeed. But the peculiarity of the campaign of 
 1870 was that, able leader as Von Moltke showed 
 himself, it was not he who won most of the battles. 
 It was the German army. Mr Hooper, to whose 
 work we have already referred, has admirably 
 pointed out both the dangers and the power which 
 attended the mode in which the Germans fought 
 their battles. The risks which would have been 
 run by them if the numbers and other conditions 
 had been anything like equal, are beyond dispute. 
 But for all that, the trained habit of war, the 
 knowledge how to act together in emergencies, the 
 mutual confidence, represented a force of its kind 
 unique and new. Some approach to it existed 
 formerly in our own army in the Peninsula. But 
 the conditions of 1870 demanded a far freer 
 exercise of individual initiative than was ever 
 possible before. Hence one may almost say that
 
 and ill 1888. 123 
 
 it was the engrained habits or custom of the Ger- 
 man army which won the war, or at least gave 
 to the Germans the marvellous power they de- 
 veloped. Now there are few things in the world 
 more permanent than custom. We incline, there- 
 fore, to believe that the efficiency of the German 
 army is likely to be maintained for a far longer 
 time than has usually happened where armies 
 formed under the ideas of a great leader have 
 rusted during a long peace, and have gradually 
 mistaken forms for the spirit which once animated 
 them. That certainly is a danger for the German 
 army, but we do not think that it has yet affected 
 it. The conviction which we feel in looking at a 
 set of German soldiers at work is still always that 
 whatever has to be done is done with absolute 
 thoroughness and efficiency. 
 
 On the other side, we cannot persuade ourselves 
 that all the gaseous froth which has attended the 
 career of General Boulanger was precisely the thing 
 that was wanted to give efficiency to the French 
 army. To take a small point. There was a great 
 flourish of trumpets a little time ago as to the 
 supply to the French army of magazine rifles. So 
 far as we can ascertain, few divisions have actually 
 received them. Meantim.e, beyond all doubt and 
 question, the German Government, which has 
 talked as little as possible about the matter, has 
 been steadily proceeding with the actual arma-
 
 1 24 French and German Totals. 
 
 ment. In the same way, everywhere one gets a 
 sense that the French will have talked of a good 
 deal more than they have done, and that the Ger- 
 mans will have done a good deal more than they 
 have talked about. That affects largely the question 
 even of the armed forces that will respectively be 
 put into the field. 
 
 The grand French total shows, on paper, a force 
 of 646,000 odd more men than the German, — the 
 German total being 2,075,000, the French 2,721,000.^ 
 If a great leader, capable of awaking the enthusiasm 
 of the French, should arise, there is, of course, no 
 calculating what influence that fact might have on 
 the future war ; but that at present the general 
 temper of the French army, and more especially of 
 the territorial army, represents the same high con- 
 dition as the German, we cannot persuade our- 
 selves. Probably the territorial army is now better 
 in hand than were those Gardes Mobiles who sur- 
 prised MacMahon by demanding to be sent back 
 to Paris instead of towards Berlin ; but with such 
 an enormous operation to be carried out, as is 
 represented by the mobilisation, the very numbers 
 that will come to hand must depend on the dis- 
 cipline of men scattered all over the country. We 
 cannot satisfy ourselves that the indications are 
 that the discipline of the French army is in a 
 satisfactory condition. That, with such elaborate 
 
 1 This is balanced by the new German bill.
 
 Confidence, French and German. 125 
 
 preparations as the French have made, the war 
 would be a very different one from that of 1870, 
 we havic no doubt ; but that at present the German 
 army would still be able to give a good account of 
 the French we feel tolerably certain. The element 
 of self-confidence, so necessary to the French, which 
 made the French Guards, always accustomed to 
 victory, go forward with such power during the 
 1870 campaign, has disappeared. The French are 
 always talking to persuade themselves that they 
 are as good or better than the Germans. The talk 
 sounds hollow. It has not in it that kind of ring 
 which presages victory. The Germans have ac- 
 quired a calm confidence which they did not 
 possess at the beginning of 1870. 
 
 We must leave for our two next articles an ex- 
 amination of the bearing of these remarks upon 
 the general question of the balance of power as it 
 affects ourselves. It will be necessary to consider, 
 first, the Russo-German frontiers and their effect 
 on possible war. 
 
 Note. — A courteous and friendly critic of our 
 last article in the ' St James's Gazette ' suggests a 
 doubt whether it was not Sir Arthur Otway, and 
 not Mr Bright, who caused the removal of the 
 term the " balance of power in Europe " from the 
 Mutiny Act. We are grateful to him for giving us 
 an excuse for citing a rather curious and interest-
 
 126 Air Bright and " The Balance of Powers 
 
 ing piece of historical evidence from a friend who, 
 on the appearance of the last article, wrote to us, — 
 " It may interest you to know that I happened to 
 be in the Speaker's Gallery of the House of Com- 
 mons when Mr Bright came to speak to a friend of 
 his who was sitting near me, and said to him, ' Do 
 you know, I have just found out the oddest thing 
 in the world. Would you believe that they have 
 retained to this year the statement that our army 
 is maintained " for the preservation of the balance 
 of power in Europe " ? ' They both laughed, and 
 next year the words disappeared from the Army 
 List." 
 
 Our own statement was founded upon a letter 
 from Mr Bright to a friend which we well remem- 
 ber to have seen published at the time. We do 
 not remember the exact part which Sir Arthur 
 Otway may have played in the matter, but that 
 the Cabinet Minister whose action determined the 
 change was Mr Bright, we believe to be beyond 
 dispute. 
 
 We do not know whether it is necessary to point 
 out to more than one reader of our last article, that 
 we certainly did not say that Mr Bradlaugh was 
 the author of the very ancient form of adjuration 
 " By Jingo " ; but that we did say that he invented 
 the political nickname "A Jingo," "The Jingoes," 
 founding it upon the then popular song in which 
 the ancient adjuration appeared. As a correspon-
 
 TJic A ntJior of " Jingo r 1 27 
 
 dent of the ' Glasgow Herald ' thinks that he has 
 disposed of our statement by quoting from ' Bom- 
 bastes Furioso ' the oath, we may say, first, that he 
 might have seen from our own article that the use 
 of the oath in the popular song preceded Mr 
 Bradlaugh's use of the political nickname ; and, 
 secondly, that the antiquity of the oath runs many 
 centuries back before ' Bombastes Furioso.' Our 
 assertion as to the authorship of the nickname has 
 not been challenged, because it could not be.
 
 III. 
 
 GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA
 
 GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND 
 AUSTRIA. 
 
 It happened to the present writer to be in Paris 
 almost immediately after the fall of the Commune 
 in 1 87 1. Both then and at a rather later period, 
 whilst M. Thiers was still the ruling power in 
 France, he was staying with French friends who 
 had means of knowing what the private views and 
 private conversation of that veteran statesman 
 were. Again and again he was assured that M. 
 Thiers was bent upon preparing France to be 
 ready for two events — the death of the present 
 Emperor of Germany, and the death of the then 
 Tzar. There is surely something pathetic in the 
 case. The one factor of which elderly men seem 
 never to take account is the uncertainty of the 
 space within which they can expect to exercise a 
 determining influence on events. M. Thiers, in the 
 course of nature, has gone to his rest ; Alexander
 
 132 Tzar, Prince, Kaiser. 
 
 the emancipator has been removed by a violent 
 death ; but the great German ruler still survives, 
 seventeen years from the time when M. Thiers 
 was counting upon his great age as an element of 
 hope for France. Nevertheless the soundness of 
 M. Thiers's analysis of the European situation is 
 vindicated by the relation to one another in which 
 the Powers stand to-day. It is on the life of the 
 present Emperor of Germany that the peace of 
 Europe hangs. 
 
 It remains to be seen how far M. Thiers's cal- 
 culation will prove itself true, that the personal 
 antagonism between the present Tzar and the 
 Crown Prince of Germany may be securely relied 
 upon to bring about a Russo- German war. It 
 looks at the present moment as if peace were 
 almost as much imperilled by the uncertainty of 
 his life as by the uncertainty of that of the Em- 
 peror. The present Tzar has at least shown clearly 
 enough, in his dealings with Prince Alexander of 
 Battenberg, that such personal considerations pro- 
 foundly affect his policy. Again, it is at least cer- 
 tain that, anxious as the German statesmen are for 
 permanent peace, if that be possible, it is to the 
 securing of peace during the lifetime of the present 
 Emperor that all their present efforts arc directed. 
 A truce dependent on the life of a man of the 
 Emperor's age can scarcely be one of great length, 
 as time is reckoned in the history of nations. It 
 can hardly, therefore, be without interest, even as
 
 The German Frontier and Russia. 133 
 
 a question of the immediate future of European 
 policy, to consider the conditions under which the 
 two great empires must engage if they should ever 
 meet in arms. For reasons on the face of facts, on 
 which we shall have occasion to enlarge presently, 
 the matter is one of vital importance to ourselves. 
 We have spoken of the characteristics of both 
 armies already. We propose, therefore, now to 
 consider the nature of the operations which the 
 frontiers of the two Powers will impose upon either 
 army in defence or offence. 
 
 I. TJie German and Russian frontiers. — The 
 superiority of the German military frontier on the 
 Russian side is much more obvious than it is on 
 the French. It has been elaborately discussed ; 
 and we do not know, at all events, any opinions 
 which have been given, unless it be in some 
 chauvinist Russian newspaper, in favour of the 
 superior advantages of the Russian frontier over 
 the German, so long, that is, as Austria and Ger- 
 many are in alliance. The importance, however, 
 of the Austro-German frontier to Germany, in 
 the event of a war with Russia, is so great that, if 
 it were on that account alone, it would seem to 
 be a certainty that Germany must fight to save 
 Austria from destruction.^ 
 
 During the last seven years, Russia has certainly 
 
 ^ The recent publication of the treaty of 1879 does not leave much 
 doubt on this point now. It was hotly contested by .Sir C. Dilke.
 
 134 Recent Changes. 
 
 done rather more than Germany to improve her 
 position on her eastern frontier. She has made 
 Warsaw into a great intrenched camp. She has 
 greatly increased the defences of Ivangorod (or 
 Dembhn), of ModHn (or Novo-Georgievisk), of 
 Goniondz (Sperfort), of Kovno, and of Lutzk. 
 She has increased the number of her railways 
 running into Poland, and has made lines running 
 towards Kholm and Rovno, which would facilitate 
 the supply of an army on the Austrian frontier. 
 Meantime Germany, beyond completing what she 
 had been engaged upon since 1870, and in addi- 
 tion, what may be looked upon as ordinary fort- 
 ress repairs, has only perfected her railway system 
 along the Polish frontier, where it was defective 
 before. But nothing has been done on either 
 side substantially to alter the balance of advan- 
 tage as to the frontiers which existed in 1879. 
 At the end of that year, two papers, giving each 
 an elaborate study of the military frontiers of the 
 two countries, were published, one by a German 
 officer, under the title of ' Die Befestigung und 
 Verthcidigung der Deutsch-Russichen Grenze der 
 Dcutschen Armee dargestellt von einem Deuts- 
 chen Offizier ' ^ (The Fortification and Defence of 
 
 ^ Of which a new edition has been published this year. We re- 
 fer in the text to these only, because they are probably the most 
 accessible and most complete statements of the facts. The number 
 of articles that have appeared on the subject is legion. A very 
 elaborate and careful study of the Polish theatre of war, ' Skizzen
 
 Two Valuable SUidies. 135 
 
 the Russo - German Frontier, reviewed for the 
 benefit of the German Army, by a German Officer) 
 — and another by an Austrian officer. Captain 
 Kirchhammer, ' Deutschlands Nordost - Grenze ' 
 (The North-Eastern Frontier of Germany). The 
 substance of both of them was translated in 1880 
 by Sir Lumley Graham, and appears in the Jour- 
 nal of the United Service Institution, vol. xxiv. 
 Any one who desires to make a fuller study of 
 the subject, and to understand in detail the 
 grounds we have for the opinions we expressed 
 in our first article as to the superior strength of 
 the German frontier, cannot do better than refer 
 to that paper. The substantial facts of the case 
 have not been changed in any material degree, 
 except as to the section on Russian fortifications, 
 which requires the modifications we have given, 
 and except, further, that a certain number of the 
 Russian lines which were then single have been 
 
 aus dem europaischen Russland,' has been published by Captain 
 Janki, professor at the Metz War School. It is, however, too 
 full of detail for general readers. Among periodical papers, two 
 interesting articles appeared in the 'Augsburg Gazette,' 2ist and 
 22d March 1882, and another in the 'Golos,' 8th November 1880. 
 A scheme of invasion of Russia by " Sarmaticus, " and a review of 
 this in the 'Novoe Vremia' of April 1886, are among the most 
 recent. We have been indebted to Captain A'Court of the Rifle 
 Brigade, who has been for a long time a careful student of the 
 Russian army, for drawing our attention to these. The most valu- 
 able study of the Austro-Russian frontier was that of the late 
 General Haymerle. Marga's study, to which Sir C. Dilke refers, 
 seems to have been based on Haymerle's lectures.
 
 136 Russian Raikvays. 
 
 doubled. The discussion is so sound and able 
 that it would not be easy to improve upon it. 
 Naturally the Austrian officer is rather more 
 anxious than the German to insist on the import- 
 ance to Germany of the alliance of Austria ; but 
 the German admits this also, and there can be 
 very little question that substantially Captain 
 Kirchhammer's views are correct. 
 
 We should observe, to begin with, that the 
 Russian railways which have been added since 1880, 
 as well as the old ones, are very different from the 
 German lines. If as many as four trains travel 
 over the most important lines in the day, it repre- 
 sents their full number. Bradshaw does not ac- 
 knowledge some of the smaller lines, and gives 
 only two trains a-day for others. Curiously enough, 
 for a country like Russia, few of the railways belong 
 to the Government. Altogether, the staff that is 
 kept up on them is in no way adapted to undertake 
 the charge of great movements of troops by rail, 
 and their entraining and detraining arrangements 
 are naturally on a scale proportioned to their 
 normal wants. Railways under these circum- 
 stances are amazingly slow in the despatch of 
 great numbers of men. On the other hand, it 
 must be recognised that Russia maintains perma- 
 nently during peace an enormous body of troops in 
 Poland at all times. Her doing so, however, seems 
 to suggest that she has some fear lest, if she did
 
 Karl Blind on Poland. 137 
 
 not sit pretty heavily on the supposed corpse of 
 poor Poland, it might give signs of having been 
 prematurely buried. For our own part, we are 
 disposed to believe, with Sir Charles Dilkc, that no 
 great Polish forces will ever again fight in arms 
 against Russia. Nevertheless, those who most 
 nearly watch the ancient kingdom are convinced 
 that a hostile army would find within it a popula- 
 tion by no means so patriotically disposed to resist 
 attack upon Russia, as, let us say, the inhabitants 
 of Moscow. If Warsaw is ever set on fire to expel 
 an army engaged in the invasion of Russia, the fire 
 will not have been ignited by the citizens. 
 
 A very interesting paper, by Karl Blind, which 
 appeared in the ' Fortnightly Review ' for August, 
 offers striking evidence against the current theory 
 to which Sir Charles Dilke has given his support, 
 that the anti-Russian element in Poland is purely 
 that of a small aristocratic class. It would be 
 scarcely possible to have evidence which throws 
 more light from within the revolutionary circles on 
 a very obscure part of history. Karl Blind dis- 
 tinctly alleges that the last Polish revolt was essen- 
 tially a popular one. He further shows that the 
 agrarian arrangements, which are assumed by Sir 
 Charles Dilke to have made revolt against Russia 
 for the future impossible, were, in fact, initiated 
 by the National Junta, were at first opposed by 
 Russia, and were only accepted by her as ulti-
 
 138 Importance of Poland Region. 
 
 matcly inevitable. If the popular memory of these 
 facts is as vivid as popular tradition is apt to be, 
 they are an element that must not be ignored in 
 the political balance of Eastern Europe. Further- 
 more, Karl Blind offers some evidence to show that 
 even in 1864 the Poles themselves recognised that 
 Prussian Poland had become essentially German. 
 Prussia has no longer any interest in checking 
 Polish discontent against Russia. 
 
 These considerations are of importance, because, 
 throughout almost its entire length, the frontier of 
 Russia, which marches with that of Germany, is 
 the frontier of Poland. In all discussions on 
 the invasion of Russia by Germany, it is as- 
 sumed that Poland will be the object of German 
 attack. In the discussion of Russian invasion of 
 Germany, in addition to that of advance from 
 Poland, there is another possible line, the exist- 
 ence of which is of great importance to England, 
 because it shows how, in the event of actual war 
 between the two great empires, England might 
 afford the most material assistance to Germany. 
 We do not think that our military judgment is 
 affected by this fact ; but it has always seemed to 
 us that the line of invasion which would be most 
 advantageous for Russia would be that across the 
 Niemen, and by the line of the Baltic. For, as the 
 "German officer" says, "the Russian fleet would 
 completely command the sea, and would have 
 access to numerous good harbours."
 
 German Baltic Fortresses. \ 39 
 
 The powerful defences which have been erected 
 by Prussia in the extreme north angle of the 
 kingdom along the Baltic, would be very difficult 
 to take by a Russian army which was not sup- 
 ported by a fleet having complete command of the 
 sea. For the works of Memel, Pillau, and Konigs- 
 berg, together with the two arms of the sea known 
 as " Haffs," and the rivers which run into them, 
 form together one vast fortress of which Konigs- 
 berg is the key. Konigsberg cannot be invested 
 till the invader has forced the entrance of the 
 " Frisches Haff," which enables Konigsberg to 
 maintain communication with Danzig. Support- 
 ed by a powerful fleet, the advance could ulti- 
 mately be m.ade. So advancing, a Russian army 
 would be striking straight for the line of com- 
 munications of any German army that should 
 attempt to invade Poland. It would be directly 
 covering its own communications, and could fall 
 back at once if menaced by superior force. Never- 
 theless, even by this line the difficulties that it 
 would have to encounter in the fortresses we have 
 named, and in Danzig, Graudenz, and Thorn, on 
 the line of the Vistula, are sufficiently serious. 
 
 We have spoken first of this line because it is 
 to some extent external to the question of attack 
 against or from Poland, which would, we believe 
 we may say with certainty, be the direction taken 
 by any German invasion of Russia. 
 
 The general form of the frontier of Poland " at
 
 140 Russia's Wedge. 
 
 first sight would appear to give Russia great offen- 
 sive power." We purposely quote these words 
 from Sir Lumley Graham, because we cannot help 
 believing that they exactly represent the semblance 
 of advantage which has, in our judgment, deceived 
 Sir Charles Dilke as to the relative power for 
 offence and defence represented by the two fron- 
 tiers. We can hardly put the matter better than 
 Sir Lumley has done in these words : " No one 
 can look at the map of Europe without being 
 struck by the extraordinary configuration of the 
 Russo-German frontier, which is identical with 
 that established in 1815 between Prussia and 
 Russia, and the outline of which was determined 
 by historical rather than by geographical con- 
 siderations. The old kingdom of Poland, which 
 has since 18 15 formed part of the dominions of the 
 Czar, is driven like a huge wedge (200 miles in 
 thickness) into the body of Germany within 200 
 miles of its heart (Berlin) ; whilst the advanced 
 provinces of Germany enfold Russian Poland like 
 two mighty arms : the left and longer one (East 
 Prussia) extending some 200 miles ; the right one 
 (Silesia) some 70 miles behind its foremost point, 
 the latter arm being prolonged for a further 
 distance of nearly 200 miles by the Austrian 
 province of Galicia. The extremity of Germany's 
 longer arm is, however, not less than 500 or 600 
 miles from the heart of Russia, whether you
 
 How met by Germany. 1 4 1 
 
 consider that heart to be St Petersburg or 
 Moscow." 
 
 But long before " Prussia " had become " Ger- 
 many," her statesmen had fully realised the danger 
 which thus existed for them. Humble as Prussia 
 was to Russia, her deliverer, for many years sub- 
 sequent to 181 5, she steadily pursued the course of 
 securing her frontier by every means which art 
 could devise. Of late years her plans have been 
 carried out so systematically that it is not surpris- 
 ing that since 1880 she has rested content with 
 things as they were, only completing character- 
 istically enough her railway system. 
 
 For essentially, as on her western so on her 
 eastern frontier, it is on the threefold power of 
 rapid mobilisation, of rapid and perfect railway 
 transport, and of fortresses which would enable 
 her active army in the field to manoeuvre in every 
 direction with advantage, that she depends. As 
 against France so against Russia, she possesses the 
 advantages of a natural frontier so fortified by art 
 that her army can at pleasure rapidly develop its 
 force for striking into the heart of the enemy's 
 country, or can fall back upon a powerful river of 
 which she commands all the passages, with the 
 option of holding or destroying those she pleases. 
 As against France so against Russia, her striking 
 offensive point is pushed far out beyond the great 
 defensive fortress river-line.
 
 142 German MetJiod for Defence 
 
 To make clear the nature of these positions, let 
 us now go rather more into detail. The province 
 of East Prussia, which is wedged in between Poland 
 and the Baltic, is covered all along its southern 
 frontier, which faces Poland, by a series of lakes 
 and marshes. Movement is here, as in Poland, 
 much restricted by the nature of the country, 
 which makes transport very difficult, except by the 
 best roads. The two great highways are held by 
 Germany at Lotzen and Osterode ; though, acting 
 on the same principle as she has adopted on her 
 French frontier, she no longer maintains Osterode 
 as a fortress. Thorn on the Vistula, just inside the 
 Prussian frontier, was, by works completed in 1880, 
 made into a great intrenched camp, with five great 
 forts on the right bank and three on the left. 
 Thorn commands not only the Vistula, but its 
 tributary the Drewenz, which runs from the lakes 
 to fall into the Vistula just south of Thorn. The 
 Drewenz forms for a considerable distance the 
 frontier line. Behind all this frontier, Prussia has 
 now a complete railway line covered by the 
 Drewenz, the fortresses, and the lakes. I'our 
 great railways converge on Thorn, giving com- 
 munication with the interior of Germany, forward 
 along the frontier into East Prussia, south-west- 
 ward around the western frontier of Poland, and 
 northward behind the Vistula. Thorn also covers 
 one of the only four Russian railways which meet
 
 and Offence. 143 
 
 the German lines. Only one Russian railway 
 crosses the Vistula at Warsaw ; one branch along 
 the right bank crosses the German frontier near 
 Mlava, one, after the crossing, towards Thorn, while 
 the third runs completely south towards Myslovitz, 
 at the extreme south point of the common Polish 
 and German frontier. The fourth line over the 
 frontier is that from Goniondz to Lotzen. On the 
 other hand, Germany has complete communica- 
 tion from the interior to that part of the Vistula 
 which forms the border line of the province of 
 East Prussia, and her railways pass thence into 
 the province from Graudenz and Marienburg, two 
 fortified bridge-heads, while Thorn and Danzig 
 are the great fortress barriers which secure it on 
 right and left. 
 
 Looking now along the frontier south-westwards 
 from Thorn. Posen on the Wartha has been con- 
 verted since 1870 into a great intrenched camp of 
 the first class, with eleven detached forts. It is 
 about forty miles from the point of the Russian 
 frontier which juts farthest into Germany. Six 
 lines of railway unite here. Next to Posen lies 
 Glogau, a strong bridge-head on the Oder. These 
 form the advanced German fortresses towards 
 Russia. Behind them lies Kiistrin, commanding 
 the junction of the Oder and the Netze, the 
 favourite type of site for a great German fortress, 
 because an enemy cannot invest such a one with-
 
 144 K?tss2an Fortresses in Poland. 
 
 out dividing his army into three sections, each 
 h'able to separate attack. 
 
 The whole of the country to the south of Thorn, 
 Posen, and Kiistrin is interlaced with very numerous 
 railways, which would permit the transfer of Prus- 
 sian forces in any direction along the frontier ; 
 but as a direct advance eastwards upon Poland 
 would never, for reasons we shall presently note, 
 be the most favourable direction for German 
 attack, hardly any of these railways have been 
 led up to the frontier line. 
 
 Let us now look across the border at the con- 
 dition of Poland itself The peculiarity of the 
 ground lies in this, that it is a vast plain, cut off 
 from the great mass of Russia by the enormous 
 Pinsk Marshes. Of the defence of the kingdom, 
 and of its general military power, Warsaw is the 
 centre. Unquestionably, the recent adaptation to 
 modern war of the Warsaw works, and the fortifi- 
 cations of Novo-Georgievisk, have added greatly to 
 the merely defensive strength of this base. The 
 position at Ivangorod makes the whole of this line 
 of the Russian Vistula strong, so far as the com- 
 pleteness of the fortresses is concerned ; but the 
 defect of the base as such is well expressed by the 
 " German officer " when, after speaking of a number 
 of Russian railway projects, which, though their 
 proposal was already of old standing seven years 
 ago, have not been carried out, he adds : " All
 
 TJic Russian Bjndge. 145 
 
 these additions, however, will be of little effect 
 from a military point of view upon the utility of 
 the railways west of the Vistula, as long as the 
 passage of this river, and consequently the con- 
 nection of the railways on its left bank with those 
 from the interior of Russia, is only to be effected 
 by the one bridge at Warsaw. It will be abso- 
 lutely necessary to build several railway bridges 
 over the river before you can calculate upon con- 
 centrating a Russian army on the central and 
 southern portions of the German frontier with the 
 speed demanded by the present style of making 
 war." 1 
 
 Now, no fresh bridges have been constructed 
 over the Russian part of the Vistula, and the want 
 of manoeuvring facility which this implies, marks 
 the typical difference between the Russian power 
 and the German. Furthermore, a direct advance 
 upon Germany westwards would be necessary to 
 take advantage of the position which, from the 
 point of view of what Sir Charles Dilke rather 
 happily calls " map-makers' war," looks so valuable 
 for Russia. Of course, if mere distance on a map 
 determined military movements, the thrusting for- 
 ward of Poland into the heart of Germany ought 
 to give Russia a great opportunity for attack. 
 Direct advance from Warsaw westwards is, how- 
 ever, prohibited by the fact that there are no rail- 
 
 1 Journal of the United Service Institution, vol, xxiv. p. 137. 
 K
 
 146 Importance of Silesia. 
 
 ways in that part of Poland to facilitate supply. 
 Furthermore, the country is so difficult to traverse, 
 that the army that began the march would have 
 dwindled into very different numbers before it had 
 accomplished it. Finally, from East Prussia Ger- 
 many could, from an amply supplied base, aided 
 by every kind of railway facility, strike across the 
 communications of the invader. 
 
 It is rather significant that even the " German 
 officer," though he naturally does not enlarge on 
 the subject, assumes as a sine qua nan the friend- 
 ship of Austria, which he regards as an absolute 
 datum. That granted, any attack from the Rus- 
 sian base on the Vistula, passing to the south of 
 Silesia, which must in any case be very eccentric, 
 would be impossible till Austria was conquered. 
 Undoubtedly, on the other hand, with Austria at 
 the feet of Russia, invasion of the southern portion 
 of Silesia would be relatively easy ; simply be- 
 cause Prussia, knowing the practical impossibility 
 of direct invasion westwards from Poland, has no 
 fortified place in this district south of Glogau, it- 
 self little more than a strong bridge-head. Neisse 
 and Glatz, her two southward fortresses, would be 
 completely out of the line of advance. 
 
 Hence Russian attack from Poland is virtually 
 limited either to a movement upon East Prussia 
 directly northward, which would encounter all the 
 difficulties of the line of the lakes, and be met by
 
 Russian Advance by Vistula. 147 
 
 a far more rapid German concentration ; or along 
 the line of the Vistula, which would have the ad- 
 vantage of that stream for a highway, and be to a 
 large extent assisted by two of the lines of railway 
 which run towards the frontier. 
 
 But it is as against this movement along the 
 Vistula that the German defences are strongest. 
 The advance along the right bank would meet the 
 defences of the Prussian Vistula, Against the 
 movement by the left bank, between Thorn and 
 Posen, a distance of 80 miles, there spread at in- 
 tervals great swampy forests, which would impede 
 movement and restrict the invader very closely to 
 the neighbourhood of the fortresses themselves ; 
 while the facilities in rear for Prussian concentra- 
 tion and action are ample — and here, as always, 
 the counterstroke from East Prussia would be an 
 element of danger. The " German officer," rather 
 cynically we think, suggests for Russia a double 
 movement — part along the Vistula from Poland, 
 on either the right or left bank, and part by the 
 line we have already referred to as what seems to 
 us the best, that altogether independent of Poland, 
 moving upon Konigsberg and the north from the 
 great Russian depot of Dunaburg and from Vilna. 
 Such an attempt to move in two separate col- 
 umns, unless each column was in overwhelming 
 force, which, from the nature of the country, would 
 not be easy, must give opportunities to a German
 
 1 48 IVcakness of Russian Base. 
 
 general for dealing blows right and left against 
 either army while separated by the lake region of 
 East Prussia. Thus an attack by Russia upon 
 Germany appears to be one which offers every 
 kind of advantage to the Germans, either for a 
 prolonged resistance with inferior forces, or if in 
 approximately equal numbers, for striking deadly 
 blows against the invader. 
 
 Unquestionably the character of the Polish 
 region and the neighbouring provinces is of a kind 
 that offers also many facilities for pure defensive 
 action to Russia. But it presents none of those 
 combinations which give to the defender the oppor- 
 tunity for counterstrokcs against an invader which 
 the German frontier supplies. The province is 
 dependent upon its artificial communications by 
 railway with Russia for any rapid reinforcement, 
 because of the difficult country which separates 
 it from the interior. As Captain Kirchhammer 
 says : " The value of these communications as a 
 whole is much weakened by the fact that the two 
 northernmost lines are much exposed in conse- 
 quence of their situation in close vicinity to the 
 German frontier. The Russian base is certainly 
 not well adapted to military requirements. First 
 of all, it is too narrow in proportion to the extent 
 of the German theatre of war ; moreover, it is 
 outflanked from the very first ; in a word, it is 
 weak."
 
 Ritssian Fortresses. 149 
 
 In rear of the main defensive line of the Russian 
 Vistula stands the very important fortress of Brest 
 Litewsk, which protects the connection of a vast 
 number of railways, and is on the Bug, about no 
 miles east of Warsaw. It is intended to cover 
 the concentration of the Russian forces cominsf 
 from the various quarters of the empire, whose 
 movements are separated by the great Pinsk 
 Marshes. It seems, however, to us that it would be 
 almost as difficult a task for the Russians to protect 
 from Prussian cavalry the lines of railway which 
 connect Brest Litewsk with Warsaw, as it would be 
 difficult for the Russian cavalry to disturb any of 
 the railway lines which are needed for the German 
 concentration. This is the more remarkable, be- 
 cause the Prussian railways run much more con- 
 veniently near to the frontier than the Russian. 
 
 So far as the immediate attack of Germany upon 
 Russia is concerned there are no other fortresses 
 that need be taken into account. For of all 
 countries in the world Russia is the last which can 
 safely be attacked by plunging into the depths of 
 " her large and almost impenetrable stretches of 
 marsh and of forest imperfectly supplied with roads." 
 
 " Germany must," as the German officer puts it, 
 "while standing on the defensive, on the eastern 
 frontier of East Prussia, at once take possession 
 of such a large portion of Poland as to cripple the 
 action of Russia on that side."
 
 150 Poland as a Theatre of War. 
 
 " The kingdom of Poland is the most densely- 
 populated portion of the Russian empire, and is 
 well adapted, from the nature of the country, for 
 operations on a large scale.^ The task, therefore, 
 which would devolve upon a German commander 
 would not be impossible ; and its successful com- 
 pletion, entailing as it would a prolonged occupa- 
 tion of the conquered country, might well lead to 
 the attainment of the object of the war. Otherwise 
 it would remain for the German leader to proceed 
 with his further operations according to circum- 
 stances, his chances of success being much increased 
 in every way by the preliminary occupation of 
 Poland." 2 
 
 For this purpose, in a war in which Germany 
 could afford to employ her troops in an attack 
 upon Russia, without troubling herself about an- 
 other enemy, it seems to us that, from the nature 
 of the Russian communications with Poland, Ger- 
 many ought almost with certainty to be able, for 
 a time, to isolate the force in Poland before it 
 could receive material reinforcements. That force 
 is undoubtedly large, probably more than twice 
 as large as the army which Germany has in the 
 neighbouring provinces ready to bring against it. 
 
 ^ An expression which, we must admit, seems to us not to take 
 adequate account of Napoleon's great enemy, the Polish mud. 
 Still he certainly did conduct there operations on a large scale. 
 
 - Journal of the United Service Institution, vol. xxiv. p. 145.
 
 The Armies that would engage. 151 
 
 But the conditions of the frontier would make it 
 impossible for it to act against Germany before 
 her mobilisation was complete. Any premature 
 advance westward or northward would only tend 
 to separate it more from the main Russian army, 
 and to expose its communications more completely 
 to the enemy. Moreover, Russia has taken a pre- 
 caution which, while it certainly indicates that she 
 is more afraid of attack herself than hopeful of 
 a rapid success from sudden invasion of her neigh- 
 bours, would seriously interfere with her throwing 
 her Polish army so quickly across the frontier as 
 to interfere with mobilisation. She has taken as 
 the gauge of her railways 5 feet instead of 4 feet 
 8^ inches, which is the common gauge of Ger- 
 many, Austria, and the Continent generally. Both 
 she and her neighbours have shifting axles pro- 
 vided to overcome the difficulty, but the extent to 
 which they would practically facilitate transport is 
 very uncertain, and they are likely to be better 
 managed by German than by Russian railway 
 engineers. Therefore, under such conditions, the 
 contest would not and could not be between the 
 army of occupation of Poland and the German 
 peace army. It would be the mobilised German 
 army which would be able to throw itself upon the 
 army in Poland. If that takes place, we are of 
 the opinion of Captain Kirchhammer, that "the 
 overlapping form of the German base will make
 
 152 Advantages of German Frontier. 
 
 any line of operations, having for its objective 
 Russian Poland, strategically safe, and will give 
 the commander - in - chief considerable facilities, 
 should he wish to change that line. 
 
 " The want of cohesion between Poland and the 
 remainder of the Russian empire will naturally 
 suggest to the German general the idea of slipping 
 in between the two, of completely isolating the 
 regions of the Vistula, of overwhelming its garrison, 
 and of preventing the arrival of reinforcements 
 from the interior. 
 
 " Whether the main German operation should 
 be directed from Posen-Thorn against the triangle 
 Warsaw, Novo-Georgievisk, Serotsk, or from Ko- 
 nigsberg-Lotzen against Brest-Litewsk — whether to 
 play a safe or a bold game — whether to aim at the 
 Russian army or at its communications, — he who 
 has to decide this question must go beyond mere 
 geographical considerations ; he must take account 
 of a great mass of circumstances, and above all he 
 must reckon up the armed force which Germany 
 can hurl on Russia. Our rapid survey satisfies us 
 that the north-eastern frontier of Germany forms 
 an excellent base both for offence and defence. 
 
 " The strategist will find in it almost an ideal 
 theatre of war, a field for numerous and varied 
 combinations." ^ 
 
 An almost similar result would occur if Poland 
 
 ^ Journal of the United Service Institution, vol. xxiv. p. 148.
 
 W/if Germany needs Austria. 153 
 
 had been so far denuded of troops by the con- 
 sequences of war elsewhere as to leave to a portion 
 of the German army the opportunity of striking 
 against it, though the main body of the German 
 forces were otherwise engaged. 
 
 We mention these several cases because it is 
 highly improbable, in the present condition of 
 European politics, that a war will ever take place 
 in which Germany and Russia will be engaged 
 against one another without allies on either hand. 
 Not only the Prussian frontier but the heart of 
 the German Empire would be open to an attack 
 directed from Russia in possession of a secured 
 hold upon Galicia. This fact, and the isolation in 
 which Germany would be left if Austria was 
 crushed, make it scarcely possible to conceive that 
 Austria will be allowed to be seriously defeated 
 before Germany takes the field. We cannot be- 
 lieve, as Sir Charles Dilke thinks, that Russia 
 would be allowed to wrench Galicia from Austria. 
 Similarly, the very existence of Austria depends 
 on the support of Germany. For though we do 
 not believe that Austrian force is une qiiantitc 
 negligible, we certainly do not think that, taken 
 alone, she is equal in power to Russia ; and she 
 knows well that, in the long-run, no terms that she 
 can make will prevent Russia from feeling her to 
 be an obstacle in her path, while one most power- 
 ful section of her people will resent all terms made
 
 154 Aiistria in Historic Wars. 
 
 with Russia. On the other hand, it needs no pro- 
 phet to predict that " the Chassepots," or rather 
 now the Lebels, " will go off of themselves," if ever 
 Germany is at war with Russia. 
 
 II. Austria. — Here, therefore, it becomes impor- 
 tant to consider what contribution Austria can at 
 present offer to the resistance to Russian aggres- 
 sion. The sketch which Sir Charles Dilke has 
 given of the present weakness of Austria appears 
 to us to be defective in this, that while most that 
 he has said is true as a bare statement of fact, 
 it ignores all the elements which compensate this 
 weakness, and it does not take account of the 
 special character which Austrian resistance to 
 Russia would assume. There is no story in the 
 history of the world more remarkable than that of 
 Austria. It is the history of the triumph of diplo- 
 macy over war, and yet of a diplomacy dependent 
 always for its power on a certain kind of military 
 strength. To us it seems that though undoubtedly 
 the heterogeneous character of the monarchy, 
 which has always weakened its armies, is more 
 apparent on the surface than ever, yet that, in a 
 contest with Russia which should take place a year 
 or two hence, Austria would be practically stronger 
 than she has been at any time in her history. The 
 Austrian armies have probably sustained more 
 defeats than any other troops in Europe, yet over
 
 Austrian Strength. 155 
 
 and over again she has become the decisive Power, 
 whose influence, thrown into the scale, has deter- 
 mined the issue of victorious war. It was her 
 union with the AUies that proved fatal to Napo- 
 leon in 181 3. Her union with us during the 
 campaigns of Marlborough is connected with some 
 of the most glorious periods of our own military 
 history. The power of recuperation which she 
 has again and again shown after defeat has been 
 marvellous. It is no doubt due to the fact that 
 her population, almost entirely agricultural, has 
 always furnished a vast supply of hardy healthy 
 soldiers ; while the masses of her rural folk have, 
 despite the socialism of the towns, been less dis- 
 posed towards revolutionary changes than any 
 others in Europe.^ Patriotism, except in Hun- 
 gary, is no doubt difficult for the inhabitants of 
 the agglomerate empire. It is hard to know to- 
 wards what nation their patriotism should be felt. 
 Nevertheless the loyalty of many races — the Tyrol- 
 ese, for instance — and generally a certain attach- 
 ment to the Royal house, if it does not supply all 
 the motive power which armies need, saves Austria 
 from many of the risks which some of her neigh- 
 bours run. It is of no small consequence that all 
 the heterogeneous population feels the Emperor's 
 
 ^ The tremendous shock which she sustained in 1848 was far 
 more due to a conflict of races than to any insurrectionary tenden- 
 cies among the masses of the people.
 
 156 Effect of Recent Political 
 
 authority to be essential to them. Certainly those 
 who have most recently been studying the people 
 of Austria are not disposed to think that Russian 
 propagandism has made any way even in Bohemia 
 or among the Slave populations. No doubt it is 
 true, as Sir Charles Dilke says, that the difficulties 
 of such an empire are aggravated by the adoption 
 of popular forms of government which tend to give 
 play to jealousies within the empire. But on the 
 other hand, it is well to remember that as long ago 
 at least as the campaign of Blenheim, the weak- 
 ness of Austria against which her enemies directed 
 their efforts, was the hostility of the most warlike 
 section of her people to the Imperial Government. 
 It was precisely in order to give scope to the pos- 
 sible effects of Hungarian insurrection that Louis 
 XIV. planned the scheme of war which was de- 
 feated by Marlborough's famous march, of which 
 the great purpose was to save the empire from 
 destruction, Prussia hoped to .secure the same 
 advantage in 1866. To-day, amid all the efforts 
 which have been put forth by Austria to prepare 
 for the coming fray, those who have most enthusi- 
 astically responded to the call have been the Hun- 
 garian subjects of the Kaiser. The enthusiasm 
 which in Hungary has greeted new arrangements 
 of the Landsturm, which have vastly added to 
 the numerical forces at the disposal of the Aus- 
 trian generals, led to officers and men of the army,
 
 Changes on Austrian Poiuer. 157 
 
 and to members of the Hungarian Parliament, 
 patiently submitting last year to the drudgery of 
 special military courses, designed for developing 
 the warlike power of a race apt beyond most 
 others in the art. The change which is thus repre- 
 sented, cannot fail to show itself in fighting effi- 
 ciency. Never before has Austria entered upon 
 war, with Hungarians passionately enlisted on her 
 side, without Italian regiments ready to lay down 
 the arms of a hated service the moment an oppor- 
 tunity presented itself Tyrolese and German loy- 
 alty is not less than of old. 
 
 Of the fourteen chief races which are included in 
 the Austrian monarchy, it appears to us that a war 
 against Russia will unite at least twelve in more 
 enthusiasm for the cause than has ever been felt in 
 an Austrian struggle before. Only two, the Serbs 
 and the Ruthenians, are both Slaves and of the 
 Greek Church. It is tolerably certain that the 
 bitter persecution of alien religions in Russia will 
 have estranged, among several of the other Slave 
 races, such as the Czechs and Croats, any sym- 
 pathies which race affinities or Slave propagandism 
 may have produced ; while, on all accounts, Ger- 
 man, Jew, Magyar, Saxon, and Italian have their 
 own special and bitter feud with the Tzar. There- 
 fore, so far as it is possible to judge of such matters 
 by any other test than that of trial, the inner moral 
 weakness which has always hitherto made the mag-
 
 158 TJie Races of A 21 stria. 
 
 nificent presentments on parade of the Austrian 
 armies a deceptive indication of their strength, 
 seems at least hkely to have disappeared. No 
 doubt the discrepancies of language will remain a 
 difficulty ; but that is, as compared with the other, 
 a secondary matter.^ It is not a little remark- 
 able that one of the earliest protests against 
 the Metternich system in 1848, came from the 
 army, in the form of a pamphlet by an officer, 
 Karl Moring, entitled ' Die Sibyllinische Bucher,' 
 in which, declaring that " the Austrian has no 
 fatherland," he pointed out the increased power 
 which would be given to Austria if a more 
 liberal system were introduced. For a very in- 
 teresting account of this incident and its effect, 
 as well as of the several races of the Austrian 
 empire, in tabular form with their religions, and 
 for another matter which we shall next mention, 
 we may refer our readers to a volume just pub- 
 lished on 'The Revolutionary Movement of 1848- 
 49 in Italy, Austria- Hungary, and Germany.''^ 
 The same author brings out a fact which is of no 
 little importance to our present purpose. It ap- 
 
 ' Only, howevei', "as comi)arccl with the other," I am far from 
 underrating its vast importance. 
 
 - By C. Edmund Maurice. London : George Bell & Sons, York 
 Street, Covent Garden, 1887. Marga gives a more complete ac- 
 count of the races, but it is not so easily seen at a glance. Oddly 
 enough, the Jews, who number, according to Marga, 1,400,000, 
 arc omitted from the book we have referred to in the text.
 
 Austria's Great Soldiers. 159 
 
 pears that the Bohemian historian Palacky was 
 asked to join the Revolutionary Assembly at 
 Frankfort as representative of Bohemia. He, 
 speaking in the name of his countrymen, pro- 
 tested against their being called upon to send 
 such representatives at all, on two grounds : one, 
 the necessity of an independent Austria as a 
 barrier against Russia ; the other, the fact that 
 " Austria, which must necessarily remain an em- 
 pire, could not consent to a close union with " a 
 republican " Germany without breaking to pieces." 
 VVe venture to commend this statement from a 
 brother historian, who may be supposed to know 
 something of the several races of the empire in 
 which he lived, to Mr Freeman, apropos to his 
 letters to the 'Times' of September 17th and 
 October 15th, 1887. 
 
 It has not been from lack of producing great 
 generals, skilled officers, a perfect discipline, or 
 hardy soldiers, that Austria has so often failed. 
 Wallenstein, Prince Eugene, the Archdukes Charles 
 and Albert, have been leaders of the highest class. 
 But again and again in the past, Court intrigue has 
 kept the genius from command, and left to the 
 pedant or the beaii, sabreur the opportunity to 
 destroy armies that in better hands might have 
 given a different account of their enemies. Both 
 Court intrigue and the exclusiveness of aristocratic 
 privilege are likely to play a much less dangerous
 
 i6o Recent Austrian Fortification. 
 
 part in the future than they have done in the past 
 of Austrian history. No doubt it is true, as Mr 
 Freeman says in the letters to which we have re- 
 ferred, that the Croatians and others of the various 
 peoples ruled over by the Hapsburgs are conscious 
 of claims which have been by no means dealt with 
 in the Austro-Hungarian compact. But, so far as 
 we have been able to ascertain from those who 
 have most recently studied the feeling of these 
 nationalities, they are conscious of the danger of 
 allowing the empire to become a loose bundle of 
 sticks such as Mr Freeman would desire it to be. 
 They cherish, no doubt, certain sentimental griev- 
 ances ; but these are by no means at present likely 
 seriously to affect the zeal of men in the ranks. 
 
 Meantime the efforts that have been recently 
 made towards developing the numbers and im- 
 proving the fighting efficiency of the army have 
 been vigorous. It is not easy to ascertain how 
 far the fortresses have been completed. Austria 
 is always in financial difficulties, and fortresses of 
 the modern type are costly luxuries. Cracow (or 
 Krakem) and Przemysl, Olmutz, Komorn, and 
 Pola ^ in Dalmatia, have all lately been receiving 
 attention, as well as, for southern war, Mostar ^ in 
 the Herzegovina. It is impossible to say how 
 much may be done, before a war, to render them 
 
 ^ Both Mostar and Tula are beyond the Hmits of our frontier 
 map.
 
 Austria s Commanding Position. i6i 
 
 fit for use under modern conditions, as the works, 
 so far as Austria is able to afford the expense, are 
 now in progress. It is certainly not a little re- 
 markable that Austria, which secured her hold in 
 Italy by one of the most powerful combinations of 
 fortresses ever devised, has never succeeded in 
 completing her defence system as worked out by 
 her own engineers. There is no story to tell of 
 carefully planned artificial improvements of the 
 natural frontier such as we have given for Prussia, 
 On the other hand, few countries have a more 
 commanding situation naturally than Austria pos- 
 sesses towards Russia. The great range of the 
 Carpathians forms for her a kind of natural citadel 
 of which Galicia is the glacis. From them she can 
 strike northward into Poland even more easily than 
 Germany can strike south ; while her position as 
 against any Russian movement to the south of 
 her empire is so commanding that Russia has 
 never yet ventured to attack Turkey without 
 coming to an understanding with her. As against 
 attack, she has the enormous advantage that the 
 Russian troops, which are now said to be collecting 
 in Poland and the south, could not attack her from 
 these quarters without giving her the opportunity 
 of dealing with each of them separately. Any 
 movement of the Russians from Poland, as long 
 as Austria and Germany are in alliance, is seriously 
 affected by the difficulties of passage across the 
 
 L
 
 1 62 Austrian Forces. 
 
 directly western frontier of Poland, which wc have 
 described. She must, to attack either Power, move 
 north or south, and therefore expose herself to the 
 risk of attack from the one which is not imme- 
 diately assailed. 
 
 According to a French officer, who has, in the 
 columns of the ' Revue Militaire de I'Etranger,' 
 been devoting nearly a year to a statement of the 
 present organisation of the Austrian army, the 
 results of which were summed up in the issue for 
 August 30th last, the total infantry of the Imperial 
 Hapsburg army, including standing army, Land- 
 wehr, and Landsturm, but excluding depots of 
 recruits and untrained men, is now 32,600 officers 
 and 1,380,000 men, the cavalry 3358 officers and 
 88,263 men. They have also been increasing the 
 personnel of their artillery by some 28,000 men. 
 Probably, therefore, including artillery, the num- 
 bers may be reckoned at something considerably 
 exceeding a million and a half. For a population 
 of 39 millions odd that is certainly not as formi- 
 dable a result as either France or Germany has 
 produced ; but, thanks to the recent political action 
 of Russia, very considerable armies may now be 
 reckoned as added to those which Austria would 
 employ, if the quarrel arose about Russian inter- 
 ference with Bulgaria. It is hardly too much to 
 say that Bulgaria, Roumania, and Servia might all 
 in that case be reckoned on to give any support
 
 Field- A rmies of Europe. 163 
 
 they could to Austria. The Roumanians showed 
 their efficiency in 1876 by saving the Russians 
 from ignominious disaster, and were rewarded with 
 a treachery which they have not forgotten. The 
 Bulgarians have also shown that they could fight, 
 and the support of a large disciplined army would 
 probably make valuable troops of them all. To- 
 gether, it is believed at present that they could put 
 eight army-corps, or say 240,000 men, into the 
 field, without counting their troops of second line, 
 the organisation of which is by no means complete. 
 The Austrian army, as organised for war, would 
 be probably raised to forty-nine divisions of 18,000 
 each, by help of the new organisation. The dis- 
 crepancy between these figures and those which 
 are represented by the million and a half of trained 
 men whom we have mentioned above, exists in all 
 the armies, whether of Russia, Germany, or France, 
 in greater or less degree. Thus, out of the German 
 total of two millions, 1,265,746 constitute the field- 
 army ; and of the 2,721,000 of the French, 1,21 1,000 
 constitute the field - army,^ An addition to the 
 882,000, composing the forty-nine Austrian divi- 
 
 1 The whole character of the French organisation has, however, 
 been recently changed. By a law introduced on June 25, 1887, by 
 General Ferron, forty-five battalions have been added to the forces 
 actually with the colours. This has been gained by a sacrifice of all 
 available cadres to such an extent that French critics themselves 
 believe that the mobilisation of all but the first line will be reduced 
 to hopeless confusion. The law took effect from October i, 1887. 
 It is hardly possible as yet to estimate what the result may be.
 
 164 Russian Nuvibers v. Austria. 
 
 sions, of the 240,000 men of the three minor states, 
 would raise the Austrian field-army, which com- 
 pares with these, to about 1,120,000 men. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate what proportion of 
 the Russian nominal grand total of seven millions 
 could actually be moved to attack Austria ; but 
 considering the enormous extent of her almost 
 roadless territory, and the proportion which has 
 always hitherto existed between the paper num- 
 bers of the Russian army and the force it was pos- 
 sible to place in the field, there does not seem to 
 us any reason to believe that the forces which she 
 would actually deliver in the area of war would be 
 practically greater than those which Austria and 
 the minor states would be able to maintain in 
 action. On one side and on the other it will 
 become a question of the numbers that can be fed 
 and supplied with ammunition. That, though it 
 is in part a question of money, is by no means 
 altogether so. The numbers that could be sup- 
 plied from Germany and fed in France afford no 
 means of judging what would be possible for 
 armies dependent upon such railways as Russia 
 possesses. Moreover, the railway connection across 
 the border between Russia and Austria is even 
 more slender than it is between Russia and Ger- 
 many. Already there are clear indications that 
 the Russians are finding it impossible to provide 
 for their nominal army sufficient numbers of non-
 
 Austrian Cavalry. 165 
 
 commissioned or commissioned officers of even 
 such quality as have hitherto supplied her forces. 
 At this moment the Russian infantry has probably 
 the best breech-loader possessed by any army ; but 
 by the end of 1888, the Austrian infantry is to be 
 armed throughout with magazine rifles. It may or 
 may not be the case that in all respects magazine 
 rifles are a great improvement on effective breech- 
 loaders for fighting purposes. What is certain is 
 that the army which does not possess them, and 
 finds itself in the presence of those that do, will be at 
 a great disadvantage as to the morale of the troops. 
 
 We have already in a former article given so 
 fully our reasons for distrusting the effect upon the 
 efficiency of the Russian cavalry of the changes 
 which the present Tzar has introduced, that the 
 value of our estimate of the Austrian cavalry must 
 depend on the soundness of that statement, based 
 as it was on authorities taken from every country 
 in Europe. If that contention be right, then we 
 have no hesitation in saying that the Austrian 
 cavalry is second to none in Europe. The Aus- 
 trian artillery has unfortunately been the subject 
 of so many experiments and failures that we con- 
 fess we are entirely unable to judge of the power 
 it would actually show in war. So far as peace 
 manoeuvres furnish means of judging, it is in a high 
 state of efficiency. 
 
 In discussing the position in which Austria
 
 1 66 Margds view of Austrian Defence. 
 
 stands to Russia, Sir Charles Dilke has evidently 
 misunderstood Captain Marga. He says : " As a 
 great foreign military writer, Marga, has consolingly 
 observed of Austria- Hungary, in that which is the 
 first of all the military works of the day, ' After 
 several defeats she can retire into the wooded 
 Carpathians ;' but he adds, 'The road to Vienna is 
 thus uncovered.'" ^ But Marga, p. 142, vol. ii., says 
 this, not in the least in order to show that the 
 Austrian army is likely to be defeated, but in order 
 to defend a proposition that Austria has a much 
 more effective defence against one particular line 
 of Russian attack than that of retiring by the line 
 of the Carpathians. " C'est en s'appuyant sur les 
 principaux cours d'eau, ainsi que sur les places de 
 Cracovie et de Przemysl, que I'Autriche chercherait 
 a couvrir la Galicie," is the previous sentence. 
 Then he shows that for an Austrian army to fall 
 back on the Carpathians in case of defeat would 
 have the disadvantage of uncovering Vienna, and 
 probably of allowing the Russians to break her 
 army in two. This, however, is only to lead up to 
 the argument that, by falling back instead on the 
 San, the Wysloka, and the Donajec, whilst guard- 
 ing the carriage-roads across the mountains by 
 field fortifications, the Austrian army would com- 
 pletely cover both Vienna and Pesth, and oblige 
 the Russian army to follow its excentric move- 
 ' The Present Position of European Politics, p. 189.
 
 GevDiany's " Word to Saj'." 167 
 
 ment. He had already shown that Russian attack 
 by the left of the Vistula, and so on Cracow, would 
 expose the Russian army to the danger of being 
 cut off from Russia by an Austrian army acting 
 along the right bank. The discussion throughout 
 tends to give the advantage to Austria because of 
 the formidable Pinsk Marshes, which tell more in 
 favour of Austrian than even of German action. 
 But there is a yet more telling sentence of Marga's, 
 saying that, in order to carry out a march on 
 Vienna, Russia " must be very sure of the neutrality 
 of Germany." Sir Charles thinks he has disposed 
 of this awkward phrase, which he does not quote, 
 by adding, " Neither can Germany be trusted to 
 defend Vienna by menacing the long line of the 
 Russian advance ; because when Germany ceases to 
 be neutral, the neutrality of France in turn will 
 cease, and Germany will have enough to do to 
 defend the Rhine." -^ Is that so? That is just 
 what we propose to consider next. We may, 
 however, observe in passing, that the number 
 of troops is not very great that are required to 
 cause the collapse of an army which has committed 
 itself to a long line of advance, open to attack 
 throughout its length by fresh forces acting at 
 right angles to it. Russia learnt that both in Asia 
 and in Europe in 1878. It seems hardly conceiv- 
 able that Sir Charles Dilke will lull her into re- 
 ^ The I'resent Position of EuroiDcan Politics, p. 189.
 
 i68 Germany's '"Million 
 
 peating, by a march on Vienna exposed to the 
 possible attacks of a hostile Germany, even though 
 engaged against France, the mistakes of the march 
 on the Balkans and the march on Erzeroum. We 
 may safely assume that Bayazid and Plevna are 
 names too deeply burnt into Russian souls for that. 
 If that is so, Sir Charles Dilke's whole theory of the 
 political balance, with K\x'&\.x\d, forced \.o rest on Italy, 
 tumbles like 2, house of cards touched at its base. 
 
 III. The position of Germany in a war with both 
 Russia and Franee combined. — We now propose 
 to consider the circumstances of vantage and of 
 disadvantage which the two frontiers of Germany 
 and of her neighbours, and the nature of her whole 
 defensive and offensive strength, present to an 
 alliance against her of France and of Russia. 
 That she would stand alone, we disbelieve ; that 
 it is in our interest, or in that of Europe, that she 
 and Austria should together stand alone against 
 Russia and France, it will be one of the special 
 purposes of our next article to deny. But it is 
 important to realise what the forces will be that 
 will be brought into the issue by the Power against 
 whom the Franco-Russian alliance, if it ever be- 
 comes a fact, will be in the first instance directed. 
 
 Undoubtedly an examination of the German 
 methods of national defence must, we think, leave 
 one impression at least upon any of our readers
 
 on either Frontier'^ 169 
 
 who have realised them as we have laid them be- 
 fore them. They are pre-eminently bold. On 
 both frontiers alike her most effective defence de- 
 pends on her power of being able to strike offen- 
 sive blows at the outset of a campaign. Has she 
 the strength, and dare she attempt, to strike offen- 
 sive blows on both sides of her great empire, at 
 once against two such adversaries as Russia and 
 France? We answer that it is morally certain 
 that her rulers will be much too wise to carry on 
 two long offensive campaigns at both ends of her 
 empire at the same time. But there are offensive 
 strokes like that which Napoleon attempted 
 against the Anglo-allied and Prussian armies dur- 
 ing the Waterloo campaign, which are only in- 
 tended to knock out of time one assailant before 
 another can come on. It appears to us that the 
 central position of the German Empire, guarded 
 on either frontier by the fortified rivers of the 
 Rhine on one side, and of the Vistula and Oder 
 on the other, with the advanced post of Metz 
 thrust out beyond the mountain - barrier of the 
 Vosges on one side, and the arm of East Prussia 
 stretched out along the kingdom of Poland on the 
 other, offers opportunities to a great strategist that 
 are even more " ideal " than those which Captain 
 Kirchhammer has so described. War nowadays 
 has indeed come to be waged on a colossal scale ; 
 but there are possibilities involved in the posses-
 
 1 70 Germany s Poivcr of Transfer 
 
 sion by Germany of a middle position covered 
 with a most perfect and carefully devised railway 
 system, and a telegraph network as complete, 
 which stagger one as to the terrible grandeur of 
 the drama which may be enacted by their means 
 almost under our eyes. In a time far shorter than 
 it took Napoleon to transfer his force from Bou- 
 logne to Ulm and Austerlitz, far shorter than it 
 took Marlborough to carry out that magnificent 
 campaign from which Napoleon, in all probability, 
 took the idea which rolled up the map of Europe 
 for ten years, a German army might be nowadays 
 transferred from the Rhine to the Vistula, or from 
 Konigsberg to Metz. Under given conditions, 
 such a transfer of men from one side of Europe to 
 the other might be made without any knowledge 
 of the movement reaching either of the hostile 
 armies, until one that had been advancing triumph- 
 antly was crushed by the new and overwhelming 
 power suddenly thrown into the field, and till the 
 other had lost the opportunity aff'orded by the 
 diminution of force. For, though the two frontiers 
 of Germany are specially fitted for oft"ensive action, 
 both are adapted also to afi"ord means to a com- 
 paratively inferior force for imposing delay on one 
 very superior. The difficult country of Western 
 Poland, the lakes and the shallow Jiaffs of East 
 Prussia, the swampy forests between the Wartha 
 and the upper Vistula, the marshy region of the
 
 of Force and of Gaining Time. 1 7 1 
 
 Obra in the province of Posen, the Polish mud 
 which bothered Napoleon, the strong defences of 
 Thorn and of Posen, the broad Vistula directly 
 intercepting a Russian march through Prussia, as 
 it does not intercept a Prussian stroke against the 
 Russian communications with Poland, will be in- 
 convenient obstacles for those Russian generals, 
 " who," as the " German officer " has it, " after 
 sharing many a disillusion during the late Russo- 
 Turkish war, may wish to satisfy their ardent thirst 
 for glory at the expense of Germany, but who 
 might possibly find out by experience that it is 
 more difficult to gain their object in a war against 
 that Power than even in one against Turkey." 
 The difficulties of the Vosges, the passage of the 
 Rhine, the siege of Metz or Strasbourg, may delay 
 the picking up of the field-marshaFs baton by a 
 French general, even when the flash of guns in 
 Poland had set the Chassepots or the Lebels going 
 off of themselves. 
 
 It would, of course, be vain to speculate on 
 which side the blow of the central force would, 
 in such a case, be first struck. If, in order to give 
 Austria breathing-time afterwards, it were thought 
 better to join her in overwhelming the force in 
 Poland, then the French might be allowed to ad- 
 vance into positions in the Vosges, where a stroke 
 delivered from the north at their communications 
 would be easier work than a dash at the fortress-
 
 1/2 German Power. 
 
 forest of the frontier ; or the French might be 
 tempted to raise up foes in their rear by a violation 
 of Swiss or Belgian neutrality. Or to take the 
 other side of the theatre of war, — if the decision 
 were to anticipate the French mobilisation, to 
 strike a blow that might induce the French for 
 some time afterwards to hug their fortresses, 
 Austria might then be left for a time to hold her 
 own as best she might, and the stroke at Poland 
 might be subsequently delivered whilst the Rus- 
 sian forces were employed in the Carpathians, or 
 the advance on Vienna might be made disastrous 
 by an even easier movement upon Galicia. Such 
 speculations are only of value in so far as they 
 suggest the possibilities which are offered by her 
 position to Germany. The decision will of course 
 depend on the circumstances of the hour, largely 
 upon the belief in Berlin as to the efficiency of 
 the French mobilisation and the condition of the 
 Russian forces in Poland, the state of the Austrian 
 army, of other political alliances, the time of year, 
 and the probable nature of the weather. We have, 
 however, we think, said enough to explain why, 
 neither as to her frontiers nor as to her military 
 situation, do we believe that as a power in Europe, 
 Germany, though she has before her a tremendous 
 task, has ceased to be the mightiest empire on the 
 Continent. That she is now an essentially con- 
 servative and peaceful nation we firmly believe.
 
 Hoiv keep " tivo Fretful Realms" in Awe. ly^, 
 
 That most assuredly she has no temptation to go 
 to war, and that if her most skilful statesmen can 
 save her from that dire calamity they will do so, 
 we are well convinced. Unfortunately no one who 
 studies the present situation believes any more 
 than Sir Charles Dilke that their success can be 
 more than temporary. 
 
 At the present moment there are in the world 
 two " fretful realms " ; and it is of vital consequence 
 to us to estimate accurately the forces that exist 
 for keeping them in awe. Of those forces we are 
 convinced that Germany must always be the 
 mighty nucleus. We disbelieve that she is in a 
 position scornfully to reject any alliance for the 
 purpose on whose loyalty she can depend. We 
 are certain that it is contrary to the whole policy of 
 her statesmen to do so. For us the great necessity 
 is to realise that Sir Charles Dilke has earnestly 
 pressed upon us, that, now that our frontier virtually 
 marches with that of Russia in Asia, and that we 
 certainly know that her progress towards India is 
 no accident brought on by over-zealous servants, 
 but part of a deliberately designed plan, all the 
 particulars of which are known, we must face the 
 facts like men, and prepare for the inevitable 
 attack. We differ from him as to the means 
 by which we ought to meet it. But we are sure 
 that we cannot do wrong in pressing home this, 
 that no reply has been made to the challenge given
 
 174 TJic ' Quarterly s' Statement on Rnssia. 
 
 in the 'Quarterly Review' of January 1887, to those 
 who know, to deny that they have had indisputable 
 evidence before them that Russian action on India 
 is and has been for years deliberate, designed, care- 
 fully planned, and that it is hourly approaching the 
 period of overt action.^ We cannot think that 
 enough has been done to bring this fact home to 
 our people. With our great enemy the case is 
 different. The whole resources of the State are at 
 the disposal of the Tzar, before whom silently the 
 facts which serve as motives for action can be laid. 
 Year after year a policy can be steadily pursued, 
 the results of which are only obvious to us when 
 they are about to be secured. Sir Charles Dilke 
 has himself admirably exposed the reckless in- 
 difference to solemn pledges, the ingenious sub- 
 terfuges, the false analogies which have been used 
 as cloaks to cover from English eyes the steady 
 purpose with which her march proceeds. 
 
 1 The wording of the passage we refer to deserves to be given : 
 " To those who would fain believe that this rapid advance is the 
 result of accidental circumstances, we would, 7mth full knowledge of 
 the subject, reply by challenging any high official, either Liberal or 
 Conservative in either India or England, to say that he had not had 
 absolute proofs before him that the Russian advance is the residt of a 
 luell-viatured design to dispute our empire in the East." — Article 
 "Constantinople, Russia, and India," Quarterly Review, January 
 1887. For our own part, we cannot doubt that this was an author- 
 ised attempt to draw public attention to this vital truth. Sir C. 
 Dilke obviously is not among the officials referred to ; the informa- 
 tion was probably obtained subsequently to his leaving office. In 
 any case, he knows nothing of the matter.
 
 Secrecy in State and Camp. 175 
 
 Now it is not possible that we should meet that 
 deliberate scheme as long as our people are halt- 
 ing between two opinions as to whether Madame 
 Novikofif and her faithful henchman are not honest 
 friends of England, instead of being, as in fact they 
 are — one consciously, the other blinded by flattery, 
 by gratitude for favours received, and by personal 
 vanity — the agents for throwing dust in the eyes 
 of Englishmen. We are sure that Sir Charles 
 Dilke has done good service in endeavouring to 
 persuade our statesmen that great as were the 
 diplomatic facilities of the days of Castlereagh, 
 those days are in fact for England no more. Our 
 people must know things which in those days 
 were wisely for the national good kept from them. 
 Secrecy has, in war, still overwhelming advantage. 
 We believe, as we have already urged, that it is 
 a very great mistake to discuss in public the pre- 
 cise point at which our blow at Russia should be 
 aimed. Such a public discussion as led to the 
 movement on Sebastopol in 1854, would, in these 
 days of completed railways and telegraphs, bring 
 disaster upon the expedition which attempted the 
 advertised attack. But there are many questions 
 of politics as to which we attempt to carry on the 
 old system of playing their own game against 
 nations which can secretly exert all their power 
 when we cannot develop ours, or maintain a con- 
 stant policy unless the country at large under-
 
 I ']6 Halting between two MetJiods. 
 
 stands the true facts. We entirely agree with 
 Sir Charles Dilke that " if it were possible to con- 
 duct the foreign relations of a democratic country, 
 such as England has now become, with secrecy 
 as well as with firm devotion to a fixed line of 
 conduct, no doubt it would be better to leave the 
 consideration of many questions until they actually 
 arise ; but at the present moment we suffer from 
 the disadvantages of both systems. We do not 
 fully discuss foreign relations in advance, and 
 make up our minds as to our best course ; we do 
 not even take steps to inform ourselves thoroughly 
 as to the facts ; but at the same time we en- 
 courage our public men to make rash and hasty 
 statements founded upon imperfect knowledge, 
 and we ' go wild ' from time to time in various 
 directions." ^ 
 
 It would be very easy for us to show that Sir 
 Charles Dilke has offended against his own canons; 
 that he has misinterpreted the meaning of the 
 surrender to China of the station at Port Hamil- 
 ton ; that he has similarly misinterpreted the 
 meaning of the present Government scheme for 
 adding power to our army. It has been precisely 
 because he has not been behind the scenes in these 
 matters that he is not aware that they have been 
 attempts to secure many of the very objects which 
 he himself most earnestly desires. He has struck 
 
 ^ The Present Position of European Politics, p. 2S5.
 
 Diego Suarez and the Como7'os. i yj 
 
 wild blows, hitting those who have been steadily- 
 working to secure real efficiency. Nevertheless, in 
 so far as he has brought before the country the 
 necessity for not shutting our eyes to undoubted 
 facts, and before our statesmen the necessity for 
 keeping the nation informed of the dangers to be 
 faced, he has rendered a great service. 
 
 There are not a few of these dangers which he 
 has ignored. He has, for instance, touched far too 
 lightly on the risk to our trade round the Cape of 
 the French occupation of Diego Suarez, the mag- 
 nificent harbour to the north of Madagascar, and 
 of the Comoro Islands,^ which together command 
 the Mozambique Channel. The case is the more 
 curious because he has rightly judged that the Cape 
 route, and not the Suez Canal, must necessarily be 
 that on which we chiefly depend during war-time. 
 
 We must confess that we have found it extremely 
 difficult to be sure of the exact impression which he 
 has wished to leave by his statements on many of 
 the subjects he has handled. He certainly appeared 
 to us, as he did to many others of his critics, to wish 
 us to believe that Russia was a Power fully a match 
 by herself for Germany and Austria combined. We 
 by no means have committed ourselves to disputing 
 his assertion that, on the whole, Austria is not so 
 strong a Power, if she stands alone, as Russia. Yet, 
 in the " Conclusion " to his now published volume, 
 
 1 Not mentioned at all. 
 
 M
 
 i/S ^^ Indian A^itJioritiesy 
 
 he appears almost to limit himself to that assertion. 
 We are not aware that that position has been any- 
 where assailed. He has, however, in no wise modi- 
 fied his views as to the value, under present con- 
 ditions of war, of the Russian infantry or of the 
 Russian cavalry as newly organised. In our first 
 article we cited from almost every country in 
 Europe high authorities against his opinion. We 
 do not, indeed, know where those authorities are to 
 be found to whom he constantly appeals as decisive. 
 The opinions of those whose names ordinarily carry 
 weight are everywhere against him. It seems to 
 us that, in order to support his statement on this 
 subject, he must have inquired either among those 
 who have not been tried, or among those who have 
 been tried and failed. On other questions, as, for 
 instance, when he appeals against Colonel Malleson 
 to high Indian authorities "whom Colonel Malleson 
 would be the first to respect," there is this difficulty, 
 from his habit of citing without naming men,^ that 
 he evidently is not aware what a conflict of opinion 
 exists as to the question of the proper defence of 
 India among the highest Indian authorities, nor 
 does he quite realise how very intelligible that 
 conflict is. So far as we have been able to ascer- 
 tain, among those who, without any circumstances 
 
 ' A good deal of this difficulty has been removed in his more 
 recent articles. It will be seen that the mentioning of the names 
 in no way weakens the force of anything I have said here.
 
 Hoiv to protect Herat. 179 
 
 which tend to obscure their vision, base their 
 opinion upon pure mihtary grounds, and upon the 
 advantage to England of the course to be pursued, 
 there is no dispute as to the facts which we pressed 
 home in our former article. On the one hand, so 
 far as the fighting on the actual Indian frontier is 
 concerned, the farther we can fight Russia away 
 from her base, and therefore the nearer to our 
 Indian frontier, unless we can strike through Persia 
 from an altogether independent base, the stronger 
 we are. On the other hand, though we cannot 
 safely advance upon Herat from India, it is vitally 
 necessary to us to forbid Russia to possess herself 
 of Herat and the Heri Rud. Therefore it is also 
 vitally necessary for us to put pressure upon Russia 
 elsewhere than at Herat in order to protect Herat. 
 Undoubtedly, if the Afghans were a united 
 people, who could be trusted to adhere religiously 
 to contracts made by a central Power, advance 
 upon Herat would be a question of their friendship 
 or hostility ; but that is just the element on which 
 we cannot count. The Afghans are, in fact, a con- 
 geries of fierce tribes, who, no matter what bargains 
 we had made with them beforehand, would be apt 
 to break out in our rear after the first check we 
 received in our front. Therefore, advance far be- 
 yond the Indian frontier becomes for us most dan- 
 gerous. Our position there is strongest when it is 
 strictly defensive.
 
 i8o Where sJioiild ive Strike? 
 
 But all the world over human nature is human 
 nature, and the clearest military vision may be 
 obscured by the temptations of a brilliant cam- 
 paign. The matter may be plausibly put : " We 
 are all agreed that Russia must be stopped from 
 advancing upon Herat, — why should not the cam- 
 paign to achieve that end be carried out from 
 India itself?" It is not therefore difficult to guess 
 why some of the highest authorities — whose names 
 Sir Charles has not produced, but of whom we will 
 give Sir Charles the benefit of declaring that, as 
 we know their views, we know also that their 
 names would add much weight to his words — 
 should be tempted, against their better judgment, 
 to persuade themselves of the wisdom of a course 
 which would for England be very dangerous. If 
 the question as to the proper course to be pursued 
 by another country and another army under an- 
 alogous conditions could be submitted to their 
 unbiassed judgment, we have no doubt at all as 
 to the value of their military opinions. The an- 
 alogies of military history are now sufficiently 
 numerous, and we say unhesitatingly that they 
 all preach — •" Strike by all means. Do not wait 
 to be struck, when you know that your enemy is 
 only waiting for the moment which will be best 
 for him to strike you ; but do not strike him at 
 the point where he is strongest and you will be 
 weakest."
 
 Russia's real Pozuer. 1 8 1 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke, who has not had the means 
 of knowing what, in England at all events, have 
 been the proposals of " the highest authorities " 
 for some time past, puts forward a series of state- 
 ments, dogmatically given without support of any 
 kind, to the effect that we cannot attack Russia 
 in Europe. He treats the question as though we 
 had nothing to offer in exchange for those facilities 
 for "getting at her in Europe " for which we un- 
 questionably require the aid of other Powers. 
 What he has not told us is, that the great power 
 which Russia has shown in her Asiatic conquests, 
 is that of gaining strength as she goes forward — 
 of assimilating the tribes she has conquered there, 
 as he shows that she has now assimilated the 
 tribes of the Caucasus. The omission in his cal- 
 culations which Colonel Malleson pointed out is 
 the central point of the whole question : — 
 
 " What, then, I may ask, has become of the sur- 
 vivors of the defeat of Geok Tepe in January 1881 .-* 
 Of the many thousand Turkmans who fought, some 
 thousands at least submitted. What, too, has be- 
 come of the Turkmans of Merv? The whole of 
 these yielded without striking a blow, and we 
 may be sure that Russia did not slaughter them 
 in cold blood. It cannot be that they have no 
 trained horses. The testimony of many travellers, 
 from Burnes down to Vambery, proves that there 
 has ever been an abundance of horses among the
 
 1 82 Absorbing Eastern Countries. 
 
 Turkman tribes — horses ready to do the work of 
 the desert, hardy, stout-hearted, full of endurance. 
 No ; in those nomadic countries it is safe to assert 
 that history repeats itself From the earliest days, 
 from Mahmoud of Ghazni down to Nadir Shah, 
 the Turkman cavalry have invariably taken service 
 with the conqueror of their desert homes, more 
 especially when they have realised the fact that 
 that conqueror designs to lead them to pastures 
 rich in booty. As light cavalry they can scarcely 
 be surpassed ; they are accustomed to Eastern 
 warfare ; they make war support war. With such 
 men Russia could ill dispense, and we may be 
 sure that she has not dispensed with them. There 
 are, at this moment, not hundreds, but thousands, 
 of them at the beck and call of Russia." ^ 
 
 He has taken no notice of this,- except by a 
 casual admission that it is the manifest interest of 
 Russia to absorb Northern Persia, "as Russia 
 alone of European Powers can absorb an Eastern 
 country." He quietly proposes to hand over 
 Herat to Russia, because in the "race for Herat 
 Russia has undoubtedly beaten us," ignoring what 
 Colonel Malleson has unanswerably urged as to 
 the vital importance of our preventing Russia 
 
 ^ "The Fortnightly Reviewer and Russia" — Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine, April 1SS7, ]). 576. 
 
 - See the answer to Colonel Malleson, pp. 329, 330, ' The 
 Present Position of European Politics ' (Chapman & Hall).
 
 '■'Indian Authority" on Europe. 183 
 
 from securing all the advantages " of the mar- 
 vellous fertility of the Heri Rud," as a base for 
 acting against India. 
 
 We are to yield every sort of advantage to 
 Russia for the attack on India, because "the 
 highest authorities " have decided that we cannot 
 attack Russia in Europe. We assert emphatically, 
 that just as the "highest authorities" in relation to 
 cavalry action mean, for Sir Charles Dilke, as we 
 showed in our first article, " those who agree with 
 me," and do not mean the men of European re- 
 putation, or the men whose arguments have been 
 laid before the military opinion of Europe, and 
 have been universally accepted as sound by those 
 whose judgments decide it, so in relation to this 
 far greater question, the " highest authorities " do 
 not mean the men who have been tried and have 
 proved their value, but do mean either those who 
 have not been tried, those who have failed, or 
 those who have had no opportunities for knowing 
 the evidence on this question. It is naturally not 
 the business of Indian authorities, however high, 
 to obtain information as to the best points for 
 attacking Russia in Europe. 
 
 It is because the power of attacking Russia in 
 Europe is vital to us that the question of the 
 " balance of mJlitary power in Europe " is a matter 
 that concerns us so nearly. 
 
 So far as we have gone at present in dis-
 
 1 84 Summary of 
 
 cussing that question, our purpose has been to 
 show — 
 
 1. That the reform of our mihtary forces which 
 is at present in progress, is of the kind which will 
 enable us most economically to utilise the strength 
 we possess and to defend our empire. 
 
 2. That we cannot keep India in economical and 
 tranquil security, even if we can defend it at all, 
 without the power of striking effective blows 
 against Russia elsewhere than from India. 
 
 3. That we at present do not spend upon our 
 forces sums incomparably greater than foreign 
 Powers do, but that on the contrary our monetary 
 sacrifices are much less than those of foreign 
 Powers, although we have a far more vulnerable 
 and a vastly more extended empire than any other 
 Power whatever, and though we do not make any 
 of those personal sacrifices which are involved in 
 compulsory service. 
 
 4. That unless this be recognised, it is hopeless 
 to attempt to provide an army relatively economi- 
 cal and efficient, because our actual deficiencies, as 
 to which all men are agreed, arc so very serious 
 that only by increased expenditure can they be 
 remedied. 
 
 5. That our present system of expenditure has 
 not been an economical one, because it has been 
 headless, unreasoned, inorganic, haphazard — de- 
 signed to furnish War Ministers with effective
 
 previous Pages. 185 
 
 speeches for the House of Commons, and not 
 designed by any men who could really and effec- 
 tively combine power and responsibility ; because 
 power and knowledge have been hopelessly di- 
 vorced, because every department has catered for 
 itself, and no one for all. 
 
 6. That in the present condition of the Conti- 
 nent, the great central and conservative Power of 
 Germany is undoubtedly still, by frontiers, by 
 position, by organisation, by military training and 
 force, the strongest in Europe. That to her Aus- 
 tria is a necessity ; and that, though Austria is not 
 as strong as Russia, her forces would have probably 
 many elements of strength in such a contest which 
 she has often lacked in former wars. That France 
 is undoubtedly immeasurably stronger than she 
 was in 1870, but that there are elements of uncer- 
 tainty in her military organisation such as there 
 are not in Germany. We may add now that those 
 uncertainties have not been removed by her re- 
 cent very limited and long-prepared mobilisation, 
 and that the new military law has at least intro- 
 duced a new element of uncertainty as to her 
 strength. That Russia, from the enormous num- 
 bers of her population, and from the extent to 
 which she devotes all her resources to preparation 
 for war, must always be a great military Power ; 
 but that she has not gained, but lost very heavily 
 indeed, by the changed conditions of modern war-
 
 1 86 Smnniary contimied. 
 
 fare. That, till she has again had to fight with a 
 European Power, it will be impossible absolutely 
 to estimate her military strength ; but that, though 
 she has been actively engaged since 1877 in per- 
 fecting her military organisation, yet the weak- 
 nesses which she showed in the Turkish war were 
 due not merely to temporary defects, but to con- 
 ditions inherent in the nature of her people and 
 her Government. That, nevertheless, her special 
 aptitude for assimilating an Eastern people, and 
 so rolling up her strength as she advances towards 
 India, is a real power, and to us a real danger. 
 That that advance is no result of accident, or of 
 such causes as those which have, in the teeth of 
 every sort of effort of the Home Government to 
 restrain the tendency, led to the extension of our 
 Indian empire. That the notion that that is so is 
 simply the result of ignorant, cosmopolitan, easy- 
 going pseudo-liberality of mind in England. That 
 the advance has been designed from St Peters- 
 burg, and has been concealed by every artifice. 
 
 7. That under those circumstances our interest 
 lies, not in insular exclusiveness, but in joining 
 hands with those who have as much interest as we 
 have in opposing the designs of Russia. That 
 for us, therefore, the central point of the balance 
 of power in Europe lies in the relations of other 
 Powers to Russia. 
 
 8. In our last article we examined the counter-
 
 Purpose of next A rticle. 1 87 
 
 weights, Germany and France. Incidentally we 
 there showed why we do not believe that there 
 is any reason for fear lest either of them will be 
 greatly tempted to violate the neutrality of Bel- 
 gium, provided Belgium performs her duty ; that 
 we shall earn no gratitude either from Germany or 
 France by not fulfilling international obligations 
 to Belgium to which we stand distinctly pledged ; 
 and that certainly no one has had authority to 
 declare that we intend to break our word. 
 
 In our next and final article, we propose to 
 examine certain questions as to our own possible 
 alliances, and more especially to consider the effect 
 upon the European balance of the rise of the 
 young and vigorous Power of Italy, and the con- 
 dition of Turkey, and to say a few words about 
 China. We shall then be able to lead up to our 
 general conclusion as to our future policy based 
 upon the considerations we have urged.
 
 IV. 
 
 ITALY, TURKEY, AND ENGLISH ALLIANCES
 
 ITALY, TURKEY, AND ENGLISH 
 ALLIANCES. 
 
 We have now to deal with what seems to us to be 
 for Englishmen the most important factor in the 
 whole European problem. Writing, as we have 
 been throughout, purely from a national and in 
 no wise from a party point of view, it would be 
 both ungracious and unfair not to acknowledge 
 that, in our judgment, we very largely owe the 
 national advantage to us of the rise of the Italian 
 power to one man — Mr Gladstone. Probably no 
 man ever more completely expressed the feeling of 
 sympathy of one great nation for another than did 
 Mr Gladstone, when he declared in i860 that there 
 was a subject on which all Englishmen everywhere 
 were agreed — " that Italy ought to be one ; that 
 Italy ought to be free." It was many years after 
 that before Italians as a nation fully realised the 
 extent and depth of the sympathy which had been
 
 1 92 TJie Neiv Poiver of England. 
 
 felt for them in England. They have very fully 
 realised it now. Such matters are of the gravest 
 possible importance. It seems to us that no word 
 should be said in England which can in any way 
 tend to modify that friendly feeling.^ 
 
 Yet there is, apart altogether from historical 
 sympathy, a service which England can now 
 render to Italy such as it has never before been 
 possible for England to render to any Power pos- 
 sessed of a great national army. England can at 
 one and the same time secure Italy from attack, 
 and can enable her to become an offensive Power. 
 That is a consideration for statesman rather than 
 for peoples, but it is essential for us that our people 
 should understand it. What is perhaps of even 
 more importance to us is, that this fact is thoroughly 
 realised by Italian statesmen of all parties, and by 
 the more influential and intelligent classes through- 
 out the country. We almost fear lest, in the space 
 of an article in which we have much else to discuss, 
 we shall not be able to bring fully home to our 
 English readers in detail the causes which make 
 this a military and political certainty. Briefly 
 stated, it is clear enough that a country with an 
 enormous .seaboard, a country of length without 
 
 ^ We regret that in Sir Charles Dilke's article in the November 1887 
 number of the ' Fortnightly,' he should have thought it necessary 
 to discuss the possible injiiry which English hostility might inflict 
 on Italy. Is it wise for a politician to discuss such a subject at all 
 in regard to a friendly and most sensitive country?
 
 The Weak Point of Italy. 1 93 
 
 breadth, dependent for a large portion of its forces 
 on two islands, and divided throughout the length 
 of its mainland by a great mountain-chain, is liable 
 to invasion from France by sea to an extent to 
 which she is not liable to invasion across a moun- 
 tain-range the defence of which has been elaborately 
 prepared. The consequence of these facts is, that 
 the debates in the Italian Parliament, the pamphlets 
 which have teemed from the Italian press, and the 
 innumerable discussions which have testiiied to the 
 intense patriotic interest which all Italians have 
 taken in the question of national welfare, all turn 
 upon this point. As we shall probably more easily 
 convince our readers by a few extracts of the in- 
 tensity of this feeling, than we shall drive home a 
 proof of some military intricacy as to facts about a 
 foreign country, we venture to give the following. 
 
 Here is the first, from 'Nuova Antologia' of 
 October 1 884 : " With our present resources we can 
 defend ourselves, but we cannot conquer. . . . We 
 must be prepared to see, at the beginning of hos- 
 tilities, our coasts and seas infested by war-ships, 
 which will capture ships, destroy railways, and at- 
 tempt surprises and attacks of all sorts. If we are 
 not prepared to do the same, we shall be surprised, 
 crushed, and exposed to incalculable disasters." 
 
 Here is a soldier's view. Lieut.-General Ricci, 
 late Chief of the Staff of the Italian army, on re- 
 turning from a tour of inspection at Massouah, 
 
 N
 
 194 '^^^^ Patriotic Zeal of Italians. 
 
 said to his constitutents at Belluno : " Our conti- 
 nental frontier is one of the strongest in the world, 
 because the Alps, fortified as they are, and defended 
 by 250,000 or 300,000 Italians, present an impas- 
 sable barrier. I even dare say that we are too 
 strong on the side of the Alps, and I wish to again 
 ask the Chamber to economise here as much as 
 possible in order to increase the naval budget, so 
 that we may have enough ships to prevent attack 
 on our coasts, tJic weak point — very tveak point — of 
 Italy. . . . Each time that I, General of the 
 Army, and Alpine deputy, appear in Parliament, 
 I shall say, 'All for the navy.'" 
 
 These extracts, which might be multiplied in- 
 definitely, are only representative of what is the 
 universal Italian feeling. The difficulty is to con- 
 vey to English readers the impression which is 
 left upon those who have most closely been watch- 
 ing what has been going on in the peninsula of the 
 " zeal and untiring energy with which Italy has 
 pressed forward her land and sea defences : it is 
 necessary to take stock of the multitudinous im- 
 provements in every service, and to study the 
 frequent and instructive debates, to acquire a true 
 idea of the immense interest taken in this question 
 by all classes." We quote from a private letter 
 from Captain A'Court, the author of ' Military 
 Italy,' who has devoted years to the patient study 
 of this question. His book is now by far the most
 
 The possible Poiver of Italy. 195 
 
 complete account we have of the actual condition 
 of the military forces of the kingdom. 
 
 For our purposes it will be sufficient to say that 
 by the laws of 1882 the Italian army having been 
 increased by 1 50,000 men, and the army - corps 
 increased from ten to twelve, she has now 430,000 
 men actually available in the army, with 200,000 
 " mobile militia " in second line ready to reinforce 
 them. Allowing for the complete defence of the 
 Alpine region, according to a scheme elaborated by 
 General Ricci, she has available 330,000 men for 
 active operations in the field, either against Russia 
 in support of Austria or against France in support 
 of Germany, — provided, and provided only, that an 
 alliance with a great naval Power secures the Italian 
 coasts. 
 
 With all the efforts that Italy has made to 
 strengthen her navy, she does not at all disguise 
 from herself that the French navy is incomparably 
 stronger. Nor is it only the French navy that she 
 has to fear by sea. When we have spoken of two 
 army-corps and a cavalry division as representing 
 the force which at least we ought to have ready to 
 ship, and have declared that at least until that 
 force has been provided complete in all respects 
 and ready to act, no other additions to our army 
 would serve our turn, we take account of the im- 
 mense distance to which it would be necessary for 
 us to transport troops. The vast increase in the
 
 196 Hozv France can sU'ihe Italy. 
 
 supplies of all kinds which are involved in long sea- 
 transits multiplies, to an extent that would hardly 
 be believed, the amount of mercantile tonnage that 
 is required. The few hours' steaming which inter- 
 vene between France and Italy impose altogether 
 other conditions of sea-transport. Paper transport 
 by sea for those who have not actually taken up 
 the tenders, is apt to seem a much simpler thing 
 than it does to those who have to provide, even for 
 a few days, for all that troops require on landing. 
 It will, however, at least give some indication of 
 what Italians fear, if we say that Colonel Perrucretti, 
 in * La Difesa dello stato,' one of the most popular 
 of Italian works, calculates that France has the 
 means of forming and rapidly transporting by sea 
 four army-corps. It is not too much to say that if 
 that is true, or anything like true, the mere danger 
 of such a descent on some unknown point of the 
 Italian coast, together with the command of the 
 sea by the French fleet, would be sufficient to 
 paralyse the entire Italian army that could be 
 spared from the local defence of the Alps. Thus 
 a French force numerically most inferior to the 
 Italian army would be sufficient to prevent Italy 
 either from assisting Austria or troubling France. 
 
 To sum up — the Italians have, with one excep- 
 tion which we shall presently note,^ no fear of not 
 being able to hold their own perfectly as long as 
 1 Vide p. 226.
 
 How we can give Italy Power. 197 
 
 the contest is confined to movement across the 
 respective land-frontiers. Without an English al- 
 liance the entire Italian army would be paralysed 
 for offensive action by the French fleet and a com- 
 paratively small portion of the French army. With 
 an English alliance the combined Italian and Medi- 
 terranean fleets would certainly command the sea, 
 paralyse any possible attempt at French invasion 
 by sea, protect the much exposed Italian ports, 
 many of which, like Naples, are not only unpro- 
 tected, but from local causes cannot be adequately 
 protected, and finally would set free the Italian 
 army for action beyond the frontiers. We say, 
 therefore, that the rise of the Italian Power has 
 completely changed the relation of a great naval 
 Power like England to the military forces of the 
 Continent. Without putting a soldier on shore 
 abroad, and without moving a soldier from Eng- 
 land, we can by our naval action alone, and that 
 without any special strain on our naval forces, set 
 free at least 300,000 men for effective action against 
 the aggressive Powers of the Continent. 
 
 It seems to us that under these circumstances 
 the principle of all our policy ought to be, before 
 all things, an active alliance with Italy. No one 
 who has studied the views of Italian statesmen can 
 fail to see that that is their opinion also. An al- 
 liance of Italy with Germany, or even of Italy with 
 Germany and Austria, without an English alliance
 
 198 Hoiv no otJier State can. 
 
 against Russia and France, is of the nature of the 
 alliance of Thumblin with the giant, in which 
 Thumblin gets all the knocks. Not that we do 
 not think Italy a great Power. Italy and England 
 allied together become two very great Powers in- 
 deed, from the moment that England has provided 
 the force which is indispensable for the security of 
 her own existence. But no alliance that Germany 
 or Germany and Austria can offer to Italy, will 
 save her from what Italians know to be their real 
 danger. Germany and Austria, having to deal 
 with the Russian navy, cannot absorb a sufficient 
 portion of the activity of the French fleet to make 
 Italy safe. 
 
 There is no alliance which would so securely 
 unite all parties in this country. If it be true, as 
 Sir Charles Dilke alleges in his article in the ' Fort- 
 nightly' of November 1887, that Prince Bismarck 
 has recently proposed to England to join the three 
 Powers, the cause is clear. Either Signor Crispi's 
 interview or the views of Italian statesmen, ex- 
 pressed through other means, have made him 
 attach a different value to the "sick old woman" 
 from that which it suited his policy to profess in 
 former times. It is clear that England and Italy 
 together can offer to the central Powers an ac- 
 cession of strength which Bismarck could not and 
 does not despise. It is equally clear that he can- 
 not get Italy to join him on the same terms with-
 
 IV/iat zue tJiiis give Austria. 199 
 
 out our alliance. This fact changes the nature of 
 our power in relation to every state on the Con- 
 tinent. We do not believe, as we have already 
 shown, that Italy is, as Sir Charles Dilke alleged, 
 so necessary to the existence of Austria that Aus- 
 tria must cringe to her to any extent to secure 
 her alliance ; but this much is certain, that Italy 
 cannot move a man to the support of Austria with- 
 out our alliance. The position of France in any 
 contest between Russia and Austria is so menacing 
 for Italy, that neutrality is enforced on Italy, at 
 least until Germany and France are at war. Even 
 then we think we have given reasons for believing 
 that whilst the French fleet holds the seas, Italy 
 will scarcely be able to move. Therefore to 
 Austria our adhesion to the alliance is vital in 
 proportion as the alliance of Italy is or is not im- 
 portant to her. As Sir Charles Dilke has at least 
 given its full weight to the value of that alliance, 
 the importance of which for Austria we by no 
 means ignore, we claim his evidence as represent- 
 ing on that side the value we can offer to Austria 
 on the do lit des principle. We have much else also 
 to offer her, of which it will be more convenient to 
 speak later. 
 
 Having this view of the importance and effect 
 of Italian alliance before us, we wrote in our first 
 article : " It is almost certain that we shall never 
 have to enter into any quarrel in which zve cannot
 
 20O Can ivc secure Allies ? 
 
 obtain allies, to whom the command of the sea, 
 such a force ^ so capable of movement, and the 
 financial support of England, would be of priceless 
 value." ^ We do not think that these words, used 
 after we had referred to the importance of Italy, 
 and had repeatedly spoken of acting on the do lit 
 des principle, conveyed to any one else the impres- 
 sion which they did to Sir Charles Dilke. " He is 
 positive, however," he says of the present writer — 
 " and I envy him his firm belief — that zuhe)i zvar 
 conies upoji us we shall have allies." If they had 
 done so, they would have been ill-chosen words. 
 A forced construction placed on an isolated clause 
 in a long argument is apt to mislead ; but as it is 
 vital to us not to be misunderstood in this matter, 
 we are much more anxious to make our meaning 
 clear than to split hairs as to the correct turn of a 
 phrase. The purpose, then, with which we under- 
 took these articles may now be fully stated, and 
 the argument as a whole worked out. We do not 
 believe, and never have believed, that if we wait 
 till war comes upon us in behalf of our own in- 
 terests, we can secure allies who will fight for us 
 when we have refused to fight for them. We be- 
 lieve, as Sir Charles Dilke believes, that a great 
 
 ^ Two army-corps and a cavalry division complete in all respects, 
 and ready to embark on the word being given. 
 
 - Vide p. 5'- I retain here the wording of the original article as 
 it has been challenged by Sir C. Dilke. I have for the sake of 
 greater clearness slightly altered it at p. 51.
 
 Yes, if the Nation decides. 201 
 
 change has come over the political relation of Eng- 
 land to the Continent since we have in Asia come 
 to have frontiers which virtually march with those 
 of a great European Power. We believe that the 
 phase of public opinion which looked upon it as 
 the duty of English statesmen to keep clear of 
 Continental alliances, and to devote our strength 
 to the peaceful extension of our colonial empire, 
 was a very natural and legitimate view of the ex- 
 isting condition of things for many years of the 
 present century. We believe also with Sir Charles 
 Dilke that in our days it is impossible for Eng- 
 lish statesmen, however clearly they may see that 
 the circumstances which tended to form a certain 
 popular sentiment have radically changed, to com- 
 mit the country to action for which it is not pre- 
 pared. We do not see how, as an upright states- 
 man who desired to pledge himself to brother 
 statesmen on the Continent to that only which he 
 could fulfil to the letter, it would have been pos- 
 sible for Lord Salisbury to completely commit this 
 country to a formal union with the great peace- 
 league of the three Powers. Therefore we firmly 
 believe that, in order that such alliance, which is 
 now vital to our interests, should be formed, the 
 nation generally must have laid before them the 
 motives which ought to determine our action. It 
 is well that our foreign policy should be consistent, 
 continuous, and based on a knowledge of the exist-
 
 202 TJic Grounds of Decision. 
 
 ing state of things, which prevents violent changes 
 when one party succeeds another in power. Cir- 
 cumstances, however, alter cases. The policy which 
 was wise, or appeared wise, to the majority of Eng- 
 lishmen under one condition of things, may, if they 
 see clearly that those conditions have altogether 
 changed, appear in a very different light to them. 
 There is no reason why English opinion should not 
 be roused to the same interest in the question 
 which exists at this moment everywhere through- 
 out Italy. Therefore we held it to be our duty, 
 having facts before us which, as we have heard 
 from all sides, have not hitherto been understood 
 by most Englishmen, to lay them before them. 
 
 We think we do Sir Charles Dilke no injustice 
 when we say that the whole purport of his articles 
 was to leave the impression that war with Russia 
 being sooner or later inevitable for us, and war 
 with Russia and France together a by no means 
 impossible contingency, we must prepare ourselves 
 to fight them without allies. He based that opinion 
 on the belief that our alliance was not worth having, 
 and that the rejection of it by Austria at Prince 
 Bismarck's instigation, which he alleged had at the 
 beginning of the year recently occurred, was repre- 
 sentative of what we had to expect for the future.^ 
 We said, therefore, when we first challenged his 
 
 ' Compare ' The Present Position of European Politics,' jiji. i6, 
 21, i6o, 185, 186 d scq., with p. 277 and pp. 339-343.
 
 Prussia before Jena. 203 
 
 statements, and we say now, that both in the case 
 of England and Russia he put strength for weak- 
 ness and weakness for strength. We entirely agree 
 with those military critics who have assured him 
 that he has underrated the power of Russia, and 
 exaggerated the power of England, in maintaining 
 that by some tinkering with our military finances, 
 by some catching at popular military prejudices, by 
 some substituting of a plausible statesman who is 
 " out " for one who is in, we can more easily arrange 
 to meet Russia in the field, in India, or at Vladivos- 
 tock, without allies, than we can arrange to meet 
 her elsewhere with them.^ We say that he ex- 
 aggerated the power of Russia when he tried to 
 persuade us to leave the nations of the Continent 
 to be trodden under the feet of the colossus be- 
 cause Russia, or, at all events, Russia and France 
 together, represented a force so great that other 
 nations could not resist them. We say that he 
 misjudged the statesmanship of Italian statesmen 
 when he believed that their whole policy was one 
 oi poiirboires. 
 
 We believed then, and believe now, that the 
 position in which we stand is very much like that 
 in which Prussia stood in the years prior to 1806, 
 whilst Napoleon was overthrowing Austria and the 
 other states of the Continent. We can fan our- 
 
 ^ Sir C. Dilke has challenged the fairness of this statement. My 
 answer lies in the references given on the preceding page.
 
 204 How the Military Conditions 
 
 selves with the beHcf that it is a matter of no 
 moment to us whether Russia and France do or 
 do not deal first with the Continental Powers, and 
 then with ourselves. In that case we shall surely 
 be left, as Prussia was in 1806, without allies when 
 the fast-approaching hour arrives when Russia is 
 able to deal with us in India, secure at least in a 
 neutrality of France benevolent towards her, and 
 ready to take every advantage of her many causes 
 of quarrel with us. On the other hand, if only our 
 fleet be in the condition in which all Englishmen 
 desire to see it, we can offer such additional strength 
 to the alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, that 
 we ought to be able to make such terms as will 
 keep Russia and France quiet and at peace both 
 with ourselves and the other Powers for our genera- 
 tion and perhaps the next. We neither deny nor 
 affirm that our fleet is now in that condition. That 
 is a question for sailors. It happens now, as it 
 often happens, that the questions of the nature of 
 the great services which a fleet can render us are 
 mainly dependent on points of military study on 
 land. It is because of the nature of the military 
 frontiers of Germany and Russia, and of the mili- 
 tary forces and lines of communication of the two 
 great empires, that we are able to affirm that, by 
 prohibiting a Russian naval expedition against 
 Konigsbcrg, Memel, and Danzig, the Whale can 
 offer a direct service to the Prussian Eagle against
 
 determine our Naval Power. 205 
 
 the Elephant that may be worth the Eagle's pur- 
 chasing at a price. 1 It is because of the necessary 
 military distribution of the Italian depots, fortresses, 
 and frontiers that we are able to affirm that our 
 navy can offer a service to Italy which will affect 
 Germany and Austria alike, and be worth at least 
 300,000 men to the alliance. Whether our navy 
 can at this moment crush or confine the now 
 nearly ready Russian fleet in the Black Sea, and 
 at the same time, with the assistance of the Italian 
 fleet, dominate the Mediterranean and the Baltic, 
 while it secures our commerce, our shores, and our 
 colonies from attack, we do not know. From a 
 military point of view, those are the services it 
 ought to render us. Till it can accomplish them 
 with certainty, we cry with General Ricci, "All for 
 the navy and nothing for the army." To that, 
 however, there is one saving clause on which we 
 need not dwell, as on that point we are in entire 
 agreement with Sir Charles Dilke. The army 
 knows perfectly what the navy requires from it 
 in order to accomplish its proper work at sea — 
 secure ports, and secure coaling-stations. Their 
 security is imperative if we are to be able to feed 
 our population in time of war. 
 
 We shall, however, continue to accuse Sir 
 Charles Dilke, in season and out of season, of 
 party spirit, until he acknowledges one fact on 
 ^ See III., "Germany, Russia, and Austria."
 
 2o6 On Coaling- Stations 
 
 that matter, which is true whether he acknow- 
 ledges it or not. The one statesman who has 
 really and heartily thrown himself into the cause 
 of practically securing for us coaling - stations 
 and harbours effectively garrisoned, and has 
 gone as far in it as it was possible for a man 
 to do, has not been Sir Charles Dilke, has 
 not been Mr Stanhope, or any other statesman, 
 Conservative or Liberal, but Mr Smith. Sir 
 Charles Dilke either knows that or is wilfully 
 ignorant of it. For our part, in so far as any 
 feeling of the kind affected our determination to 
 offer these articles to our readers, it was the sense 
 of the mischief to the country that was done when 
 a statesman not much given to talk, but steadily 
 and honestly setting himself to work at reforms 
 not showy but vital to efificieny, was assailed by a 
 clever talker, appealing to every catch-penny pre- 
 judice that could be raked together. Those re- 
 forms have been now fully explained in public by 
 General Brackenbury ; and we are at a loss to 
 understand how Sir Charles Dilke can say, after 
 expressing the fullest approval of them, that he 
 does not know what was meant when, speaking 
 of this work, which had then at Mr Smith's 
 instance, and with his full approval, been just 
 accomplished, Lord Wolseley declared that more 
 effective, non-theatrical work had been done in 
 them than he had known done for years. Sir
 
 and Partisanship. 207 
 
 Charles Dilke wishes those who desire genuine 
 army reform not to hit at one another. We 
 heartily sympathise with the wish ; but the speech 
 from him seems to us like the historical one of the 
 robber to the policeman, to which we can only 
 give the policeman's answer. The present writer 
 never once spoke to Mr Smith, Not a word of 
 what has been here written in Mr Smith's praise 
 would have been altered had he been a Radical 
 statesman, if that statesman had shown the desire 
 Mr Smith has shown to accomplish genuine work 
 for the country. We have had enough and to spare 
 of brilliant speeches made by Secretaries of State 
 for War, for which they receive the compliments of 
 every one in the House. A little steady, unstagey, 
 untheatrical work, that does not show in a speech, 
 is a novelty ; and, whilst Sir Charles Dilke shows 
 his patriotism and independence of party spirit 
 by vituperating or undervaluing all work, no 
 matter how valuable it has been, done whilst 
 Conservatives happened to be in power, we shall 
 show ours by throwing all the enthusiasm we can 
 into the support of any statesman, no matter of 
 what party, who will strive after genuine efficiency. 
 Since we began our series there has appeared 
 an article ^ from the pen of Herr von Bunsen, de- 
 claring, not as an expression of his own opinion 
 
 1 'Nineteenth Century,' Sept. 1887— "A German View of Mr 
 Gladstone."
 
 2o8 Voii Buns en on German Views. 
 
 but as a study of the growth of public opinion in 
 Germany, that the Germans generally have come 
 to look upon this question as we do. He says that 
 the whole feeling of Germany towards England 
 has undergone a change, precisely because they 
 consider that the great danger of the present situa- 
 tion lies in the high probability that, whether from 
 deliberate design or as a consequence of the course 
 of events, Russia and France together may attack 
 England by herself first without allies, or else may 
 attack Germany and Austria by themselves. We 
 have in the present article shown why it is the 
 case that these great military Powers may well 
 desire the alliance of England, even though she 
 should not be able to land a single corps d'armee 
 anywhere. Herr von Bunsen belongs to a family 
 of statesmen, and is not likely to write without 
 knowing what the views of German statesmen are. 
 This article, the speeches which have been made 
 in the Foreign Committee of the Hungarian De- 
 legations, notably on November 5, together with 
 Signor Crispi's declarations, have been sufficient 
 to refute Sir Charles Dilke's statement that " we 
 are so little prepared for war that no Power thinks 
 our alliance worth having for a short war, and it is 
 the first days of a war that count at the present 
 time." ^ But if these be not sufficient. Sir Charles's 
 present assertion that Prince Bismarck has recently 
 1 The Present Position of European Politics, p. 160.
 
 Ca7i zve strike quickly ? 209 
 
 pressed upon us an alliance with the three Powers, 
 is its complete and final refutation.^ 
 
 We entirely agree with Sir Charles that the 
 first days of a war are now of vital importance. 
 We entirely agree with him that our army is not 
 now ready for the first few days or weeks, hardly 
 for the first few months, of a Continental war. It 
 has been with a view to make it so, that all the 
 reforms which Sir Charles Dilke has so fiercely 
 attacked were being attempted.^ If he can use 
 his influence with Radical members to give cour- 
 age to the Government to ask for the immediate 
 expenditure which he now at last admits to be 
 necessary in order to carry them out, he will 
 confer the greatest service on his country which 
 lies in his power. 
 
 Nevertheless with our army as it is, though we 
 cannot do all that we ought to be able to do for 
 the defence of the country, we can act potently 
 on the first few days of a Continental war, as we 
 cannot act on the first few days of a war between 
 ourselves and Russia. A telegraphic order to our 
 Mediterranean fleet to join the Italian navy will 
 then and there set free at least 300,000 soldiers in 
 Italy from the moment they are mobilised, and 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, November 1887. 
 
 ^ I do not myself profess to reconcile tlie apparent approval of 
 General Brackenbury's speech, alluded to on p. 206, and the attack 
 on the very same reforms which was the basis of Sir Charles Dilke's 
 article on " The United Kingdom." 
 
 O
 
 2IO Ves ; quicker than any Poivcr. 
 
 will begin to operate with enormous force in favour 
 of the great alliance during the course of the very- 
 days of mobilisation. A telegraphic assurance to 
 Germany that another English fleet will co-operate 
 with the German from the moment that the state 
 of the Baltic permits the Russian fleet to approach 
 Memel, Konigsberg, or Danzig, will enable the 
 German leaders completely to modify all their 
 plans for dealing with Russia. It will secure the 
 communications of a German army engaged in 
 the invasion of Poland. It will protect Germany 
 on the only side on which Russian attack could 
 be seriously dangerous.^ Before we conclude our 
 article, we shall show that yet another telegraphic 
 order will be worth a further 200,000 men to Ger- 
 many. There is no Power in Europe whose in- 
 fluence can be so rapidly exercised. 
 
 Therefore, pace Sir Charles Dilke, we say that, 
 with these weapons in our hands, it will be not 
 in war-power but in statesmenship and diplomacy 
 that England will fail, if we are not able to make 
 such terms with other States as will oblige Russia 
 to leave Herat alone. We feel certain that if only 
 our statesmen will take to heart that principle 
 which Sir Charles Dilke has so soundly and wisely 
 pressed on them, that at present they must under- 
 stand the conditions of war on the Continent if 
 
 ^ For the complete justification for these statements, see III., 
 " Germany, Russia, and Austria."
 
 Can we seat re Peace ? 2i I 
 
 they would attempt to safeguard England, there 
 are yet other terms that we can make. We believe 
 that Russia could be held to adhere, in relation to 
 all the points of interest to us as well as to Europe, 
 to the bargains she has made. We believe that 
 we could obtain security that her pledges so habit- 
 ually broken, and her solemn words so habitually 
 repudiated, shall not again be ignored. Only by 
 the union of the four Powers, all interested in peace, 
 can such a result be secured. 
 
 We believe, also, that we could obtain a very 
 similar security as against France. We wish that 
 Sir Charles Dilke had brought out more fully than 
 he has done many of those causes of quarrel with 
 France to which he has only alluded. We fear 
 that our diplomacy will only be too willing to 
 continue the evil courses in which it has been 
 for more than a generation engaged, trusting to 
 the ignorance of the nation as to the feeble conces- 
 sions about which Sir Charles has only given hints. 
 
 We wish that he had drawn attention to the 
 almost appalling frankness with which law officers 
 of the Crown have declared that on the coast of 
 Newfoundland, thanks to the carelessness and 
 neglect of our statesmen, we have allowed French 
 "rights of user" to be converted into "rights of 
 wont," and " rights of wont " to be converted into 
 tolerated claims to exclusive possession, till now, 
 in a territory where the French have not, by treaty,
 
 212 Danger of present Situation. 
 
 a yard of soil, the French newspapers talk of " the 
 French coast," almost as if they had territorial 
 jurisdiction over it and we had not. How long it 
 will be before French diplomatists adopt the same 
 tone it would be dangerous to predict. An alliance 
 for the maintenance of treaty rights, by which the 
 rights of all the four Powers concerned were 
 mutually guaranteed, and the violations of treaty 
 were regarded as a matter of common interest, 
 would give a firmness to our diplomacy and a 
 security to peace such as there has not been in the 
 world, at least since what Sir Charles Dilke now 
 says that he agrees with us in thinking our great 
 blunder in 1864, though he considers us most par- 
 tisan writers for having called it so. 
 
 For it must not be disguised that the situation, 
 as it now stands, though it is most satisfactory for 
 the central Powers, is most dangerous for us. It is 
 true that the Hungarian representatives have shown 
 that they appreciate the nature of the action of 
 English statesmen in a way that, unfortunately, it 
 would be thought derogatory to the dignity of an 
 English Opposition on either side to admit that 
 they appreciated it. " We expect," said Csernatony, 
 " no formal alliance on the part of England, as it is 
 her habit not to bind herself before she finds it 
 necessary to go to war ; but it is highly satisfactory 
 to learn that England is not against us, and will 
 never side with our enemies ; and that her good-
 
 Semi-Alliance and Russian A inis. 2 1 3 
 
 will towards us, from which we may derive great 
 advantages, is assured." 
 
 Unfortunately the " semi- alliance " which may 
 confer these great advantages on the central Powers 
 offers us no guarantee of their help in an event 
 which that semi-alliance itself is especially likely 
 to bring about. 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke thinks that nihilism would 
 disappear if Russia went to war. We gladly ac- 
 cept his authority on a subject of which he knows 
 much more than we do. It is at least certain that 
 the probability that war would kill nihilism is 
 sufficiently strong to make war present continual 
 temptations to the Tzar. Is it not likely, then, 
 that the very strength of the alliance of the three 
 Powers, with England in the background, may 
 induce the Tzar now to turn his attention towards 
 India, instead of towards Europe? Unless we 
 have made not a "half alliance" but a whole 
 alliance with the other Powers, so that they are as 
 much pledged to us as we to them, he will there 
 find England in the foreground with no other 
 Powers behind her. Nor, unless the declarations 
 which Lord Hartington used formerly to make are 
 wholly unsound, would the result be very different 
 if the Tzar were to turn his attention to Asia Minor 
 instead of to India. " In Asia Minor," as Lord 
 Hartington used to say, "lies the great danger for 
 England." In either case, as Sir Charles Dilke
 
 214 ■^- Thiers on Allies. 
 
 himself admits, it would be at least highly probable 
 that we should have France on our back at the 
 same time. Why should we run this tremendous 
 risk merely for the sake of preserving a pedantic 
 tradition of English statesmanship, suited to con- 
 ditions which are not those of to-day ? Why should 
 we be compelled to put our armed forces on an 
 enormously expensive establishment ? For the 
 discovery that Sir Charles Dilke has now made, 
 that we must at least begin with an expenditure of 
 several millions, shows only that he now knows of a 
 flea-bite on what it will actually cost us to be ready, 
 out of our own resources alone, to face Russia and 
 France together, as he admits that with the policy 
 which he advocates we must be ready to do. 
 
 Towards the end of the Franco-German war, 
 when M. Thiers — the old war-historian of France, 
 the great exponent of the Napoleonic tradition as 
 to war, the author of the fortifications of Paris — 
 was endeavouring to persuade his countrymen for 
 the moment to make peace, he used an argument 
 which seems to us worth considering in our present 
 situation. " If," he said, " four men better armed 
 than I am come to me and demand my purse, I 
 do not choose the moment when they arc superior 
 to me to settle the question finally. I make such 
 terms with them as I can for the moment, and 
 then I go to six other men as much interested as I 
 am in stopping robbery, and arrange with them to
 
 Mr " Facing-both- Ways'' 2 1 5 
 
 master the robbers and recover mjr purse." We 
 are in a somewhat happier position. Two are 
 threatening a general disturbance. If they can 
 only catch one alone, they arc quite ready to tackle 
 him for their common advantage. Three of those 
 exposed to this risk are agreed in lending one 
 another mutual support. We, the fourth, stand 
 apart, wishing well to the three, and very likely to 
 be obliged to join them if the three are attacked. 
 The three are most anxious that we should join 
 them, and are quite ready to give as we give. But 
 we have, and can have, no counter-promise from 
 them, because, though our feelings are sufficiently 
 well known to the other two to irritate them greatly, 
 we prefer sitting half on one side and half on the 
 other of the fence, and will not make up our mind 
 to a definite decision. Is that for us a satisfactory 
 condition of things ? Can it foreshadow any good 
 for us ? 
 
 Nor is even that a full statement of the case. 
 As we have shown in our detailed examination of 
 the facts, we can, for the purposes of the general 
 alliance, use our own special strength to the full. 
 If we allow ourselves to be isolated and then at- 
 tacked, instead of being able to lend offensive 
 power to the general service, we shall be thrown 
 upon a miserable defensive. With Russia we shall 
 find, as we did in the days of the Crimea, that we 
 cannot exert our naval power to its full extent, and
 
 2i6 Can English Poivev 
 
 must trust to the service in which we shall be al- 
 ways weakest. When Sir Charles Dilke has done 
 his utmost to expand our forces to the dimensions 
 of the great Continental armies,^ we fear much that 
 the faithful son must say to his country what the 
 little frog of .^sop's fable said to his mother, at- 
 tempting to blow herself out to the size of the ox — 
 " You will burst before you succeed." We can be, 
 relatively to other countries, as great a naval Power 
 as we choose to be. We shall be delighted if from 
 Sir Charles, or any one else, we can hear of any 
 means that will economically increase the size of 
 our army. We are bound, however, to say that, if 
 what he has in his articles foreshadowed be the 
 solution he is about to propose to us, then there is 
 much danger lest he should increase numbers with- 
 out increasing force. He speaks of an English 
 system not based upon foreign schemes. We are 
 delighted with all genuine thought and genuine 
 originality. We fear, however, that he has already 
 given us hints enough to show that the scheme he 
 is to propose is one that has been already tried and 
 discarded because of its failure by a great Con- 
 tinental Power. However, we shall be anxious to 
 hear without prejudice what his proposals are. In 
 
 ' I, ill common with others, iiavc so understood him. But, as 
 the burial service puts it, "he continueth not in any one stay," so 
 that it is difficult to be sure what his actual meaning is. He now 
 says that this does not represent his view.
 
 conic " but by Sea " P 217 
 
 the meantime, we do not think it will be easy to 
 persuade Englishmen that a contest in which their 
 naval power cannot be freely exerted can ever be 
 so satisfactory a one for them as one in which 
 naval power tells from the first outbreak of war. 
 
 There is, however, one argument which has been 
 recently very ably put in the 'Spectator' against 
 the possibility of our forming an alliance such as we 
 have described. The writer urges that we cannot 
 adhere as patiently and consistently to a formed 
 purpose as is the case with Powers ruled by a 
 despot. Is that historically true ? We do not 
 think so. Of all the Powers opposed to Napoleon, 
 which maintained the struggle with most patience 
 and consistency ? 
 
 Nor can we persuade ourselves that the more 
 aristocratic nature of our constitution in those days 
 materially affected the question. The feelings of 
 all classes were as heartily enlisted in that struggle 
 as were those of the ruling men — nay, it was the 
 popular feeling which originally forced Pitt's un- 
 willing hand. But if that be not a sufficient indi- 
 cation of the extent to which a country with a very 
 popular constitution may adhere firmly to a policy 
 once thoroughly understood by the mass of the 
 nation, what case can be more forcible than that 
 of the United States of America during the war 
 with the South ? What comparisons are naturally 
 suggested by the setting of that case side by side
 
 2i8 Can England persist ? 
 
 with the action of the Russian armies in the days 
 of Frederick the Great ! Then the successive 
 deaths of Russian rulers converted on the spot 
 enemies into friends, friends into enemies. What 
 reversals of policy that, at the worst, England has 
 ever known, approach in their suddenness the 
 changes which are suggested by the mere names, 
 Elizabeth, Paul, Catherine ? It appears to us that 
 the whole history of the English race, both in 
 America and England, promises, despite some 
 lapses due to the violence of party spirit,^ a security 
 to allies not to be found elsewhere. It is of equal 
 importance to us that the belief that that is so 
 is strong on the Continent. Even now, in the 
 Foreign Committee of the Hungarian Delegations, 
 the independent members contrast the " sympa- 
 thetic attitude of England " with " the frequently 
 vacillating conduct of Germany." Few things can 
 be more significant than Count Apponyi's speech 
 on that matter on November 5th. 
 
 We turn, however, now to a question on which, 
 as it seems to us, the Italian alliance offers us a 
 solution of a difficulty which more than any other 
 threatens to make it hard for us in England to 
 maintain a continuous and persistent policy in 
 
 ^ We arc disposed to agree with Mr Green that tlie worst case of 
 which we have been ever guilty, tlic desertion of Frederick, was 
 due chiefly to the personal wilfulness of the young king, George 
 III., on his accession. Chatham surely then represented the pop- 
 ular feeling in favour of persistency.
 
 Italian Statesmen and Tnrkey. 219 
 
 foreign affairs. We hardly think that any one in 
 England now doubts that pacha government in 
 Asia Minor is intolerably bad. We hardly think 
 that any one is ready to commit England to the 
 defence of intolerably bad government. On the 
 other hand, no Conservative statesman has ever 
 been more strongly opposed to allowing Russian 
 government to be substituted for Turkish, than 
 were Mazzini and the most Liberal or Radical of 
 Italian statesmen. Carl Blind's article, to which 
 we have referred already,^ supplies, to those who 
 are not cognisant of these facts, unanswerable evi- 
 dence on that subject. Notoriously Signor Crispi 
 is the heir of these traditions, and not of any mere 
 historical or selfish policy for the maintenance of 
 the integrity of the Turkish empire. Bad as 
 pacha government may be, it is at least subject to 
 a pressure from without which tends to check its 
 worst excesses. We would ask any one who thinks 
 that there may not be something worse than this 
 to study Prince Kropotkine's new work.- We can- 
 not believe that Englishmen, who appreciate the 
 check to tyranny which is supplied by ample day- 
 light, can doubt that a Government which can 
 work out in absolute darkness such devilry as 
 Prince Kropotkinc proves to be common, would 
 
 1 P. 137, ante. 
 
 " III Russian and French Prisons. By Prince Kropotkine. Lon- 
 don : Ward & Downey. 1887.
 
 220 Italy and the Balkan States. 
 
 be a blessing even to Asia Minor. No statesmen 
 are more heartily friendly than the Italian to the 
 emancipated Balkan States. No one now doubts 
 that friendliness towards them is the true policy of 
 English statesmen, and that in the persons of Lord 
 Salisbury and Lord Rosebery both parties are com- 
 mitted to that view. The policy of Russia towards 
 Turkey is simple enough. It consists in pandering 
 to the vices of the ruling pachas in order to make the 
 government of Turkey as bad as possible, so that it 
 may disgust Europe and become intolerable to the 
 subjects of Turkey.^ It seems to us that all English 
 parties may agree in resisting to the utmost that 
 policy. Surely also we may join Signor Crispi in 
 refusing to allow Russia to be the heir of Turkey. 
 
 1 Ignatieff, no doubt, in 1877 carried out that policy with a per- 
 fection that it never attained before or since. To have induced the 
 repudiation of the debt, and by a subtle complication of ingenious 
 intrigue to have almost compelled the Turkish Government to em- 
 ploy in the suppression of the insurrection he had fomented the local 
 militia instead of the Turkish regulars, were masterpieces of their 
 kind. The knowledge he thus showed of the possible devilries 
 which the sectarian zeal of Uulgarian Verts might be trusted to 
 work on men of their own race, with whom they had carried on a 
 feud for centuries, was marvellous. His cynical appreciation of the 
 effect of his action upon the conscience of Europe was only equalled 
 by the cynicism with which he subsequently worked for political 
 purposes the devilries of the Jew-baiting. In his person Russia 
 decorated the supreme leader in both crimes. We have never been 
 able to understand why the volume known as ' Les Rcsponsabilites,' 
 in whicli the whole story of Ignatieffs action at Constantinople was 
 set forth, was never published or in any way made known in Eng- 
 land.
 
 Shall Russia be Turkey's Heir ? 221 
 
 Wc have dealt first with what we beheve to be 
 by far the more difficult problem involved in this 
 question — the problem, that is, of adopting such a 
 policy towards Turkey as may enable us to utilise 
 her brave soldiers in the common resistance to 
 Russian aggression, with the consent of English- 
 men, who loathe as much as we do the wretched 
 rule of the pachas in the outlying provinces of the 
 Turkish empire. We do not in the least believe 
 that it is necessary to commit ourselves to vague 
 promises as to maintaining against her subject 
 races the integrity of the empire in order to gain 
 her assistance in keeping the Russians out of Asia 
 Minor, or in inflicting such blows upon Russia, if 
 she recommences the repudiation of treaties and 
 the aggressive policy of the past, as will keep her 
 quiet for many a long day. It is notorious that 
 Turkey is now anxiously seeking admission into 
 the Central Alliance. It will almost certainly not 
 be granted to her — and we do not think that it 
 ought to be granted to her on the terms on which 
 other Powers enter into that alliance. Nevertheless 
 it may be possible to agree with Turkey to assist 
 her in preventing Russia from carrying out further 
 aggression in Asia Minor, on condition of her 
 assisting us in attacking the Russian lines of com- 
 munication should Russia move on India. 
 
 On the side of Europe, Russia can now only 
 approach Constantinople over the free Balkan
 
 222 English Power in iJic Black Sea. 
 
 States, or by sea. We think Sir Charles Dilke 
 will admit that towards a European prohibition of 
 Constantinople to Russia on that side, we can lend, 
 if not the most powerful assistance that any State 
 can contribute, at least an aid which is second to 
 none. That the English, Italian, and Turkish 
 navies can, even when the very formidable fleet 
 which Russia is providing in the Black Sea is 
 complete, prohibit approach to Varna or Con- 
 stantinople, ought not to be open to question. 
 Whether that is an assistance which Roumania 
 can offer in such an event to Austria, we shall 
 not insult our readers by discussing. 
 
 We are not impressed by the knowledge as to 
 the military facts of the 1877-78 campaign which 
 has been shown by Sir Charles Dilke, whoever 
 may have been his military advisers. He, in the 
 form of a question, wishes to destroy the basis of 
 an argument of ours, of some importance to the 
 general position we have taken up. For the pur- 
 pose of disclosing the weakness of his thesis, it 
 will be convenient to extract from the question 
 the logical position it involves. 
 
 Major premiss, — Some generals, who knew 
 nothing of the condition of the Austrian and 
 Prussian armies in 1866, felt sure that Austria 
 must beat Prussia. 
 
 Minor premiss, — Yet Prussia beat Austria. 
 
 Therefore it is clear that no knowledge, however
 
 The Turkish Poivcr for War. 223 
 
 complete, and however fully confirmed at present 
 by historical documents, of the condition of the 
 Russian army in Turkey in 1878, and of the 
 strength of the English forces that could have 
 been landed in the neighbourhood of Constanti- 
 nople, can now enable any soldiers to say that in 
 1878 England was in a position to have prohibited 
 Russian approach to Constantinople, Deduction, 
 — Such fools are all soldiers ! We shall not reply, 
 but leave Lord Macaulay's schoolboy to do so. 
 
 The question, however, next arises, whether Italy 
 and England can lend to Turkey a support in the 
 Black Sea, and in Asia Minor, which will enable 
 us to forbid Russian approach on the Asiatic side 
 towards Constantinople, and to utilise the Turkish 
 troops. 
 
 We should attach more importance to Sir Charles 
 Dilke's very confident assertions of our impotence, 
 if he had shown that he knew even a little of the 
 present condition of the Turkish army. To judge 
 of the prospects of a race or a battle from a know- 
 ledge of the efforts at training of only one of the 
 competitors, is, after all, not to bet on a certainty. 
 Sir Charles, from similar one-sided knowledge, 
 evidently thinks that he is in that happy position. 
 Now we have strong reason to believe that Turkey 
 can even now put something like 300,000 effective 
 soldiers, complete in all arms, into the field in 
 Europe alone, without calling upon her Asiatic sub-
 
 224 Can ive pTotcct Asia Minor? 
 
 jects. If that is so, considering that the far greater 
 proportion of her fighting population resides in Asia 
 Minor, it is not hard to believe, as we also have 
 reason to think, that she is steadily working up 
 to a standard, which will enable her to put an ef- 
 fective army, in all, more than 700,000 strong in 
 the field. 
 
 We entirely agree with Sir Charles Dilkc that if 
 the numbers of the Turkish soldiery that can be 
 provided out of this force to contend with Russia 
 in Asia Minor are not adequate, we can add to 
 them nothing in point of numbers that will justify 
 us in speaking of protecting the Asiatic dominions 
 of Turkey. But on the other hand, both Russia 
 and Turkey know well that we more easily than 
 any other Power can lend such aid in such a 
 contest as will simply turn the scale of victory 
 and defeat. We can enable Turkey to maintain 
 her armies in the field in a country where efficiency 
 of condition and facility of supply are more im- 
 portant than numbers, and where numbers that 
 cannot be supplied and fed are utterly useless. 
 We can supply officers that can be trusted, many 
 of whom can speak Turkish. The two corps and 
 the cavalry division of which we have spoken, 
 serving as the nucleus of a force of Turks as large 
 as the complete command of the sea would enable 
 us to furnish and supply, would, in despite of Sir 
 Charles Dilkc's confident assertions, be able to act
 
 W/ij/ Detail oiigJit' not to be given. 225 
 
 in those regions with decisive effect upon Russian 
 action in India. 
 
 We know what we are talking about.^ For the 
 reasons we have already given, we utterly refuse to 
 enter into further details for the benefit of our 
 enemies. Here, as in the case of the European 
 alliance, we say it is far better for us to develop 
 and use such strength and force as may un- 
 doubtedly be ours, than to strain at the develop- 
 ment of a force which will be delusive, and will 
 involve us in confusion worse confounded. There 
 is one principle which we venture to think we may 
 at least learn from the Germans, if the common- 
 sense of our own people does not furnish us with 
 sufficient arguments for it — and that is, not to be 
 perpetually reversing the methods on which we 
 work with our army. One, if not the greatest 
 misfortune which has hitherto attended the effort 
 to bring our army up to the conditions of modern 
 warfare, has been the necessity for providing suc- 
 cessive Secretaries of State with the material for 
 oratorical effects. The principles needed for the 
 mobilisation of an army are now as well under- 
 
 ^ I retain this phrase, because I do not think it will be misunder- 
 stood by any one but Sir Charles Dilke. I mean simply that I 
 deliberately abstain from entering into details because I do not think 
 it would be right to enter into them, and not because I have not 
 carefully considered the question, or have not had the means of 
 knowing what those think who have had even better means of 
 judging of it. 
 
 P
 
 226 " Vote Straight ! " 
 
 stood as the laws of the game of chess. What 
 we want is to have them applied with business-like 
 precision to our actual condition, as Mr Smith was 
 striving to do during his unfortunately short tenure 
 of the War Office. When we know what we want, 
 the thing is actually to get it. We have endeav- 
 oured to show in what direction our efforts can 
 be most economically and effectively employed. 
 We feel a little disposed to borrow from a speech 
 delivered some years ago by Mr Grant Duff, when 
 member for the Elgin burghs. What we want 
 from those who mean to have the army put on a 
 sound basis is that they should " vote straight," 
 and work to get others to " vote straight," not for 
 a party but for the nation. 
 
 Before, however, we draw together the points 
 which we are most anxious to enforce, we must 
 recur to a matter to which we alluded when speak- 
 ing of the defence of Italy on the land-frontier. 
 There is a service to the cause of Italian defence 
 which it ought not to be beyond the power of unit- 
 ed European diplomacy to render her. Among 
 the few remnants of the Treaty of Vienna, we 
 think that most Englishmen assume that the neu- 
 trality of Switzerland has at least remained a part 
 of the public law of Europe. Now, by one of the 
 protocols of the Vienna Congress, "toutes les 
 fois que les puissances voisines de la Suisse seront 
 en hostilite ouverte ou imminente," Switzerland
 
 Neutral Savoy. 227 
 
 was authorised, for the purpose of neutrah'sation, 
 to occupy the districts of Chablais, Faucigny, and 
 other named parts of Savoy. Nothing in the 
 transfer of Savoy and Nice to France in i860 
 altered this condition of European law. Switzer- 
 land has recently claimed the right to execute 
 this protocol in the event of imminent war. It is 
 scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance 
 to Italy of having this question at least settled 
 on a clear basis. Upper Savoy in the possession 
 of France, and with the free right to use it, allows 
 a French army to menace Italian concentration 
 in Piedmont by the Simplon, and to turn the 
 Swiss defences by taking them in rear by Friburg 
 and Berne, so as to fall upon the left flank of a 
 German army between Basle and Schaft"hausen. 
 Clearly, both Italy and Germany have a right to 
 understand whether this neutralised ground re- 
 mains sacred from war or not. Left in the 
 condition in which the question at present 
 stands, with French troops trained to use this 
 very ground in the teeth of treaties,^ this nominal 
 
 ^ I do not, of course, mean that it is expressly contrary to treaty 
 for French troops to be drilled on this ground, but that their local 
 training to an employment of ground which would be valueless 
 except by a violation of treaty is too significant not to suggest the 
 purpose for which it is designed. It is a training to a use of this 
 ground, which, if ever put into warlike practice, would be contrary 
 to treaty. Sir Charles Dilke, in withdrawing a charge he had made 
 of incorrectness against my statement, has declared that he looks 
 upon the training of French troops in the military use of neutralised
 
 2 28 China. 
 
 neutralisation itself prevents either State from 
 taking effective measures to protect themselves 
 against the risk. It appears to us that we at least 
 ought not to object to have any refusal to allow 
 Switzerland to occupy this ground under the con- 
 ditions of the protocol, considered as one of the 
 casus belli which would be regarded as of com- 
 mon interest by all the members of the great 
 alliance whose effective creation on fixed terms 
 we desire. 
 
 As to China, we have little to add to what Sir 
 Charles Dilke has said, except to express our 
 strong agreement with him as to the importance 
 to us of securing, as against Russia, that alliance 
 in its most effective form. Nevertheless, we ven- 
 ture to think that here, as elsewhere, we must give 
 if we wish to take. If it had been possible, with 
 the full consent of China, to retain Port Hamilton 
 — still more if it had been possible, with due re- 
 gard to the vast number of our dispersed fortresses 
 
 ground as equivalent to "the training of Prussian guards at Pots- 
 dam." The difference between two kinds of military training is 
 clearly a question for soldiers. I directly deny the soundness of 
 Sir Charles Dilke's position, and I unhesitatingly submit the ques- 
 tion to the military opinion of Europe. Drilling upon a parade- 
 ground is one thing ; local practice in the military knowledge of 
 mountain-passes and a mountain district is another — one which can 
 be only acquired in that district itself. The very acquisition of 
 that special knowledge by troops becomes suspicious when it would 
 be useless unless treaties were violated, and when a violation of 
 treaty would give immense military advantage to the troops so 
 trained. That is now the case in neutralised Savoy.
 
 Port Hamilton. 229 
 
 in distant seas and to their efificient defence, to 
 make Port Hamilton into a strong fortress — we 
 should have quite agreed with him as to the im- 
 portance of gaining that foothold for enabling our 
 fleet to cross any Russian movement from Vladi- 
 vostock upon Australia. But we cannot believe 
 that what Mr Carlyle used to call " praeternatural 
 suspicion " is the wise attitude for those who are 
 not engaged in carrying on difficult negotiations 
 as against those who are, so long as the critics are 
 flying the banner of patriotism against party, and 
 are appealing to their countrymen on those terms. 
 Praeternatural suspicion is, of course, the estab- 
 lished function of " her Majesty's Opposition." So 
 long as Sir Charles Dilke professes to write on 
 party principles, these and many other strokes are 
 intelligible enough. They are part of a game that 
 we know. A Government has plenty of provision 
 against such. What we object to is the sheep's- 
 clothing of appeal to those who, like ourselves, do 
 not accept those principles in a matter of national 
 concern. Our own belief is, that whichever party 
 had been in. Port Hamilton would have been sur- 
 rendered when it was found that our occupation 
 ofiended the Chinese. 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke thinks that, in maintaining that 
 it is to the interest of England not to abandon 
 Belgium if Belgium does not abandon herself, we 
 have added further proof of the necessity for
 
 230 Denmark as a Base 
 
 revolutionary change in our military system.^ We 
 believe, on the contrary, that the broad principle 
 which underlies our contention — the great alliance 
 for the maintenance of treaty rights — is the only 
 one which will enable us to maintain our empire 
 without changes which would affect to a revolu- 
 tionary extent our domestic as much as our military 
 condition. England, known as the support of the 
 minor seaboard States, possesses a power which 
 she loses from the moment that she abandons that 
 position. We have said our say as to Belgium, 
 and shall not return to the subject ; but there is 
 another question closely allied to it. If Denmark 
 has to choose between an alliance with France or 
 with Germany, the temptation to her to join France, 
 if only she thinks France strong enough to win, 
 must necessarily be very great. If Denmark has 
 to choose between an alliance with England and 
 Germany on one side and France on the other, it 
 is tolerably certain that she will be wise enough to 
 prefer the Anglo-German alliance. Nor does it, in 
 that case, seriously matter to any nation except 
 herself what decision she may arrive at in the 
 matter. Her neutrality, at least, would be enforced. 
 Now, as may be seen by any one who will refer to 
 the official history of the war of 1870, during the 
 earlier part of the war — that is, up to the end of 
 July — Germany, fully expecting that France would 
 
 ^ 'Fortnightly,' November 18S7, p. 610.
 
 for Russia and France. 231 
 
 attempt an incursion by sea, retained the whole 
 mobilised force of the ist, 2d, 4th, and 5th Corps 
 — that is, at least 120,000 men — ready to meet 
 such an invasion. Denmark is able to put about 
 60,000 men behind very effective fortifications in a 
 country hard to invade. Now, suppose France 
 and Russia — having full command of the sea — 
 ship, as they well may, to a friendly country 50,000 
 men each to reinforce the Danish 60,000, we have 
 an army of 160,000 men, with indefinite possibilities 
 of reinforcement, concentrated in a position whence 
 they could strike straight for Berlin and the heart 
 of the German Empire. 
 
 It must be remembered that in all that we have 
 said as to our disbelief as to the overwhelming 
 forces which Russia could employ against Ger- 
 many or Austria, the single reason we have alleged 
 has been the difficulty of movement and supply. 
 There is no question as to the vast number of 
 troops which Russia has available. Therefore we 
 think we shall be understood when we say that 
 the troops which Russia could thus ship to Den- 
 mark, however numerous they ultimately became, 
 would subtract nothing from the numbers she 
 could pour directly over the German frontier. Yet 
 for Germany the whole of this danger vanishes 
 when she has secured the English alliance. We 
 are convinced that we understate the fact when we 
 say that, in any war against Russia and France,
 
 232 An A/h'ance zvortJi 500,000 Men. 
 
 Germany must, for the defence of her coasts and 
 to fend herself from the risks of such an attack as 
 we have described, subtract 200,000 men from her 
 armies of the East and West. Therefore here is a 
 figure of at least 200,000 men whom we can add 
 to the militant forces available for the central 
 alliance. Moreover, here as elsewhere we can act 
 quicker than any other Power. From the moment 
 that our alliance is known to be secured, all danger 
 of this Russo - Franco - Danish action based on 
 Denmark vanishes. German generals can work 
 out their campaign at once with the full addition 
 of the 200,000 men whom otherwise they must 
 subtract from offensive war. 
 
 We have now stated our case. We have 
 shown — 
 
 1. That, by the assistance we can afford to Italy, 
 by protecting the German coasts, and by forbidding 
 Denmark to lend herself as a base to Russia and 
 France, we can give to the central alliance a 
 support which is worth more to it than half a 
 million of men. More than that number, because 
 the question of Memel, Konigsberg, and Danzig is 
 not included in that estimate. 
 
 2. That we can also contribute more than our 
 share towards protecting Constantinople and Varna 
 from attack on the European side, because the 
 easiest approach to both of them is by sea. We 
 have left it to our readers to judge for themselves
 
 The Black Sea a7id J oo, 000 Turks. 233 
 
 whether the complete possession of the Black Sea, 
 as against the complete loss of it, would not be 
 worth to Austria something- of importance in addi- 
 tion to this assistance. 
 
 3. Whether, when we have these advantages to 
 offer her, Germany is likely to care to violate Bel- 
 gian territory if we object to her doing so, we leave 
 it to our readers to determine. As a question of 
 the principle of maintaining treaty rights, which is 
 the single principle on which a secure alliance can 
 be based, we think that if Belgium fulfils her part, 
 we ought not to abandon her, and that our aban- 
 donment of her would greatly weaken us. 
 
 4. In all that we have spoken of above, we have 
 almost exclusively insisted upon what our navy 
 can do if it is as strong as it ought to be. If, in 
 addition to the above, we can place a small but 
 highly organised force of two corps tfannee and a 
 cavalry division where we please, on the outbreak 
 of war, and can supply what is needed to render 
 the Turkish forces effective to resist Russia, we 
 believe we shall be in a condition to make such 
 terms with other Powers as will prevent either 
 Russia or France from attacking us either at 
 Herat or elsewhere. 
 
 That is the position on the one side. It is 
 virtually a permanent security for peace on con- 
 dition of our making up our minds, now that the 
 circumstances under which we adopted the principle
 
 234 ^^<? can make our oivn Terms. 
 
 of insular cxclusivcncss have changed, to change 
 that principle of our policy. 
 
 On the other hand, if we will not do so, we run 
 at least the almost infinite risk of having, by our- 
 selves and with our own strength alone, to resist 
 Russia, and very probably Russia and France, under 
 circumstances most disadvantageous to ourselves. 
 We shall not, as against Russia, be able to put forth 
 anything like the same strength that we can put 
 forth in support of other Powers, who can deliver 
 against her far more effective blows than we can. 
 
 Meantime, whilst neither Austria nor Italy in 
 the smallest degree disguise their wish that we 
 should join their alliance, Germany, whilst she has, 
 with perhaps the exception of Italy, more to gain 
 by it than any other Power, shows clearly that she 
 is anxious for it, whilst, as it has been well put to 
 us, "she scoffs at it like a skilful purchaser in an 
 Eastern bazaar." 
 
 The reason is clear. She knows that she has to 
 deal with English statesmen who, whichever party 
 may be in office, do not understand, or attempt to 
 understand, the military bearings of the question. 
 All her statesmen, understanding these perfectly, 
 feel that they are in the position of a horse-dealer 
 wanting to buy a horse from a man who knows 
 nothing about the points of his own animal. We 
 can, if we understand the advantages we have to 
 offer, make what terms we please.
 
 Are these Facts or not ? 235 
 
 When we first saw the announcement of the 
 anonymous articles which were appearing in the 
 ' Fortnightly,' we hailed them with eager pleasure. 
 They seemed to promise that at last some man 
 well acquainted with many of the inner workings 
 of foreign politics, and with the interior of our own 
 Foreign Office, was attempting to master also the 
 military problems involved in our foreign relations. 
 Having for years attempted to urge that study 
 upon such politicians as fate has thrown in his way, 
 the present writer, as a soldier, certainly did not ask 
 for the apology which Sir Charles Dilke has offered 
 for making the attempt, nor does he know one sol- 
 dier who has not welcomed the effort. When, how- 
 ever, he found that, under guise of patriotism, party 
 spirit was rampant ; when under the name of facts, 
 fictions were put forward ; when no one of the 
 points so all-important to England as to the part 
 she can now play in ensuring peace were noticed, — 
 it seemed to him to be time to put forth a warning 
 voice. If the Italian statesmen are wrong in think- 
 ing that a great naval alliance is what will best 
 serve their turn ; if Germany will not require to be 
 protected at sea, for the reasons we have assigned ; 
 if the frontiers of Germany, of Russia, and of 
 France are not such as we have shown them to 
 be, — our errors can be easily exposed. If, on the 
 other hand, what we have said is true, we think 
 that a patriotic statesman should admit the truth
 
 236 TJie Necessities 
 
 of those points which have been omitted from his 
 calculations. Our anxiety throughout has been 
 to give such of our readers as have not seen Sir 
 Charles Dilke's pages a fair account of what he 
 has put forward, in order to show how far we 
 agreed with him, and where we differed. In hardly 
 any instances as yet has his method of reply to us 
 consisted in anything else than in alleging that we 
 had said that which we had not anywhere said, and 
 in arguing against that which we do not believe.^ 
 
 ^ The most audacious statement of this kind is the averment that 
 the articles were written " in the name of the Adjutant-General of 
 the Army" ('Fortnightly,' November 1887, p. 611). Our readers 
 will have seen that there was not even a pretext for this assertion. 
 A direct misquotation from a public speech of Lord Wolseley's had 
 been made in inverted commas by Sir Charles Dilke. We chal- 
 lenged Sir Charles Dilke to show that the words he had quoted 
 were to be found in any shorthand-writer's report of the speech. 
 He was utterly unable to show that Lord Wolseley had ever used 
 the words which he had repeatedly quoted. Under those circum- 
 stances we submit tiiat, for a man who considers himself bound by 
 the ordinary laws of civilised society in England, there is only one 
 course open — viz., to withdraw and apologise for what, under the 
 circumstances, was a very grave slander. In order, however, that 
 by no subterfuge we might take advantage of Sir Charles Dilke's 
 having made a rather careless quotation, which he could not sub- 
 stantiate, we, for that express purpose, inquired personally of Lord 
 Wolseley to what matters he was referring when he spoke of our 
 recent reforms as having been business-like and directed towards 
 getting rid of the "theatrical" element. For that purpose, and 
 that purpose only, throughout the entire series of articles, we quoted 
 a private statement of Lord Wolseley's. The complete report of 
 the nature of the reforms had not been made public, and we were 
 therefore, for the purposes of this personal explanation, for which, 
 under the circumstances, it was natural for. any one to ask, obliged
 
 of Controversy. 237 
 
 That, no doubt, will be very convincing to those 
 readers of the ' Fortnightly ' who have not looked 
 at our articles. It will, we fancy, produce a differ- 
 ent effect upon those who read both. 
 
 to say that Lord Wolseley referred to quite other matters. What 
 those were is now evident to every one who has read General 
 Brackenbury's evidence. 
 
 The most comic case in which Sir Charles has thus dealt with 
 our statements is one in which he has charged us with a ludicrous 
 blunder which we did not commit, but which he did. He says, 
 p. 620, November 1887 ' Fortnightly,' that we had made a statement 
 to the effect that we might.rely upon the native States of India in 
 the event of war with Russia, and make use of them against that 
 Power, — an opinion in direct conflict with that of the Indian 
 Commission, "who pointed out in their report that the friendship 
 of an Indian prince is no defence against the hostility of his 
 people." Sir Charles never gives references, so that none of his 
 charges can be compared by an ordinary reader with the origi- 
 nal. If we have been in any case unfair to him, the correction 
 is easy, for we give the references. Now what we did in this 
 matter — ante, p. 60 — was to quote Sir Lepel Griffin on a point 
 on which we venture to think his authority higher than that 
 of most Indian soldiers. He had said that we might, in the event 
 of war with Russia, rely upon the loyalty of the feudatory princes 
 of India. We said nothing about the extent to which they could 
 carry their people with them, or about the military value of their 
 assistance ; but we said that the fact of their loyalty was an element 
 of our strength "not to be ignored." We expressly reserved dis- 
 cussion, because we expect to have an opportunity of saying some- 
 thing about it elsewhere. 
 
 Now on pp. 171, 172 of 'The Present Position of European 
 Politics,' there is an elaborate discussion of the effect of the native 
 army and the ^^ sympathies of the oriental populations" upon the 
 chances of a contest between us and Russia. After setting forth 
 the views of foreign writers as to the chance of these both being 
 easily won by Russia, Sir Charles, as his leading argument against 
 that opinion, says, " I believe in the superior popularity of England
 
 238 To whom ought a National 
 
 In conclusion, wc have this to say : Whether it 
 be a partisan opinion or not, there are numbers of 
 us, who never cared a rush for party before, who 
 are looking to the present Government in the hope 
 
 among the native princes to any which may be thought to be en- 
 joyed by Russia." 
 
 We certainly should not have ventured to use that argument in 
 the way Sir Charles Dilke has done, because we have been long 
 aware of the facts which he appears to have discovered between the 
 publication of ' The Present Position of European Politics ' and 
 that of the article in the November number of the 'Fortnightly.' 
 Nevertheless we continue to think, with Sir Lepel Griffin, that the 
 loyalty of the native princes is an element "not to be ignored," 
 though we neither allege that it carries with it the affection of the 
 popidations, nor a very great access of military power as the de- 
 fence of India is at present constituted. 
 
 We cannot weary our readers with more specimens ; but after 
 these, and those to which the course of our argument has led us in 
 the body of the text, we think that we may fairly ask that no state- 
 ment of our words shall be accepted, without reference, on Sir 
 Charles Dilke's authority. The curious in specimens of unfair quota- 
 tion may compare Sir Charles's statement, November ' Fortnightly,' 
 p. 612, as to our expressions about Lord Salisbury's and Lord 
 Rosebery's policy, with ante, p. 10. It is needless to say that we 
 in no wise denied the continuity of the two policies, but objected 
 that a man who claimed independence of party should ignore the 
 history of the previous years of foreign policy to which we alluded. 
 Or they may compare his reference to the question of the 900 field- 
 guns, p. 613, with our words, ante, pp. 41-48. 
 
 It would not, however, be fair to complain too much. Sir Charles 
 has been trained by the habit of speaking in the heated meetings of 
 partisans who, provided their opponents are roundly abused, are 
 not nicely particular as to facts. The training of the present writer 
 for such discussions has consisted chietly in having to supply facts 
 as accurate as possible, because on their accuracy the lives of men 
 might depend. It is natural that we should approach controversy 
 from different points.
 
 Government to Appeal? 239 
 
 that, taking all its elements into consideration, it 
 is going to be thoroughly national in its policy. 
 Nothing could have tended to inspire us with 
 more hope in that respect than the business-like 
 way in which Mr Smith was setting himself to 
 work to secure untheatrical reality in matters of 
 vital importance to the country. Nothing will 
 more utterly shake our faith than any looking 
 back by those who have set their hands to the 
 plough. The Government have been going bravely 
 forward in Ireland, and have gained strength in 
 proportion to their courage, in the face of such 
 encouragement to lawlessness as we have never 
 seen before. They have inspired confidence by 
 their firmness in London. But it is idle to deny 
 that many of those who wish them best are afraid 
 that both at the Admiralty and the War Office 
 Lord Randolph's escapade has had too much in- 
 fluence. The Government perfectly well know 
 how very much truth there is in the charges 
 against our condition of preparedness which both 
 Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Charles Dilke 
 have made. In a very short time indeed, if they 
 do not carry out into practice the reforms which 
 have been worked out on paper under Mr Smith's 
 impulse, they will be responsible when the hour of 
 reckoning comes, which is now fast approaching. 
 We have cautiously throughout spoken, not of 
 what our navy is, but of what it ought to be.
 
 240 Peace or War ? 
 
 Wc have as cautiously spoken of the two corps 
 d'annce and the cavahy division towards which 
 we were working. The reduction of the Horse- 
 Artillery will have been an inexcusable blunder if, 
 in return for that great sacrifice, we are not to 
 find, when the next Army Estimates are pre- 
 sented, that actual progress has been made to- 
 wards a real and eft"ective provision for the mobil- 
 isation of those forces. It is idle to deny that 
 numbers of our best naval officers are alarmed by 
 the announcement that no more ironclads are to 
 be built. We have not written these articles for 
 the sake of crying " Peace, peace," where there is 
 no peace. We have endeavoured to show in what 
 way most economically the terrible dangers which 
 we must face can be met and dealt with. We do 
 not believe in the policy of taking more upon our 
 shoulders than we need take. Nevertheless, this 
 much is certain, that if we do not help ourselves 
 no other Power will help us. If we cannot and 
 will not give help, we cannot get help. It is a 
 question simply of securing for a moderate price 
 the incalculable blessings of peace, or of being 
 involved in certainly the most costly, and probably 
 the most fatal, war in which we have ever been 
 engaged.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A'Court, Captain, on the military 
 resources of Italy, 194. 
 
 Adrianople, the Russian force be- 
 yond, 23. 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine, annexation of, 15. 
 
 "Amphibious strength, our," xxxiv. 
 
 Apponzi, Count, on the attitude of 
 England, 218. 
 
 Armed force, the work of our, 4. 
 
 Armies, the field, of Europe, 163 — 
 Russian numbers v. Austrian, 
 164. 
 
 Armies, transport of, by sea, 34. 
 
 Army Act, alteration of the, i. 
 
 Army-corps scheme, the eight, 49. 
 
 Artillery, field, and its use, xxx. 
 
 Artillery, volunteer, 42 — Sir Ed- 
 ward Hamley on, 43 — the field, 
 44— Russian do., 59— reduction 
 of English horse, would be a 
 blunder, 239. 
 
 Asia Minor, the danger of, 213 — 
 can Britain protect ? 224. 
 
 Australian colonies, xxxiv. 
 
 Australian colonies, Russian de- 
 signs on our, 53. 
 
 Austria in historic wars, 154— the 
 races of, 158 — her great soldiers, 
 159 — her commanding position, 
 161. 
 
 Austrian defence, 166. 
 
 Austrian strength, 155 — effect of 
 recent changes on Austrian 
 power, 156 — recent, fortification, 
 160 — forces, 162 — inferiority of 
 Austrian rifles to those of Russia, 
 165. 
 
 Austro-German frontier, the, 133. 
 
 Baikov, Colonel, on the Russian 
 cavalry, 57. 
 
 " Balance of power," meaning of, 
 as formerly used, 2 — a fictitious, 
 5— when our pledge was broken, 
 11 et seq. 
 
 Balance of military power in 
 Europe, the, i et seq. 
 
 Balkan States, the, 220. 
 
 Baltic fortresses, German, 139. 
 
 Beaconsfield's, Lord, Government, 
 and the defence of coaling-sta- 
 tions, viii. 
 
 Belgian neutrality, 109 — Von 
 Moltke's view of, in 1870, 114. 
 
 Belgium and England, no— time 
 V. violation of Belgium, in — 
 railway difficulty of violation, 113 
 — our relation to Belgium, 117 — 
 Mr Kinglake and Lord Salisbury 
 on, 118 — the latest pledge to, 
 119 — duty of England towards, 
 229. 
 
 Beresford, Lord Charles, xxxii. 
 
 Berlin Congress, the, n. 
 
 Bismarck's, Prince, sons, 79 — his 
 advocacy of an Italian alliance, 
 198 — Sir Charles Dilke's erro- 
 neous views regarding the opin- 
 ions of, 208. 
 
 Blind, Karl, on Poland, 137. 
 
 Boulanger, General, and mobilisa- 
 tion, 105 — his gaseous froth, 123. 
 
 Brackenbury, General, on the 
 scheme of defence, 39 et seq. 
 
 Bridge, an economical, 46. 
 
 Bridge, the Russian, on the Vis- 
 tula, 145.
 
 242 
 
 Index. 
 
 Bright, Mr, and the ' ' balance of 
 power," 126. 
 
 British anny the cheapest in the 
 world, xviii. 
 
 British war power, 33 — how to 
 develop it, 34. 
 
 Bunsen, Herr von, on Mr Glad- 
 stone, 207. 
 
 Camjxaign of 1877-78, the military 
 facts of, 222. 
 
 Camps, intrenched, loi. 
 
 Carpathians, the, a natural citadel 
 to Austria, 161. 
 
 Cavalry, Russian, 58 — Austrian 
 do., 165. 
 
 Cavalry, the proper use of, xxvi. 
 
 Channel Tunnel, the, xxviii. 
 
 China, conditions of an alliance 
 with, 228. 
 
 Chinese Wall, the, 108. 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, his 
 Wolverhampton speech, 22 et 
 seq. — on the state of our defences, 
 38 — his deceptive comparison of 
 the army budgets of Britain and 
 Germany, 83. 
 
 Clive's economy, 70. 
 
 Coaling-stations, 206 — and parti- 
 sanship, 207. 
 
 Coaling-stations, foreign, 35. 
 
 Commerce, our strength and weak- 
 ness, 61. 
 
 Comora Islands, the French occu- 
 pation of the, 177. 
 
 Comparisons, true and false, 81. 
 
 Confidence, French and German, 
 125. 
 
 Constantinople, the Russian ap- 
 proach to, 221 — British protec- 
 tion of, and Varna, 232. 
 
 Continental armies, the dimen- 
 sions of the, 216. 
 
 Continental war, importance of 
 the first days of a, 209. 
 
 Controversy, the necessities of, 
 236. 
 
 Cyprus, the occupation of, 11, 17. 
 
 Danish army, strength of the, 230. 
 Danish war, the story of the, 16. 
 Defence, the rival schemes of, 36. 
 Defences, grave deficiencies in the 
 condition of our, 38. 
 
 Denmark, the attitude of, 230. 
 
 Diego Suarez, the French occupa- 
 tion of, 177. 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, on "the posi- 
 tion of European politics," xi. , 
 3 ct seq. — his blunders, 235 et 
 seq. — his misrepresentation of 
 I^ord Wolseley, 236 ttote. 
 
 Dragoons, the new Russian, 55 — 
 opinions on, 56. 
 
 Economy and efficiency, 69 — costly 
 economy, 91. 
 
 Education, questionable economy 
 in, 89 — recruits, non-commis- 
 sioned officers, and, 90. 
 
 Efficiency, army, English and Ger- 
 man, 92. 
 
 Egypt, the English force landed 
 in, in 1882, 30. 
 
 Egyptian revolt, the, 30. 
 
 Elsass-Lothringen railways, jj. 
 
 Empire and commerce, 85. 
 
 England, the new power of, 192. 
 
 English power " cometh but by 
 sea," 30, 216. 
 
 Europe, the war-map of, 8 — the 
 field-armies of, 163. 
 
 " Facing-both-Ways," Mr, 215. 
 
 Fighting, means of, 94. 
 
 Fleet, a strong English, a neces- 
 sity, 204. 
 
 Force, the work of our armed, 4 — 
 the reign of, in Europe, 10 — 
 British force depends on am- 
 phibious strength, 51. 
 
 Fortresses, home, 35 — the forest 
 of, 98 — German and Baltic do., 
 139 — Russian do., 149. 
 
 French army of to-day, 121 — its 
 strength, 124. 
 
 French defence scheme, the, 97 — 
 its weak point, 102. 
 
 Frontiers, French and German, 96 
 — German and Russian do., 133. 
 
 Geok Tepd, the defeat of, 181. 
 
 German and Baltic fortresses, 139. 
 
 German and English economy, 66. 
 
 German and Russian frontiers, the, 
 133 — recent changes, 134 — ad- 
 vantage of German frontier, 152. 
 
 German army of to-day, 121 — do.
 
 Index. 
 
 243 
 
 of 1870 and 1888, 122 — its 
 strength, 124. 
 
 German defence scheme, the, 99 — 
 do. silent work, 106 — the, op- 
 portunity, 107. 
 
 German empire, ring-fenced, 84. 
 
 German pension-list, 77. 
 
 "Germanic Confederation, over- 
 throw of the," Sir A. Malet's, 14. 
 
 Germany, why, needs Austria, 153 
 — position of, in a war with 
 Russia and France combined, 168 
 — her power of transfer of force 
 and of gaining time, 171 — her 
 power of keeping two "fretful 
 realms" in awe, 173 — the great 
 and conservative power of, 185. 
 
 Germany, France, and Belgium, 
 
 65- 
 
 Germany, Russia, and Austria, 131. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr, his attitude on the 
 Danish question, 15 — Mr Bright 
 on Mr Gladstone's many turn- 
 ings of his coat, 16 — his influ- 
 ence on Italy, 191. 
 
 Graham, Sir Lumley, 135. 
 
 Granville, Lord, on the Belgian 
 question, 119. 
 
 Grififin, Sir Lepel, on the feuda- 
 tory princes of India, 60. 
 
 Guns, big, and loose critics, 44. 
 
 Hagenau on the British strength 
 in Egypt, 51. 
 
 Hamilton, Port, the surrender of, 
 176 — its importance, 228. 
 
 Hamley, Sir Edward, on volun- 
 teer artillery, 43. 
 
 Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, on 
 the "Jingoes," 18. 
 
 Hardy, Mr, on defence work, 50. 
 
 Hartington, Lord, on the danger 
 in Asia Minor, 213. 
 
 Herat, how to protect, 179. 
 
 Heri Rud, the, xvii, 179. 
 
 Hong-Kong, xv. 
 
 Hooper's, Mr, history of the Sedan 
 campaign referred to, 107. 
 
 Horsford's, Sir Alfred, scheme for 
 landing English troops in Den- 
 mark, 15. 
 
 Hungarian approval of English 
 policy, 212. 
 
 Hungary, patriotism in, 155. 
 
 Ignatieff's action towards Turkey, 
 
 220 7IOtC. 
 
 India, British disadvantage in, 53 
 — our native army in, 85. 
 
 "Indian authorities," 178 — do. on 
 Europe, 183. 
 
 Indian frontier, Russian menaces 
 on the, 53. 
 
 Infantry, the Russian, 54 — Russian 
 mounted do., 58. 
 
 Intrenched camps, true use of, loi. 
 
 Italian alliance, effect of an, on 
 British foreign policy, 219. 
 
 Italian power, use of the, 197. 
 
 Italian statesmen and Turkey, 
 219. 
 
 Italy, its enormous seaboard, 192 
 — its war resources, 194 — alli- 
 ance of, Germany, Austria, and 
 England, 197 — the probability 
 of war with Russia and France 
 as allies, 202 — the naval service 
 England could offer to, 205 — 
 German view of Italian politics, 
 208. 
 
 Italy, Turkey, and English alli- 
 ances, 191. 
 
 Jena, Prussia before, 203. 
 
 "Jingo," the, 18— use of the word, 
 ig — hopeless confusion of the 
 term, 20 — the author of, 126. 
 
 Kertch expedition, the, 31. 
 Kimberley, Lord, and the Danes, 
 
 II. 
 Kinglake, Mr, the lessons of the 
 
 Kertch expedition, 31 — on the 
 
 Belgian question, 118. 
 Kirchhammer, Captain, on the 
 
 Russo-German frontier, 135. 
 Knox's, Mr, knowledge of army 
 
 schemes, 86. 
 Kropotkine, Prince, 219. 
 
 Luxembourg, the neutrality of, 113. 
 
 M.Tlleson, Colonel, on Russian 
 aggression in Asia, 52. 
 
 Malta, the Indian troops at, 23. 
 
 Marga, Captain, on Austrian de- 
 fence, 166. 
 
 Maurice's, C. Edmund, revolu- 
 tionary movement of 1848-49 in
 
 244 
 
 Index. 
 
 Italy, Austria, Hungary, and 
 Germany, referred to, 158. 
 
 Medical men, the payment of, in 
 the army, xxiv. 
 
 Medical pension-list, xx. 
 
 Military power in Europe, balance 
 of, \ et scq. 
 
 ' ' Military professors, ' ' press attacks 
 on, xxvii. 
 
 Mobilisation, difficulties of Eng- 
 lish, 86 — the present scheme, 
 87 — German do. in 1888, 105. 
 
 Moltke on the Russian dragoons, 
 56 — his position as head of the 
 "great staff," 94. 
 
 Napoleon, Louis, on the causes of 
 the French disasters, 102. 
 
 Newfoundland coast question, 211. 
 
 Nihilism in Russia, 213. 
 
 Novikoff, Madame, and her faith- 
 ful henchman, 175. 
 
 Otway, Sir Arthur, and the bal- 
 ance of power controversy, 125. 
 
 Pay in Germany, officers', 74 — do. 
 in England, 75. 
 
 Peace or war, 240. 
 
 Pension-list, the German, jj. 
 
 Perrucretti, Colonel, on French 
 power of transport of troops by 
 sea, 196. 
 
 Poland, Karl Blind on, 137— Rus- 
 sian fortresses in, 144 — Poland 
 as a theatre of war, 150 — the 
 armies that would engage, 151. 
 
 Polish mud Napoleon's great en- 
 emy, 150 note. 
 
 Polish region, importance of, 138. 
 
 Position, author's own, 21. 
 
 Powers, strength of, 9 — English 
 power, 33 — how to develop it, 
 34 — navy, wires, harbours, mo- 
 bility, 35. 
 
 ' Quarterly Review ' on Russia, 174 
 ei seq. 
 
 Railways, Russian, 136. 
 Recruits, non-commissioned offi- 
 cers, and education, 90. 
 Reserve forces, the, 45. 
 Rhine, the command of the, 100. 
 
 Ricci, Lieutenant-General, on the 
 natural strength of Italy, 193 — 
 on the Italian army, 195. 
 
 Roumanian army, the, 51. 
 
 Russell, Lord, on the defence of 
 Belgium, 119. 
 
 Russia, the broken pledges of, 210. 
 
 Russia and England, 29. 
 
 Russia's wedge, 140 — how met by 
 Germany, 141 — method for de- 
 fence and offence, 143 — when 
 should we strike her real power, 
 181 — her power of absorbing 
 Eastern countries, 182. 
 
 Russian base, weakness of, 148. 
 
 Russian forces in 1878, 22 — our 
 power to stop them, 23 — condi- 
 tion of the Russian army, 54 — 
 disbelief of the overwhelming 
 forces which Russia is said to be 
 able to employ against Germany 
 and Austria, 231. 
 
 Russian frontier, the, 133. 
 
 Salaries, civil, 73. 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, on the foreign 
 policy of Britain, 118. 
 
 Savoy, neutral, 227. 
 
 Schemes, the rival, and their 
 authors, 36. 
 
 Seaboard States, the minor, 230. 
 
 Secrecy in State and camp, 175. 
 
 Sedan campaign, the, 107. 
 
 Services, cheap and dear, 71 — 
 money cost of universal, 80. 
 
 Shakespeare, General, 47. 
 
 Silesia, importance of, 146. 
 
 Singapore, xv. 
 
 Situation, danger of present, 212. 
 
 Smith's, Mr W. H., work as a 
 military reformer, 39, 206. 
 
 Soldiers from a dear market, 82. 
 
 " Staff, the great general," 95. 
 
 Stanhope's, Mr, defence scheme, 49. 
 
 Stephen's, Sir James Fitz-James, 
 Commission, 4 et seq. 
 
 .Strength and weakness, our, 7. 
 
 Switzerland and the Vienna Con- 
 gress, 226. 
 
 Switzerland, is, safe? 116. 
 
 Taxation, methods of, 78. 
 Telegraphic orders for the move- 
 ment of troops, 210.
 
 Index. 
 
 245 
 
 Thiers, M. , his power in France 
 after the fall of the Commune, 
 131 — on the law of right, 214. 
 
 Thompson's, Sir Ralph, salary and 
 services, 71. 
 
 Transport of armies by sea, 34. 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir Charles, his respon- 
 sibility for the misery, the extra- 
 vagance, and loss of life in the 
 Crimean winter, xxxii. 
 
 Turkey and the Central Alliance, 
 221. 
 
 Turkish army, the condition of the, 
 223 — its strength, 224. 
 
 Turkish Empire, the maintenance 
 of the, 221. 
 
 Turkish war of 1877-78, the, 6. 
 
 United States expenditure, xix. 
 Universal service, money cost of, 
 
 80. 
 Upton, General (U.S.), on our 
 
 native army in India, 85. 
 
 Vantage, our, in Europe, 52. 
 Vercstchagin and Russia, 32. 
 Vienna, the treaty of, 226 et seq. 
 
 Vienna Congress, the, 226. 
 
 Vincent, Mr Howard, on the ulti- 
 mate forces of the British Em- 
 pire, 5. 
 
 Vistula, Russian bridges over the, 
 145 — Russian advance by, 147. 
 
 Vladivostock, the importance of, 
 52, 59, 61. 
 
 Vosges, the difficulties of the, 171. 
 
 Wachs, Major, on the French 
 frontier fortresses, 98. 
 
 War-map of Europe, the, 8. 
 
 War Office, practical work at the, 
 viii. 
 
 Warsaw camp, the, 134. 
 
 Waste, causes of, 88. 
 
 Welby, Sir Reginald, xxxiii. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, on prepara- 
 tion for war, 32. 
 
 Wolseley, Lord, his essay on the 
 past and present of the English 
 army, ix — and the use of ar- 
 tillery, 48 — his opinion of Mr 
 Smith's army reforms, 206 — Sir 
 Charles Dilke's misrepresenta- 
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