1909] Anniversary of Corunna 229 



Austria and Turkey which I hope may prove an end to the danger of 

 war, at least for the present, and so Turkey may get breathing time 

 for its internal affairs. In my letter to Malony I advised that no 

 attempt should be made at coercing the tribes in Arabia, and that the 

 Turks should restrict themselves to holding the seaports so as to pre- 

 vent European aggression. I am sure this is their wisest policy. 

 Eventually there will have to be some form of administrative autonomy 

 in the Arabic-speaking provinces. 



" 16th Jan. — To-day is the centenary of the battle of Corunna, where 

 my father was wounded. He had made the campaign with Sir John 

 Moore as junior ensign of the 1st Grenadier Guards, and was carry- 

 ing the colours at the final battle when he got his wound. He was 

 carried on board the ' Victory,' and came home in her and was landed 

 at Plymouth where he arrived with little hope of recovery, his wound 

 having been neglected from the multiplicity of cases, the calf of 

 one leg had been shot away and he remained lame through life and 

 was obliged to leave the army on account of it, though able after- 

 wards to ride and even walk, shooting with the best. On landing at 

 Plymouth he was taken charge of by his uncle Glanville at Catch- 

 french and nursed by his cousins there. The miniature of him in 

 scarlet uniform shows him a pale young man just convalescent. He 

 was only sixteen when he joined the Guards, and was sent out straight 

 from Harrow where he had been a younger contemporary of Byron. 

 The campaign, according to my father's account of it repeated to me 

 as a child, must have been carried on in a curiously amateur way. 

 My father, like the rest of the officers, was allowed to take with 

 him his fowling-piece and a brace of pointers for sport on the cam- 

 paign, and I have now the heavy mahogany desk and still heavier box 

 for papers which were among his baggage. The officers were mounted, 

 but on the retreat, in order to encourage their men, they walked on 

 foot. The pointers were left behind while fording a river which 

 they could not swim, and thus put an end to the sport. ' The Burial 

 of Sir John Moore ' was amongst the first pieces of poetry I learned, 

 my mother explaining to me that the line originally printed ' The foe 

 was suddenly firing ' ought to have been printed ' sullenly ' as it always 

 now is. My father retained a great devotion to Moore. There is 

 probably not another person in England to-day whose father was in 

 the battle. 



" igth Jan. — The 'Egyptian Standard' is dead. It has been mori- 

 bund for six months. 



" I have been reading Haeckel's Berlin lectures on evolution. They 

 interest me immensely, first because they are quite clear and easy to 

 understand, and secondly, because I see in them my own reading of 

 the Universe and the ' Matter God/ a philosophy I jumped to in 1861, 



