136 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



Aprtl 1, 1913. 



ALL SOLDIERS RUN AWAY. 



" Yes," said Lord Wolseley, " the pub- 

 lic little knows how often soldiers cut 

 and run. On one occasion my own men 

 ran away from me in sheer panic, leav- 

 ing me alone. All soldiers run away at 

 times. I believe that the British soldier 

 runs away less than the soldier of any 

 other nations, but he also runs away 

 sometimes. There is a great deal of 

 human nature in soldiers, but the loss 

 from skulking and desertion in the 

 great conscript armies of the Continent 

 attains dmiensions of which the English 

 public have no notion. 



THE CHINESE AS THE COMING RACE. 



I found that Lord Wolseley fully 

 shared General Gordon's belief in the 

 latent possibilities of the Chinese. 



" The Chinese," he said, " are the com- 

 ing nation. The Chinese will, I think, 

 overrun the world. The Battle of Ar- 

 mageddon will take place between the 

 Chinese and the English-speaking races. 

 There will be, I assume, another war be- 

 tween France and Germrny, and it will 

 be about the bloodiest war, or series of 

 wars, which we have £:.'n in Europe. 

 But, some day, a great General, or Law- 

 giver, will arise in China, and the Chin- 

 ■ese, who have been motionless for three 

 centuries, will begin to progress. They 

 will take to the profession of arms, and 

 then they will hurl themselves upon the 

 Russian Empire. Before the Chinese 

 armies — as they possess every military 

 virtue, are stolidly indifferent to death, 

 and capable of inexhaustible endurance 

 — the Russians will go down. Then the 

 Chinese armies will march westward. 

 They will over-run India, sweeping us 

 into the sea. Asia will belong to them, 

 and then, at last, English, Americans, 

 Australians, will have to rally for a last 

 desperate conflict. So certain do I re- 

 gard this that I think one fixed point 

 of our policy should be to strain every 

 nerve and make every sacrifice to keep 

 on good terms with China. China is 

 the Coming Power. Those people — in- 

 telligent, active, ingenious ; so indus- 

 trious that at twelve o'clock at night 

 you can hear the hammer of the smith 

 in the forge — have for the last 300 years 

 been ruled by the simple method of 



having all the more active, capable, and 

 progressive heads shorn off by their 

 Tartar rulers ; that is a simple, literal 

 fact. The Government of China has 

 been carried on by the method of cutting 

 off every head of more than average in- 

 telligence, activity, and energy. You 

 have no idea of the massacres that were 

 carried on as part of the regular govern- 

 ment of the country. When Commis- 

 sioner Leh was asked whether it was 

 true that he had, in three years, beheaded 

 60,000 men, he replied, ' Oh, surely 

 many more than that !" So long as this 

 system prevails, Chinese progress is im- 

 possible. But these rude Tartars will 

 not always be able to control the 

 nation." [A twenty-year-old prophecy 

 now realised.] 



TEL-EL-KEBIR. 



I reluctantly pass over the campaigns 

 in Ashantee and Zululand to come to 

 the more recent war in Egypt. Lord 

 Wolseley, it is an open secret, was no 

 advocate of intervention in Egypt. He 

 protested against the proposed bom- 

 bardment of Alexandra before it took 

 place, and although he carried out the 

 military operations it necessitated with 

 brilliant success, he deplored the con- 

 catenation of blunders which led to that 

 bombardment, and which forced us to 

 occupy the country. Not that Lord 

 Wolseley had much difficulty with 

 Arabi. He seemed to him a clever ass, 

 who was only frustrated by the rapid 

 rush of our cavalry from burning Cairo 

 When on this subject I asked Lord 

 Wolseley what ground there was for 

 the complaint of some of his critics that 

 he ought to have attacked in flank and 

 not in front, a mistake, according to 

 them, which caused wanton slaughter of 

 500 British troops. Lord Wolseley said, 

 " The reason why I did not take them 

 in the flank was simply because any 

 such attack must have been made by 

 daylight, and it would have cost me 

 about 5000 men instead of 500. Re- 

 member, mine was a night attack. 

 There is nothing more difficult in the 

 world than marching across the desert 

 in the dark, with nothing to guide you 

 except your compass and the' stars. 

 Next, by attacking in front we had the 



