166 
THE BRITISH ARMY ON THE CONTINENT OE EUROPE. 
absolutely right in saying that there was no corps of marines; the sailors were 
ordinary seamen. The Captain that did the navigation was one person and the 
Captain that did the fighting was another person. Blake was at first a landsman. 
Even in the campaigns of Charles II. against the Dutch one of the commanders 
in the great battles in the channels was General Monk, but General Monk had 
been a previous commander of the Coldstream and one of Cromwell’s Generals ; 
and certainly the Duke of York had distinguished himself in that very battle of 
the Dunes, fighting against his country on that occasion, I am sorry to say. 
Gentlemen of the Court used to volunteer to go and serve as soldiers on board 
our fleet in those days. 
Gentlemen, it only remains for me now to thank you exceedingly for your 
attention and I hope the British army for 300 years more will do as well for its 
country as Britons have done in the 300 years which were my theme (cheers). 
Chairman —The duty of summing up, which now falls on me consists,! presume, 
in reconciling such points of difference as may have arisen between the lecturer and 
those who have followed him. As there appear to be practically none, that duty 
lapses. Our lecturer has in his eloquent way run over in a vervcompressed summary 
a most enormous field, both in point of time and space. It would be absurd to 
attempt yet further to condense so very closely packed a summary as he has given 
us. There are some points of detail with "regard, to which, as lie has hinted, 1 
am not in entire agreement with his statements, but they are very small matters. 
For instance, I think while it is only right that we should do justice to ourselves, 
it is very important that we should give to those that were our young allies 
at the time of the battle of Waterloo all such credit as we can give them 
and not allow the temporary irritation of the hour, for which neither those 
brave and loyal comrades of the past nor the Prussian officers of to-day are in any 
way responsible to make us do injustice to those who fought side by side with 
us in that great field. As a matter of fact, it does not represent an accurate 
statement of the facts to say that the pressure which the Prussians brought 
to bear upon the field of Waterloo began at 5 o’clock in the afternoon ; it was 
from 3 o’clock that their presence on the battle-field began to draw force from 
the French side, but the whole story is much too long and much too complicated 
to discuss now. . Still I am very anxious that we should not, simply because we 
have had a hasty telegram sent out into the world, do any injustice to those who 
fought side by side with us, as our excellent lecturer has pointed out to you so 
well, not only at Waterloo, but in campaign after campaign over and over again. - 
I am afraid that I must just touch upon one point in order again to do justice 
to that side of the question. The lecturer spoke most admirably about the 
services we rendered to them during the early days of the Prussian Monarchy. 
These are by no means forgotten by Germans, especially not by German officers 
who, in my* experience, invariably receive English officers as true comrades in 
arms. Unfortunately our union with them during the Seven Years’ War ended 
bv our deserting them owing to one of those unfortunate changes in politics 
which do take place, without any fault of us soldiers, in England as well as in 
Germany. However, with those very slight exceptions I accept, with much 
pleasure, all that Dr. Maguire has said to us this evening. To turn to the 
discussion, I do not think that any of us ever hear Major Murdoch without 
o-oing away wiser and gaining a great deal from all that he has to tell us ; but, 
again, a summary is absolutely impossible. All he says is crammed full of solid 
facts and therefore there is no possibility of compressing it further. 
I am afraid mv sympathies are not so strong with regard to the actual expression 
of Major Simpson’s sentiments. I am sure lie only intended to give us a wise 
warning that we must'not'merely trust in the past but work for the future, but 
the turn of his phrases might easily lead to an impression that would be very 
