17 MAY 1902, Page 13

THE LEGEND OF WATERLOO.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The Duke of Wellington was probably correct in think- ing that his seasoned army of the Peninsula could have easily beaten the massed columns of the French at Waterloo ; but is it not a fact that those same " fourteen-years" British

veterans, having been sent to America previous to the out- break of the Waterloo Campaign, found themselves out- matched by the untrained American Rifle Volunteers to whom they were opposed ? It is some thirty years since I read the details of the siege of New Orleans, but the impres- sion produced by those details enabled me as an "armchair critic" to anticipate the disasters of Ladysmith and Colenso, which, if I remember right, they pretty closely resemble.—I