SIR COLIN C. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF.*
" Dow-seroar satisfactory work in a desert is bettor than pottering in a Paradise." The attitude of mind indicated in the words of Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff which we have just quoted go for to explain his success in life. He had none of those irresistible flashes of genius which lift a man suddenly above his fellows, and proclaim to the world his peculiar fitness for the work he has undertaken. Even in his own profession his name is not associated with any great theo- retical discovery or any particular masterpiece of practical con- struction; ho would have been the fast, himself, to deny that he was anything more than an ordinary competent engineer. But ho had in profusion those "large general powers " which Dr. Johnson regarded, rightly or wrongly, as the raw material of genius. He had, in rare perfection, the Scottish gift of discrimination. When a new problem was presented to him, he instinctively resolved it into its component parts "the known facts are so-and-so, the doubtful points are so-and-so, the inferences are so-and-so, what is the correct procedure?" Then he turned it over steadily and untiringly in his mind until he had decided on a mode of action ; it might not be the best conceivable mode of action, but it was always possible, always reasonable, always clear. Ho never confused his subordi- nates because he never confused himself. Last of all, when he had come to a conclusion, he invariably acted upon it ; and he was able to act quickly because he had thought slowly. Hesitation was a quality altogether foreign to his nature ; when he was doubtful whether or not anything ought to be done, he simply did not do it ; when he knew it ought to be done, he did it, without waiting to find out whether he was the proper authorized person for the busi- ness, or asking if all the usual formalities had been completed. A characteristic anecdote of his habit of quiet initiative is told by the late Lord Cromer :— " In the meanwhile Sir Colin Scott-Ifoncrieff and his coadjutors had been abolishing the corers without awaiting the decision of the Powers. In July, 1886, he reported that the £250,000 devoted to the reduction of the corers had enabled the number of men called out to work for one hundred daps to be reduced from 234,153 (the average of the previous three }rears) to 102,507, a reduction of 50 per cent. It appeared, therefore, that while the diplomatic • TAB Life of $ir Coils C. Sroa-Moorrieff. X.C..11.0.. tr. Edited by K. A. Ho/lbw. Louden Jobe Murray. hiss. net4 agents had been discussing whether the /2.50,000 should be spent, the practical Scotchman had to a great extent solved the question by spending the money. Tho result, I remarked to Lord Rosebery, was moat gratifying ; and an echo of satisfaction was at once wafted back from the Foreign Office."
" Happiness has no history," and a lifetime of unostentatious work has little more. Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff was born at Dalkeith, in Scotland, in 1836 ; was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, the military school at Addiscombe, and a " crammer's " at Wimble- don, from which he passed into the Bengal Engineers, after going through a preliminary training at Chatham. He arrived in India in time to take part in the later stages of the Mutiny campaign, where he won golden opinions from his commending officer for his zeal and judgment at critical momenta. Then followed a period of twenty years of service at Indian irrigation, marked by rapid and deserved promotion, until he was suddenly called upon to take charge of the famine relief operations at Mysore. The details given of his labours at this time are curiously reminiscent, down even to the names, of Mr. Kipling's famine story, Willie»; the Conqueror. We quote a passage from Sir Colin 's own recollections to show the type of man he had working under him :— " He (Captain MacIntire] was a young captain of artillery, with a wife and baby. . . . He had volunteered for relief work and had been sent to Horiyur—about the blackest district on the famine map. He obtained leave to come in to Bangalore to spend Christmas with his wife. We saw him that day, and next morning he started on his journey of about one hundred miles in a bullock-cart. Week after week his reports came in. The rain hod come at last, prices were lower, and the distress was less acute. At Easter, MacIntire again asked for leave, and then, and only then, he showed us a letter he had received from the doctor whom he had consulted the previous Christmas. It was to this effect ' My dear Maclntire,—If you go back to Heriyur, you will probably have an abscess on your liver, and I won't answer for your life.' The plucky fellow had kept this letter in his pocket, showing it to no one, until the famine pressure was over. Ho had an abscess on his liver, as the doctor warned him, but lived through it. I am sure it never occurred to MacIntire that he was doing anything out of the way, and if you had asked him what he thought of the natives he would have told you that they were a set of stupid dirty brutes, and that he could not bear them."
After an interregnum of European travel and more canal work in Burma, Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff intended to retire from active service, and was actually on his way home when at Cairo he mot Lord Dufferin, who offered him the Direction of the Irrigation of the whole of Egypt. As the distinction had come unsought, so it was accepted without vanity he was thought worthy of the post. and therefore it behoved him to do his best to fill it. "Happy is the reformer," he wrote later, " W40 finds things so bad lie cannot make a movement without making an improvement" ; and that fortunate position was his. His work centred chiefly on the repair of the Nile Barrage, and his account of the operations involved, though far too long to quote, is as exciting and interesting to the lay reader as to the expert. Suffice it to say that he achieved a complete success, and by multiplying the agricultural resources of the country helped Lord Cromer to restore it from bankruptcy in 1883 to solvency in 1887. Years afterwards, at a kyle, the Duke of York, seeing Sir Colin, asked the Duke of Cambridge who that was. " Moncrieff—Egypt, you know—splendid fellow," was the answer delivered in a stentorian aside; and wo cannot do more here than echo the Duke's Jinglesque summary. We must, however, find space for one dramatic incident, told in Sit Colin's own words :- " I went as usual to the Council of Ministers. The clerk droned through the minutes of the last Council. It was a sultry day. Nothing worth listening to, when an office servant came in and whispered to the President, Nubar Pasha, that Sir Evelyn Baring was in the anteroom and wished to 'see him. Nubar asked the Council to excuse him, and went quietly out of the room. He re- turned in about five minutes, sat down, and wrote a few words on scrape of paper, which ho threw across the table to some of the Turkish Ministers. Thera aoorned some electricity in the air. What was it ? The clerk continued drawling ; at last Nubar got up, said, Messieurs, Cordon eat rnort,' and sat down in tears, his face covered by his hands. The Council dissolved, and the Government set about bringing the troops down the river again."
On his return from Egypt, Sir Conn was appointed Under-Secre- tary for Scotland, which position he retained for ton years, retiring in 1902. Then his first service claimed him again, and ho became President of the Indian Irrigation Commission, twice revisiting 'the scenes of his early labours. Tho concluding years of his life were spent mostly in travel in Japan, South Africa, the United States, and Mexico. He died on the night of April 6th, 1916, after A brief illness.
We have quoted enough from the volume under review to give our readers a fair idea of the character of its contents. Sir Colin was a copious correspondent, and although naturally his letters are more valuable when he wrote as an expert on his own topics, ordeseribed his personal experiences than when he discussed subjects which he could treat only as an amateur, they are rarely dull, mechanical, or trite. Miss Hollings has done wisely to let her hero speak as much as possible for himself, for we close the book with the impression of him which, no doubt, she intended to leavee—that he owed his strength and eminence to a harmonious combination of fine qualities rather than to any striking but ill-balanced display of uncommon genius.
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