WINNOWED MEMORIES.•
SIR EVELYN WOOD has winnowed his memories rather summarily. We do not of course complain that chaff remains with the grain— for Sir Evelyn Wood's chaff is an excellent sort of chaff, and we cannot have too much of it. But ho might have made a tidier job. The grain is graded, it is true, in so far as the chapters are homogeneous, but the anecdotes and episodes are thrown together almost anyhow. To vary the husbandman's metaphor, let us say that Sir Evelyn's main guards, advance guards, and rearguards march through the book without any connecting files, or scouts, or signallers. This strikes us as very curious, because Sir Evelyn Wood has always been noted for precision as a soldier, and has indeed justly prided himself on it. We should have expected to find in his writing the counterpart of military precision. Very odd, the manner in which the human mind works in compartments I The present writer merely records this fact because, being a little inclined to precision himself, he thinks Sir Evelyn Wood will probably sympathize with those who ask in their own sphere for what Sir Evelyn Wood has always demanded in his. But, after all,
• Winnowed Memories. By ifeld-Marahal Slr Evelyn Wood, V.C., G.C.B., D.C.L. With 8 rhotograrura Plates. London : Cassell and Co. [1.0s. net.j
we do not want to do more than record a curious fact. The present writer, having spent some delightful hours reading the book, feels that by far the greater part of his duty is to salute the veteran soldier, to wish him long enough life to write many more books, and to hope for himself that if ever ho reaches Sir Evelyn Wood's ago he may be able to write a book containing a tithe of the merriment, geniality, graciousness, and wide and earnest interest in affairs displayed in Winnowed Memories.
Few men who have the reputation of being good story-tellers stick to the truth in their embellishments. The central fact may be true— no doubt is true if they tell you that it is—but the embroidery is their own. The embroidery as often as not makes the story. We take Sir Evelyn Wood to be the most truthful story-teller we have ever come across. It is not merely that the point of his stories generally resides in some little quaintness or subtlety of human observation that has to be true or not to be worth the telling. We have a different kind of evidence for our assertion. The book leads off with an anecdote which Sir Evelyn Wood told at a prize day at his old school twenty-nine years ago. The present writer happened to be present on that occasion, and he can testify that not a phrase of the story has changed in the twenty-nine years. That is surely a pretty good test. No story-teller need hope to survive a more severe ono. What we particularly like in Sir Evelyn Wood's temperament is that it is quite foreign to despair. We all know that old soldiers tend to think that the Service is going to the dogs. Not so Sir Evelyn Wood ; he has never consented to the theory of physical deterioration in the Army. We remember language of his in the past in which he pointed, on tho contrary, to the distinct physical progress of the British soldier ; he declared that, so far from the Army being composed of pitiable weeds from the great towns, it was able decade by decade to shame its former standards. Moreover, he has always maintained that the intellectual average of the Army was continually rising. We remember him once relating an anecdote about the Crimean War—avowedly mythical, but true enough to have a sting. " My Lord," exclaimed a sergeant to his officer, " we are enfiladed ! " " Sergeant," was the answer, " what does a fellow do when he is enfiladed ? " At the end of the anecdote Sir Evely-n Wood remarked that the improvement in military learning had quite deprived it of its point. Sir Evelyn Wood tells us that the old jealousy between the different branches of the Army has yielded to a generous readiness to praise one another. He says that the infantryman " somewhere in France " writes of " those splendid gunners," while the artilleryman writes of " our indomitable infantry." Certainly an infantryman who owes his life to a barrage thrown on to the right spot with an accuracy measured by feet ought to know what admiration means. Sir Evelyn Wood remembers that after the immortal Balaclava charge the British infantrymen in the Crimea would say no more than that " our cavalry had a smart little affair this morning." The infantry were nearly as prosaic as the gardener at Sir Evelyn Wood's home, who, when he was told breathlessly that Lord Cardigan had had six horses shot under him, remarked : " Indeed, tho likes of he ought to go afoot all the rest of his life " l In September, 1909, Sir Evelyn Wood wrote to Lord Nicholson :- " I began issuing Tactical Schemes in Jane, 1876, at Aldershot for Commanding Officers. The big manceuvres in 1871-2 taught us but little. In 1889, 1890-1-2-3 I got on farther, but never thought I should live to see the yearly increasing volume of improvement I have witnessed during the last three days. I saw troops of all Arms yesterday, from early morning till 7 p.m., and never saw a sulky face, although some of the men were tired about four o'clock. Tho narratives are the best I have ever seen."
Sir Evelyn Wood's optimism was always securely based on facts. He certainly did not take an optimistic view about our prospective enemies. When the editor of the Daily Express asked him for his opinion of Major du Matuier's play, An Englishman's Home, he answered : " It has been alleged by some that the author's treatment is over coloured, all or most of the characters being exaggerated. That must remain a matter of opinion. But as to the results of a successful invasion and what then ensues, the descriptions in the play are but as rose- water is to fish manure. Anyone would realise this who knows what the Spaniards underwent when their country was overrun prior to and during the Peninsular War, as would all readers of the stories told in Zola's Break Up ' (` La Debacle '). My friend, Colonel Lonsdale Halo, girds against the Territorial Forces scheme in one of your contem- poraries on the ground that the Forces are, and must ever remain, insufficiently trained on a sudden outbreak of war. Lonsdale Hale knows more details about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 than any othor officer I have ever met. His views, therefore, of what must occur when trained soldiers meet half-trained men are incontrovertible. On the other hand, the framework of the Territorial Forces scheme is well adapted for dealing later with universal training, and until the nation adopts such means of defence organisers must be content with what their masters, the Democracy, are willing to accept. Just 104 years ago Mr. Pitt, speaking in the House of Commons on national defence, said : I want the whole of the active population, all to be arranged beforehand, leaders appointed, companies formed, and that no man should be allowed to run about in confusion crying out, " Oh ! that I could be anyway useful to my country ! " ' The Territorial Forces scheme, when Young England likes to act on it, will obviate the inconveniences foretold by Mr. Pitt. In a long life I have known only two or three Ministers who led tho nation ; most show their ability by saying to-day what they think a majority of the electorate will want in a short time."
When he gave an opinion as to what British troops could do if called upon, ho pitched his hopes extraordinarily high. Thus it was
Characteristic of him to dismiss absolutely the idea that it was necessary to abandon Ladysmith when General Buller contemplated that course. He says :- " I wrote on December 16th [1899, the day after Colensol to Lord Lansdowne : I hope, if there is any doubt about the possibility of Sir Redvers relieving Ladysmith, that you will, at all events, endeavour to get out the Mounted troops. This would leave a great deal of food for the Infantry, and Buller could easily, by crossing the Upper. Tugela, having arranged the matter previously by flashlights, assist the Mounted troops in coming through. Anything would be better than letting them eat their horses, and we had better lose half the Effectives in an attempt to cut their way out. Please excuse my offering you my opinion on the subject, which is, no doubt, the office of the Commander- in-ChieL' After I had sent off my letter, we had an unfavourable telegram, and I wrote again about eleven o'clock that night to Lord Lansdowne : You have possibly answered the cipher telegram. If so, I hope you have not acquiesced in the view of abandoning the Ladysmith garrison. The Boors have hitherto persuaded us into attacking their prepared positions. They cannot have prepared all the fords on the Tugela. If it is as hot as Buller nays, it cannot be raining. Therefore the Tugela is fordable at several places. I forded it on the Groytown road about this week in 1881, and that is a long way downstream. I have known Buller since 1873. Brave as a lion, he hesitates to risk others. I hope you will sing " Nil desperandum" to him. I don't know Stormberg, but fancy it as ugly as Colones. N.B.—I never find when hunting it pays to ride over two fields when following hounds.' "
Any soldier might be proud indeed to remember in after years that he had written those words in a moment when something like public despair reigned.
The simile from hunting at the end of the letter to Lord Lansdowne is a clue to a good deal of Sir Evelyn Wood's advice in this book as to the training of officers. He thin s there is nothing like hunting, and he tells three remarkable anecdotes of officers whose careers were impeded or ruined through faulty horsemanship. In one case " the most profound soldier-thinker of his epoch" failed signally to do justice to his own teaching for the simple reason that at manceuvres he was too busy riding to be able to attend to anything else. In another case " the most illuminating lecturer in military history " Sir Evelyn Wood had ever known said : " I cannot convoy to you how miserable and useless I feel when I realize the insecurity of my seat in the saddle." We doubt, however, whether the handicap of bad horsemanship, great though it is, will be quite so much felt in future. If Mr. Wells is approxi- mately right, the General Officer of the future will use hardly anything but a motor-car—perhaps a pod-rail motor-car 1—and cavalry will be tanks. Still, if horsemanship is to remain of permanent military use, hunting alone is likely to save it.
We have no space left to quote any of Sir. Evelyn Wood's more uproarious stories. He has lived through the age of amazing practical jokes. We will end by quoting one story which seems to us to have the quality or savour which we find in most of his stories, and which to our thinking is both agreeable and rare. The story is about an Artillery officer who distinguished himself in the Mutiny :-
" He was marching from a station in the Midlands to Aldershot, and the Colonel in command of the Artillery rode out to meet the battery. My friend saluted him ; but, in his very easy-going, disrespectful way, did not even call the battery to attention.' The Colonel did not outwardly rebuke him, but disregarding his pleasant salutation Good morning, sir,' asked ' Pray, Major, how many led horses have you got ? ' The Major drawled out, Sergeant-Major, how many sick horses have we got ? " Four, sir,' which the Major repeated like a parrot, saying,
Four, sir.' The Colonel, very angry, said, ' How many sick men have .you got ? " Sergeant-Major, how many sick men have we got The Colonel, obviously much irritated, asked, 'Pray, sir, do you know how many guns you have got?' And the imperturbable Major, turning round, said, ' Sergeant-Major, how many guns have we got 7' And then, as if he suddenly remembered, quickening his tone, said, Six, sir, six. Sergeant-Major, I am right, it is six ? ' And as the Colonel galloped away, too angry to trust himself to speak, the Major observed to the Captain of the battery : I thought I would get rid of the Busy Bee, which was the nickname of the Officer Commanding Royal Artillery at that time."
That is surely an example of a very subtlety of insolence, of the kind of which the perfectly cool and self-possessed British officer would alone be capable. We thank Sir Evelyn Wood for this gem.
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