TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LAST SCENE OF THE ABYSSINIAN WAR.
THE vote of thanks to Sir Robert Napier has been a pleasant interlude in a most disagreeable session. The party strife has been very bitter, the hatreds developed in its course have seemed "very earnest, the speeches made have been very personal, and it is almost with a sense of relief that men see the parties for one night reunited to do honour, in the name of a nation which on this subject has no parties, to a man who has restored its military renown ; to hear the leaders of Opposition complimenting the Government, and the Govern- ment at a loss for words to express its appreciation of the fighting services. Mr. Disraeli would hang tinsel on an Achilles, but the forced character of his rhetoric, with its nonsense about the standed of St. George upon the moun- tains of Rasselas, does not conceal the hearty cordiality with which Parliament has bestowed the highest honour within its gift, the deliberate thanks of the nation to an efficient servant. It is right that the thanks should be followed by more sub- stantial rewards, but they constitute in themselves an honour of no mean kind. It is no light thing to men who, with soldierly instinct, value honour above all earthly goods, to be solemnly told, amidst ringing cheers alike from the representatives of the people and from the chiefs of the aristocracy, that their names also are inscribed in the long roll of Englishmen who have de- served well of the country for which they have risked their lives. When those thanks are sincere and given by name, no reward can vie with them in the eyes of a true Englishman, and this time they have been awarded, as Mr. Gladstone said so grace- fully, not by a vote, but an acclaim. It is well that the eulogies are done, for we think we see signs of that reaction they so invariably provoke ; but it is also well that the leaders of parties, the Head of the Army, the best military critics in the Peers, should tell the people how thoroughly the eulogies were deserved, how true has been the instinct with which, though no battle has been fought, no butcher's bill sent in, no territory won, the nation has recognized in Sir Robert Napier that most efficient of all human beings, an effi- cient General. It is this quality of efficiency, more than any other, more than the simplicity which describes that marvellous march in professional phrase as the "building of a bridge 400 miles long," more than the cool daring which sent 1,500 men into the clouds to storm a fortress that, as Lord Ellenborough happily said, "If defended by its assailant had been impregnable to man," more even than the moral nerve which risked all rather than leave friendly allies at the mercy of a barbarian, that has given Sir Robert Napier a place in the imagination and the reverence of the British people. We have been so wearied with inefficiency, so sickened with excuses, so nearly driven by ineptitude to despair of ourselves, that an expedition without a blunder, a march which reached its goal, a retreat without a disaster, a great enterprise finished as if it had been designed by Bismarck and organized by Von Moltke, restores our waning self-respect. Half England ex- pected, as it sullenly consented to do its duty, that it would be done in " regular " English fashion ; that the army would linger along the mountain road, doubtful alike of itself and of its object ; that allies would be bought by promises difficult to keep and impossible to violate ; that the rains would be upon us before Magdala had fallen ; that disease would break out in the camp, and that after two years' of dreary warfare, after reinforcements had been demanded from India and England, after angry debates in Parliament and angrier recriminations between the Horse Guards and the India House, we should find ourselves victorious, but with twenty millions to pay and Abyssinia upon our hands. That is the proper course of English affairs, and to find that we have a man who can get out of that groove, who can organize a composite army into a bar of steel, who can use the resources of two civilizations with equal effect, can make way-worn Highlanders and thirsty Beloochees shout in a unison of delight because the enemy is before them, can overcome nature as well as enemies, organize transport as well as fight, and then, with his work all accom- plished, his instructions all fulfilled, can carry back his army fitter for war than it was when he received it : this has made a distinct addition to the personal happiness of every man within the nation. The country never quite caught the wild romance of the expedition, the disinterestedness which has so impressed the Continent, the strange combination of East and West, of science and barbaric force, of camels refreshed from portable Artesian wells, and elephants carrying the last tri- umphs of inventive artillerists, and it will not catch it until the mar vates of the expedition has appeared; but it has recognized to the full the perfection of the work, the directness of the application of means to ends, the completeness,—a complete- ness as of Brunel or Stephenson, rather than of the regular British General,—in the entire affair ; and has confidence in the man to whom that completeness is mainly due. We believe the nation would see Sir Robert Napier lose a battle without. howling for his head, a remark that could not have been made of any General since Wellington.
It may be said that the country has singled out one man- too exclusively for its gratitude, but though all did well the country is in the right. In every war everything depends upon the actual chief, and Sir Robert Napier was the actual chief of the Army of Abyssinia, the man who gave counsel as well as orders to all below, not the mere speaking-trumpet of a staff. He was as well entitled to all the credit as Stephenson, to that of building the Menai Bridge. So far from over- rewarding a soldier of this kind, we do not reward him half enough, do not recognize sufficiently how vast an addition one such capacity makes to the national strength, how long and arduous is the experience, for the most part unrewarded and unacknowledged, through which a man of this kind arrives at the perfection of his powers. Suppose to-morrow it were needful to conquer Egypt, or defend Canada, what would be- the money value, the sum it would be worth the national while to give for this Indian Engineer, who, till he became Commander-in-Chief of Bombay, had in his whole career never received the sum a successful speculator on 'Change makes in a morning, who had never once tasted the delight of independent command, and who after a great campaign was deprived by a formality of the decoration acknowledged to be his due. We are no advocates for over-paying soldiers,—Gibbon was right when he said that honour- able poverty best befitted armies,—but at least let us. leave them the hope that when the hour at last arrives,, when the experience of a career, and the training of forty years, and the knowledge painfully garnered through a life, are all employed to secure a national end, the nation will not be niggardly in its applause or its acknowledgments. If it ever falls into that habit, if it reserves all its rewards for commerce,. and all its enthusiasm for eloquence, if it haggles with men who offer their lives, and strives to pay for genius by the pound, it may yet learn, on a day greater than last Easter Monday was, what it is to have lowered the honour, and> damped the ardour, and depressed the tone of men who, whether they conquer or fail, have always this one claim to plead,—that they pay for every blunder with their lives, and. that their lives are never given save in a national cause. Militarism is the worst of the many diseases which have afflicted European society, but the spirit of soldiership needs only to be directed to be among the noblest of impulses ; and it is no injury to Englishmen that the old Hebraic influence se rapidly passing away still leads them, when they would be most reverential, to address the Almighty as the Lord God of Hosts.
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