BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE.
[TO TIls EDITOR OF TR1 "SPECTATOR."]
venture to think there are few people who, at the time of the South African War, or during the tremendous struggle between Russia and Japan, would have ventured to describe those events as blessings in disguise. Providence ordained, however, that they should prove to be so. And we all see now that but for the bitter experiences of those campaigns we should never have learnt the lessons which have enabled our own soldiers and those of Russia to face successfully the armed hosts of Germany. The teachings of those campaigns revolutionized the training and tactics of both the Russian and British Armies. Germany and Austria, however, were too proud to profit by our experiences, and their troops have suffered in consequence. In other respects the results have been no less striking. Russia, instead of having a hostile Japan ready to take advantage of her difficulties, is on friendly terms with that State ; while in South Africa, -where we might have had a hostile people under German influence, we now find South Africans of all classes—Briton and Boer—fighting together under the Union Jack for the integrity of the Empire. But the greatest result of all, so far as Great Britain is concerned, was the discovery of Sir John French, now commanding the British Army on the
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