WAR-TIME LETTERS.* Fon the last eighteen months English men and

women have lingered with pride and interest over the graphic letters published by the newspapers in which many of the actors in the present titanic struggle describe in manly and straightforward language the events which have been passing under their own eyes. The predominating feature in all these letters is that, although they are for the most part written by military men, the spirit of what we now call militarism is conspicuous by reason of its absence. No joy is expressed in fighting for fighting's sake. No tendency is evinced to exalt might over right. ' The prevailing note is a stern determination to respond to the call of duty, a confident expectation of ultimate victory, and a hope that the strife of nations will not be continued longer than is necessitated by the paramount obligation of securing the triumph of political justice and public morality. The point is worth noting, for there is ,a tendency amongst some classes in this country to imagine that soldiers, like the late Lord Roberts, who urge the necessity of preparing for war, are inclined to underrate the blessings'of peace. There cannot be a greater fallacy. Probably the least bellicose members of any community arc those who have had the widest experienee of the horrors of war. What was Collingwood's inmost thought at a time when, in company with Nelson, he was sweeping the seas in the cause of European liberty ? " I hope," he wrote in 1801, " now we have seen the end of the last war that will be in our days, and that I shall be able to turn my mind to peaceful occupations."

It is possibly the perusal of some of these letters which has induced Mrs. Wragg to make and to publish a short collection of the war correspondence of olden times. However this may be, the idea is singularly felicitous. It is not merely interesting to read what celebrated men and women, themselves often actors in the scenes which they relate, had to say in times of national stress and peril. Besides the interest, encourage. ment may be derived from the buoyant confidence which the writers for the most part display in the destinies of their country. The letters are spread over a long period of time. They commence with the fifteenth century, and we learn how, in 1449, Margaret Parton speaks of raids on Cromer and Yarmouth, and adds that " folks be right sore afeard that they will do much harm this summer." They end with a letter written in 1852 by that eccentric man of genius, Sir Charles Napier, in which, as chance would have it, he quotes the following saying of Frederick the Great, which constitutes a timely reminder that the absence of morality in Prussian statecraft, which has now set the world ablaze, is no plant of .recent growth. " Give me the money to make war," said the great exemplar of German diplomacy, " and I will buy a pretext for half-a-crown."

Mrs. Wragg's work affords little scope for the comments of a reviewer. The most suitable way of treating it is to let the writers of the letters speak for themselves. One of the most interesting of the series is a letter, written on the eve of the approach of the Armada, from Lionel Sharp to the Doke of Buckingham. A prisoner had been taken by Sir Francis Drake. On being asked why the Armada was coming, he

" stoutly answered the Lords, What, but to subdue your nation, and root it out ? Good, said the Lords: and what meant you then to do with the Catholics ? He answered, We meant to send them (good men) directly unto Heaven, as all you that are heretics to Hell. Yea, but said the Lords, what meant you to do with • Letters Written in War Tints Centurits). Sele-ted and Anaurd by Mrs. 11. Wragg. London: Humphrey Milton!. Oa. net.] your whips of cord and wire ? Mat ? said he, we meant to whip you heretics to death, that have assisted my master's rebels, and done such dishonours to our Catholic king and people. Yea, but what would you have done, said they, with their young children ? They, said he, which were above seven years old, should have gone the way their fathers wont ; the rest should have lived, branded in the forehead with the letter L for Lutheran, to perpetual bondage."

Queen Elizabeth's spirited address at Tilbury was the answer to this arrogant threat. It has often been quoted, but will stand repetition once more :—

" I do not desire," the great Queen said, " to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chicfcst strength, and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. And therefore I an come amongst you as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved in the midst and heart of the battle to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour, and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too ; and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm ; to which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will lake up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."

It is easy to imagine the ringing cheers with which such an address as this must have been received.

.Cromwell's letters are a strange mixture of gloomy religion and savagery. Writing to Lenthall an account of the siege and capture of Trcdah [Drogheda], " a place very strong and diffi-

cult of access, being exceedingly high, having a good graft [i.e., ditch or moat], and strongly palisadoed," he says a- " I forbade the soldiers to spare any that were in arms in the Town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men. . . . The next day the other two Towers were summoned; in one of which was about six or seven score; but they refused to yield themselves. . . . When they submittetb their officers were knocked on the head. . . . I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the. future. Which are the satis- factory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse, and regret. . . The last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great Church called St. Peter's, and they had public) Mass there ;' and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety-. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two."

But, with all his ruthlessness, Cromwell said : " I like no war on women "—a sentiment which, with the fate of Miss Cavell fresh in our memories, may be commended to the Kaiser.

Whilst Cromwell was thus sternly enforcing the will of Parliament, Queen Henrietta Maria, with the passionate energy of a headstrong woman, was stoutly resisting all attempts at compromise, and was upbraiding her ill-fated husband for " beginning again his old game of yielding everything," and adding : " I never in my life did anything from fear, and I hope I shall not begin by the loss of a crown ; as to you, you know well that there have been persons who have said that you were of that temper."

Passing to the beginning of the next century, we find Marlborough writhing under the obstacles to action placed in his way by his _ Dutch allies. " It is very mortifying," he wrote to Lord Godolphin in July, 1705, " to find much more obstructions from friends than from enemies." Mrs. Burnet,' the wife of the celebrated Bishop, writes to the Duchess of Marlborough testifying to the effect produced by the victory of Ramillies. " The common people, who I feared were grown stupid, have and do now show greater signs of satisfaction and triumph, than I think I ever saw before on any good success' whatever." Somewhat later, Horace Walpble exults over the triumphs of the Chatham Administration. " Pondicherry," he writes to Henry Conway in 1761, "is ours, as well as the field of Kirk Denckirk. The Park guns never have time to cool; we ruin ourselves in gunpowder and sky-rockets." The prince of gossips then adds : " I forgot to tell you that the King has got: the isle of Dominique and the chicken-pox, two trifles that don't count in the midst of all these festivities."

The poet Cowper strikes the only note of pessimism to be found in the collection. In 1781, he records his opinion that " the loss of America is the ruin of England," and a little later he adds that England "is affected with every symptom of decay." In 1792, he expresses the opinion very reasonably held by Liberal England at the time of the fatal Declaration of Pilinitz. " It would have been better for Austria and Prussia to let the French alone. All nations have a right to choose their own mode of government, and the sovereignty of the people is a doctrine that evinces itself ; for wheneVer the people choose to be masters they always are so, and none can hinder them."

There is a genial and breezy raciness in the letters of Collingwood and Nelson which is highly invigorating. Nothing could be more graphic than the spirited description, too long to quote, which the former writes to his wife in 11'97 of " A brush with the Spaniards" ; and the chivalrous nature of Nelson comes out strongly in the account given. to his brother in the

m same year of the capture of a Spanish man-of-war

" When I hailed the Don, and told him, 'This is an English frigate,' and demanded his surrender or I would fire into him, his answer was noble, and such as became the illustrious family from which he is descended—' This is a Spanish frigate, and you may begin as soon as you please.' I have no idea of a closer or sharper battle : the force to a gun the same, and nearly the same number of men; we having two hundred and fifty. I asked him several times to surrender during the action, but his answer was—' No, Sir: not whilst I have the means of fighting left.' When only himself of all the officers were left alive, ho hailed, and said he could fight no more, and begged I would stop firing."

Pleasant also it is to read of the relations between the two great naval commanders. On the eve of Trafalgar, Nelson writes to Collingwood : " We can, my dear Coll, have no little jealousies. We have only one great object in view, that of annihilating our enemies, and getting a glorious peace for our country. No man has more confidence in another than I have in you : and no man will render your services more justice than your very old friend." Both are pining to come to close quarters with the enemy. On July 24th, 1805, Nelson groans over " the damned information " of General Brereton, the Governor of Gibraltar, which he feared might enable the French Fleet to escape his clutches, but which fortunately turned out to be false.

From the point of view of literary style, it is a sharp transition to turn from the letters of the sailors to the hard, unimaginative, but eminently sensible remarks of the great Duke of Wellington. He deplores—as what administrator has not deplored 7—the constant changes of officers in charge of important Departments. He deprecates the general inattention to orders. " Nobody in the British Army," he writes to Colonel Torrens in 1812, " ever reads a regulation or an order as if it were to be a guide for his conduct, or in any other manner than as an amusing novel." He dwells on the want of discipline in the Army. " We may gain the greatest victories," he writes to Lord Bathurst in 1813, but we shall do no good, until we shall so far alter our system, as to force all ranks to perform their duty." Finally, Sir Walter Scott visits the Field of Waterloo and gives us good reason for holding that tho Prussians of 1815 greatly resembled their posterity of a century later.

These extracts will suffice to show the general character of the correspondence. Rarely does a more readable shilling's-worth of literature issue from a publisher's office than is contained in Mts. Wragg's lively and timely little volume. CRO4ER.