THE MAGAZINES.
THE Nineteenth Century has a great variety of articles, most of which are sufficiently attractive to be read, though none of them are of unusual interest. Mr. H. B. Wheatley gives us some " Unpublished Pages of Pepys's Diary," which, indeed, are Pepys all over,—continuously lively, minutely detailed, self-analytical, and, we may add, self-reproachful. They mostly relate to the quarrels his wife had with him as to his conduct, and, ludicrous though their minuteness makes them appear, there is a pitiful, almost tearful, aspect about the diarist's suddenly awakened sense of wrong-doing.—" Byron at- Pisa," by Mrs. Ross, treats of the constant state of uneasi- ness in which the turbulent Byron kept the nervous Italian authorities during his residence in Italy. This is very vividly portrayed to us by extracts from contemporary diaries and documents. His actions and intentions were,. of course, absurdly exaggerated ; but the man himself was enough to send any community, except an English one, into convulsions.—The most thoughtful article in the number, however, is Mr. James Sully's," Is Man the Only Reasoner ?" It is, in the main, a careful and discriminating criticism of Dr. Romanes's attempt to bridge over the gap. between animal inference and human reasoning. Dr. Romanes seeks by an elaborately constructed series of stepping-stones to make this gap disappear. Mr. Sully claims that Dr.. Romanes has confused the logical and psychological definition of the " concept ;" that he has been led away by the " curious theory that while an idea may be general, it cannot become a true concept till it is introspectively regarded as our idea ; and its counterpart, that while a sign may be a true sign,. and even subserve the attribution of qualities to objects, it cannot grow into the full stature of a name till it is reflected on as a name." Dr. Romanes is doubtless wrong when he says that the name is bestowed on the idea, and is due to an act of introspection ; wrong in saying that before we can bestow a name on an object, we must set it. before our mind as an object of our own thought ; and that, consequently, self-consciousness is necessary for all stages of so-called thought. We agree with Mr. Sully when he says :—" Is a child when inventing a name for his toy-horse or doll, reflecting on his idea as his and naming this idea P Is he not rather thinking wholly about the object, and is not the name given to this external object and not to the idea in the namer's mind at all ?" Surely it is an objective process, not a subjective one.—" Life in a Jesuit College," by H. Dziewicki, describes from a common-sense point of view the hard, and surely meaningless, formalities of attitude and routine be- queathed by Loyola to his Society,—whether exaggerated or reduced, we cannot say.
The first article in the Fortnightly Review is the one that heads the list, and, indeed, heads the list for all the monthlies. It is "The French Armies," by Sir Charles Dilke. Sir Charles was. a privileged guest at the great autumn manoeuvres of the French Army, and he had full liberty, apparently, to do what be liked and to say what he liked ; and if the peculiarity of his position as. an honoured guest has somewhat hampered the freedom of his criticisms, we are enabled with very little difficulty to grasp the real significance of all the points that courtesy pre- vented his emphasising too plainly. It is necessary to remind ourselves that over one hundred thousand men were engaged in these operations ; hence the masses of men employed in them were unique outside Russia. The first note of praise that Sir Charles strikes, is one of admiration for the marching powers, the general discipline, and absence of complaints from the private soldiers as to their hardships. The weather was extremely trying: "On seven marching days the shade tempera- ture rose above 88° Fahr., and on two above 92°. The average marching done was something like thirty miles a day ; there were several examples of infantry marching over thirty-two miles in the day, and one when some infantry marched thirty-seven miles one day and thirty-one on the next." The absence of luxury among the officers particularly struck the writer. General Galliffet, who is over sixty, had at his lodgings no sentries, no servants, no one to perform the duties of a military secretary, or to take- off the small worries. The same simplicity was equally noticeable with the private soldiers. The extended marches were really taken to relieve the country from the pressure of such enormous numbers, and only one general bivouac was made during the manoeuvres. We must remember, as Sir Charles says, that all the marches were arranged beforehand, and also the commissariat, the real object being to see if the Staff worked smoothly. And the success was most remarkable,. for the French Generals moved large masses of men without a hitch; troops were never seen at a standstill from losing their way or absence of instructions. One cannot help thinking of what Wellington (we think) said of Souk, that he could concentrate large numbers of men at a given point better than any one else. Sir Charles tells us, however, that
there were many omissions of " details," as the French Generals would call them, details purposely neglected as being unnecessary for the object in view. The outpost system was defective, and would not have passed muster at Aldershot.
" Except for one day, sentries were hardly set at all looked for sentries very often, but did not find them, and, on asking, often discovered that they did not exist The success of the night-marches was due to extraordinarily brilliant torches at the head of every regiment." No attempt was made to keep touch with the enemy. All this Sir Charles notes with scarce-concealed surprise, and, indeed, compares it with the system at the Prussian, Austrian, and English mancenvres. The umpires obviously did not do their duty. We learn that on a march, supposed to be carried out under the conditions of war, a General commanding an army and his whole staff rode through the lines of the enemy past two companies protecting the retreat. One company fired on him, the other received him with a general salute. On another occasion, a General commanding an army and his staff took up a position within four hundred yards of a battalion of the masked enemy, and took no notice of a continued steady fire which would have killed or wounded the whole staff, " and all the telegraph operators of the army. Un- armed cyclist messengers passed freely along unguarded roads." " The French Generals," continues Sir Charles, "attach little importance to these things, and say they can be attended to at divisional mancenvres, and that at the great manceuvres they have only great things to do, not small things, and cannot occupy themselves with trifles of this kind." The fatigue of the men was put forward as an excuse. There is something in this argument, but, as Sir Charles points out, a want of precaution might occur at the beginning of a war. But, we say, what would not this lead to in the initial stages of a frontier advance ? Is the story of the great Napoleon and the sleeping sentry, then, forgotten, or is it, after all, only a fiction ? No allowance was made for losses, by ordering a certain number of men to fall out, and large num- bers of men found themselves close up to each other when they ought practically to have been annihilated. The bivouac, the only big bivouac, was not disturbed, and a convoy, almost un- guarded, was allowed to pass within easy capturing distance of a hostile force. The troops made no use of cover in an advance, and the cavalry were rarely used for scouting or reconnaissance. Indeed, the great faults of the manmuvres seem to have been contempt of the conditions of warfare, and the ignoring of the vital necessity of keeping distances,— faults, says Sir Charles, which are corrected by shot and shell. It is only necessary to remark that smokeless powder was used, to indicate the grave defect of plans carried out with such total disregard of the realities of warfare, and such un- limited confidence in blank-cartridge. According to Sir Charles, the scenic display of battle will be enhanced by the absence of smoke. The great painter Detaille missed, Sir Charles feared, the best subject for his brush, the passage of the Aube and Voire at dawn :—" On our right was the rosy promise of the dawn, and on our left the lightning-like flashes of our batteries." It must have been a beautiful, or rather, ' magnificently stern," spectacle. The handling of the cavalry has been universally condemned ; it was only once used in a great movement, never, in fact, took the initiative, to say nothing of the duties pertaining to it even in the estima- tion of the modern opponents of the arm. The French, says Sir Charles, do not agree that it can be of use in attacking artillery, as the Germans do. General Galliffet, however, according to the opinion of a critic, would be invaluable to his country as Generalissimo of the cavalry, though he could not be spared from his army. The French com- manders of armies, Sanesier (at once Commander-in-Chief and chief umpire, who is sixty-three), Galliffet, Davont, and Billot, and Generals Zurlinden, Negrier, Jamont, Herve, and Brault, have, it is said, the confidence of the nation. The staffs, which will be the same in war as they are now, are admirable, we are told, and worked admirably. The variety which exists amongst French superior officers struck Sir Charles as extraordinary, and in France they are no more able to dismiss than we are, the hopelessly incompetent. Nominally, the corps commanders are selected by merit, but the practice is tempered by seniority, and some of them, he says, can never have been fit for the position at any time of life. This does not apply to the commanders of armies. The evil as regards corps, divisional and brigade commands, is admitted ; and French critics hope to mend matters by an even more stringent law of retirement by age. Yet the rule, as it now stands, would remove General Galliffet in three years. The cavalry leaders are notoriously too old, and the service, Sir Charles says, would gain, not lose, if all officers over the rank of Colonel were swept away.
Compared with the Prussians, the French, Sir Charles feels bound to remark, do not observe the law of distances, and do not march so evenly, neither do they use their en- trenching tools, or observe such an obvious precaution as firing kneeling or prone in proximity to the enemy. The writer was astonished at the progress of the French Army, and the handling of it by the Generals ; but we leave dis- criminating readers of his able article to hold an even balance between largeness of conception and tactics, and the neglect of the precautions and the minutiae inseparable from the art of war.
In the Contemporary Review, Mr. Justin McCarthy, in " Charles Stewart Parnell," gives what is a mere political sketch of Mr. Parnell's political career, and what he conceived to be the aims that actuated him. But in no review of a man's career by another man is the absence of true insight into his character or motives more absolutely displayed. It is obvious, even from the tone of mingled respect and admiration, that the writer never penetrated the reserve that enshrouded Mr. Parnell. He is and was a problem to Mr. McCarthy, as he is to us ; and Mr. McCarthy leaves the character, the motives, and the ultimate aim of his subject exactly where they were before, and will remain. Whether Mr. Parnell had the true ambition of a patriot, or only the supreme pleasure of exercising an iron and controlling will, no one can say.—Sir Stephen de Vere, in " Local Government in Ireland," deplores the system of County Councils for Ireland, and the effects which he declares will follow from the irre- sponsibility of such bodies, and the widening of the feud between classes, instancing the effects in France of local councils in disfranchising the upper classes. In support of his argument, he quotes M. Taine. Sir Stephen de Vere draws a melancholy picture, part of which we quote, of the distress caused, he says, to landowners by the new Land Code : " With a courage but little appreciated, they reduced their establishments, sacrificed all the luxuries and many of what are called the necessaries of life, and have borne to see without a complaint their social intercourse destroyed, their homes desolate, old friendships decayed as old friends ceased to meet, old Irish hospitality a thing of the past—the bond of affection between them and their tenants rent asunder by poverty and calumny—their waste land undrained and nnplanted, their fields half-stocked, their labourers unemployed, their pleasant houses and gardens crumbling to ruin, their ancient woods felled, the fair face of the land disfigured They were no longer able to contribute to public charities ; they could but turn sadly away from the appeals of their own surrounding poor. Bitterest of all, after a life devoted to the interests of others, they heard themselves denounced by trading demagogues as tyrants and ex- tortioners before their old friends, who too easily believed the foul
falsehood They still had duties: duties which even their
enemies admitted they had discharged ably and honestly
duties which were still a bond between them and their neighbours, rich and poor."
A Conservative Government, according to Sir Stephen, pro- poses to take away even these duties.
The National Review has a subtle article on "The Morality of Animals," by Mr. C. Lloyd Morgan, in which he denies to animals a sense of moral rectitude, hinted at in a letter from Mr. Mann Jones to Mr. Herbert Spencer. Some dogs go near having it, but it may be classed, as Mr. L. Morgan says, as " prudential " or conventional-moral.—Mr. H. S. Gundry, in " Chinese Atrocities," reveals to us how completely the Chinese are under the spell of barbarous ignorance and the control of imaginative and anti-foreign agitators.
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