BOOKS.
ARCHIBALD FORBES'S MEMORIES.*
THE author of these pages is nothing if not a war-corre- spondent. He is the very form and image of that product of the present times, of and from whom we hear so much, who makes history as it flies, after a rapid and incisive fashion, which will require years of study and reams of evidence for the more ambitious historian to contradict or to confirm. At the opening of the first chapter he plunges at once in medias res in true picturesque fashion. "It was down by the Danube side, in the earlier days of the Russo-Turkish War. Skobeleff and myself were squatting in a hole in the ground, to escape the rain of bullets and shells which the Turks were pouring across the river on the detachment which the young General commanded." " Here you and I are,' said Skobeleff with a laugh, like Uriah the Hittite, right in the fore-front of the battle : and how strange it is that quiet stay-at-home folk all over the world, who take their morning papers just as they do their breakfasts, know ever so much more about this war as a whole than we fellows do, who are actually listening to the whistle of the bullets and the crash of the shells !' Skobeleff did not pursue the subject further, because just then a shell exploded right in front of us, and of the mud which it threw up a splash hit him in the face and changed the current of his ideas." The whole mise-en.scene, with "Skobeleff and myself" in the centre, is before us in a few words ; and we are at once pre- pared for the hymn of praise for the war-correspondent which duly follows. His familiarity with a soldier in the position of Skobeleff will be impressive at starting ; and only the hypercritical will detect a very doubtful compliment in the Russian's remark that the morning papers know more about the war, not only than the General who conducts it, but than the reporter who furnishes them with the story. It seems to suggest that the papers must be content with very doubtful information. But that veracity is one of the first of the cor- respondent's qualifications we gather from his theory that the first Napoleon would have been the King amongst them, "if only he could have been a little truthful occasionally." Julius Cwsar, moreover, "would have been an exceptionally brilliant war-correspondent if the profession had been invented in his time, and if he could have weaned himself from the meaner avocations of commanding armies, conquering countries, and ruling nations." We do not know why it is, but there is something in writing of this undeniably "smart" order which jars in connection with Julius Cxsar like the emporium of the Brothers Bocconi under the shadow of the Roman ruins.
"Imperial Canar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away," has more of the ring of reverence in keeping with the name. But old things are mixed with new nowadays, and no one may complain of the juxtaposition, which is evident throughout the book, and is indeed typified by the war-correspondent more, and perhaps more worthily, than by most of the latter- day products. So we must accept from Mr. Forbes such an expression as that Napoleon as a journalist would have "knocked William Howard Russell into a cocked-hat" with fitting, if melancholy, resignation. It certainly re- minds us with some force of Mr. Traill's statement that colloquial English is rather painfully divorced from what used to be called literature when it came to be written down ; but a cocked-hat has, at all events, an historical significance of its own in connection with Bonaparte ; and perhaps Mr. Forbes may so have darkly intended it. Accord- ing to him, the war-correspondent "ought to possess the gift of tongues, be conversant with all European languages, a • Memories and Studies of War and Peace. B— Archibald Forbes. Londou: Cassell and Co. 1895. neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese." He should have the sweet, angelic temperament of a woman, and be as affable as if he were a politician can- vassing for a vote : yet at the same time be big and ugly enough to impress the conviction that it would be highly unwise to take any liberties with him. He should be able to ride anything, from a giraffe to a rat ; be able to ride a hundred miles at a stretch; go without food or sleep for a week; never feel tired; and be capable of writing round-hand for an ignorant telegraph-clerk at a column an hour for six or eight hours, at the end of an arduous journey. He should be a competent judge of warfare, careless of an enemy's fire, know how the day has gone before anybody else does, and be the first bearer of the news before things have settled down. These and other matters are the war-correspondent's province ; and if Mr. Forbes's book goes far to bear out this comic style of opening from a serious point of view, it is probable that his purpose will have been fulfilled. Indeed, whether he wishes it or no, it is serious enough, and will be apt to leave a longing in the minds of weaker men for the day when arbitration or some other gentle process of the time may, if the law of Progress may so please to will it, take the place of the eternal tale of scientific slaughter. Surgeons and hospital-doctors, ambulances and field-hospitals, pass before us in a procession which is apt to remind us more of the grim imagination of Rider Haggard than of anything else, and the whole is varied with sad anecdotes of domestic tragedy and bereavement, culled almost at random from all the writer heard and saw. Of absolute achievement in his own field, perhaps the most exciting instance is to be found in connection with the famous surrender of Metz. The Daily News had sent Mr. Forbes there with plenty of money and a clear field. When the town capitulated he knew of no competitor nearer the frontier than himself. He was quick, in his own words, to enter the beleaguered city; from an American gentleman who had been inside the place throughout the siege he gathered a great mass of infor- mation; he saw the French Army and garrison march out and surrender ; he saw Bazaine drive away to Cerny,—visited the hospitals, talked with military and civilian French- men, and wrote all night in a room in the Hotel de l'Europe. Of course, he adds, he ought to have hurried by road or rail over the forty-five miles to Saarbriicken, there written for his life, and sent sheet by sheet to the telegraph-office. But he pleads that he is Scotch, and thought the money could be saved as he had matters his own way. But two days after- wards, in the same Daily News, appeared a telegram, two fall columns long, minutely and vigorously detailing all the facts. The Times quoted it in full, frankly envying the other paper its correspondent, long supposed to be Forbes. He, meantime, was suffering under a sense of self-abasement, which "turned him physically sick," beaten upon his own ground by an unknown, who had at a stroke, as he puts it, revolutionised war-correspondence in the Old World. Not for some time did Mr. Forbes find out that his successful rival was a casual observer, a young German-American surgeon or hospital-dresser of the name of Muller, who bad undertaken in London to do any journalistic work that fell in his way. His performance was sensational altogether, for he saw the capitulation, and set about utilising his advan- tage, to quote Mr. Forbes, "in the most effective, daring, and purposeful manner." He rode straight away northward along the Moselle valley, through hostile villages, and past open cannon, for forty miles, to the Luxembourg frontier, while the Englishman was seated in his hotel. From an unknown village he got his long telegram sent, no one ever knew how. For then he vanished into space, and was heard of no more. He was advertised and searched for, and Forbes and many others did all they could to find or meet him ; but in the flesh he was not 'seen again, and may not even have heard of the fame he gained. A more picturesque and curious episode the book does not contain. While upon the subject of Metz, it is well to point out that Mr. Forbes is no believer in Bazaine's treachery. He hold r; him to have been stupid but well-meaning, and simply to have been taking what he believed to be his best course, very likely for himself, but equally for France and the Emperor.
About all the foremost military figures of the time the writer has his opinion to give. Lord Wolseley he credits with
much of bad luck as well as of good ; adding that his self- reliance and self-confidence have always re-acted favourably on those around them. Lord Roberts is a fine commander and a fighting soldier; Osman Pacha and General Todleben come in for their different meed of praise and appreciation. Lord Napier of Magdala, Sheridan, Sherman and Grant, Trochu and 31facmahon, heroes of very different times and very different fights—Mr. Forbes has formed his opinion and gives his summary of them all, going far to justify his theory that the correspondent should know all about everything. But his favourite hero is Skobeleff, whom at first he set down as a genial, brilliant, dashing lunatic, but ended by holding to be "nearer being the heaven-born soldier and inspired leader of men than any chief of whom he had personal cogni- sance." Some stories of the two Skobeleffs, father and son, deeply attached to each other, but opposite in character— the father a miser, and the son a spendthrift, and the latter becoming a lieutenant-general, while the father was still in a minor grade—illustrate the text effectively. Once the son arrested his father for reporting himself in undress instead of uniform, and kept him there till he produced some of his unwilling roubles. But the German portraits are the most striking, perhaps unconsciously, of all those which Mr. Forbes supplies, and strongly characteristic of our time. There is a grand seriousness about them which contrasts strangely with all the rest, as does the description of the German troops, after a great victory, gathering together on the field, not for revelry or songs of triumph, but for prayer and for psalms of praise. The Crown Prince's "calm, serene strength of command," his hatred of war and humanity of heart, contrasted with the " Hohenzollern temper" which rose in him when the bullets flew, are the most attractive pictures in the gallery. There never passed a day on campaign on which he did not write to his wife. And so the strange historical procession passes by. Mr. Forbes's book is, indeed, a new kind of literature altogether, which will possess a new kind of fascination for the many students of war, for its pur- pose is to combine the functions of military critic with those of a professional observer,—half-fighter and half-writer. He has, nowadays, to carry his life in his hands as much as the soldier himself ; and, indeed, "must lay his account with adventuring more risk than falls to the lot of the average soldier. The percentage of casualties among war-correspondents has recently been greater than among the actual fighting-men. In the Servian campaign, for instance, there were twelve who kept the field and remained under fire. Of these three were killed and four wounded." The story of a man like this cannot fail to be fall of attractive episodes, though it may be difficult at times to accept his judgments of men and events without considerable hesitation. It seems impossible that a life so led should not bristle with prejudices of all kinds. But the fact of having seen half the history of the day for oneself must lend strange interest to the writing. While more regular historians sit at home and chronicle from authorities, Mr. Forbes can tell us how in Zululand on June 1st, 1879, be was one of a little group at dinner in the cavalry General's tent, when the Quartermaster-General put his head inside the door, and called out, "Good God ! the Prince Imperial is killed." The, man was a practical joker, and the bread was thrown at his head and he was laughed at, till his face proved the story true. And the old story of the Siege of Paris meets us again from another observer,—as savage, as depressing, and, to all appearance, as utterly useless as ever. It is a keen but melancholy book.
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