Marshal Lyautey
MARSHAL LYAUTEY is known as " the royalist who has given
an empire to the Republic." He is a man of great beliefs, with the ability to put them into practice : and these Intimate Letters show how, when he was in Tonquin from 1894-1896, he learned and acted upon the principles of colonial administra- tion of which he recently made such great use in Morocco.
These are particularly interesting to Englishmen, for he could not help being impressed by, and in sympathy with, English colonial methods. On the voyage out he visited the English barracks at Singapore. He was delighted and amazed by their unconventional character : but " I should not dare to bring even the best disposed engineer officer here. He might approve enthusiastically, but would certainly want slavishly to copy the whole plan. It would then form a Colonial Type, the same everywhere. . . . "
Red tape and administrative routine have always been the Marshal's bites noires, and he knew from the first what he wanted. From Saigon, the next port of call after Singapore, he wrote :
" Too many government monuments, too many caryatides, too much plaster, too much gold braid in the streets—what gold braid ! I look for banks, for big business houses, for people and things, in a word, whose salaries are not drawn from the Budget, and whose wealth and position are derived from something other than their monthly pay."
He was greatly influenced by General Gallicni, his chief in Tonquin, and he writes of him with affection and enthusiasm :
" It is the 25th of December, July weather, the setting sun glows on the red 'cliffs opposite at the foot of which the village hums with its preparations for the great annual Pies which begin to-morrow. Colonel Gallicni and Grandmaison captivate us as they describe their life like that of Roman legionaries, constructing roads, building barracks, opening markets, governing a little world, bringing peace, confidence, life, commerce. And Gallieni enchants me by saying other things, which arouse hopes of a partnership in the future. Who knows ? "
Marshal Lyautey was fortunately wrong in fearing that,
once in Tonquin, it would " be necessary to put into a scaled receptacle all vitality, all initiative, all personality." These qualities were too strong in him for any such suppression; The Letters reveal them as vividly as did M. Maurois' excellent Life, to which, indeed, they form an illuminating supplement: Four forewords are a little intimidating ; but, once past those, we find letters which carry their weight of transient topicalities without the slightest difficulty, which are unfailingly inter- esting, and which bear out M. Maurois' estimate of a very re- markable personality.
MONICA REDLICII.
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