What General Wavell really is stands revealed almost as convincingly
by his remarkable lectures on leadership, which The Times has printed this week (and is to reprint, I am very glad to see, in pamphlet form), as by his incomparable campaign in Libya. His choice, in the first lecture, of Socrates as the man who had written sounder sense about generalship than anyone else he could discover, tells one (as Mr. Orwell would say) a good deal about General Wavell. His list of the moral qualities requisite in a leader opens with what turns out to be a striking piece of self-portraiture : " He must have ' character,' which simply means that he knows what he wants, and has the courage and determination to get it." And it was a singularly happy choice which led the lecturer —in 1929—M discussing the principles of strategy, to give as illustration, " A man planning a holiday may decide for himself, or may be advised, that Egypt is the place to go to. That is easy; but then he has to calculate the time it will take him to get there and the cost of the trip, and compare it with the length of the holiday and of his purse " All of which applies equally, I take it, if he has decided that Egypt is the place to go from.
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