BOOKS.

A CYCLE OF ADAMS LETTERS.*

Booms have their fates. They also have their surprises. Who, for example, could imagine that A Cyr2e of Adams Letters would contain some of the best reflections on and best descrip- tions of cavalry training and cavalry fighting to be found any- where in the English language ? One expected, of course, high- brow and rather bitter dissertations upon matters of political and social importance from that very superior person, Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister to England during the war of the North and South. One expected, also, poignant and perspicuous reflections from Henry Adams. There is nothing strange in acute criticism of men and books from that mordant and sardonic pen. Though the most generous and most lovable of men, he could, when he chose, "bite into the live man's flesh for parchment." Again, one might expect clever, able, and far-seeing writing about the Army from the member of the Adams family, Charles the younger, who early took part in the Civil War as an officer. But writing good campaign letters home is a very different thing indeed from the masterly portrayal of the images of war which we find in Charles Adams's desoriptions of the way he fought and trained first his troop and then his

regiment If, then, we dwell upon Charles Adams's letters rather than upon the others in the two volumes before us, it is not because the others are not interesting, but because the element of surprise proves so attractive to the reviewer and is likely to prove equally attractive to the reader. And yet, after all, it ought not to have been a surprise to the present reviewer, for he recalls with great pleasure and great vividness a conversation he chanced to have more than twenty years ago at an English country-house, during the Boer War, with Colonel Charles Adams. He well remembers the veteran's very vivid and well-expressed remarks upon the cavalry side of that war. Needless to say, the gallant soldier, though by no means inclined to say smooth things about our troops, knew far too much about war and cavalry operations to take a high and mighty or pitying line about the stupidity of English officers, and about their want of ability to smash the so-called poor, homely, uninstructed farmers of the veld. Colonel Adams knew already all there was to be known about that type of mounted fighter and what difficult customer he is to deal with. He had fought Mosby's Guerillas.

It is interesting and pleasing, though, of course, by no means strange, to find that Colonel Adams had exactly the qualities of leadership and command which we find in the best officers drawn from historic English families. The eternal English officer is apparent in passage after passage. Note the passionate determination to talk no "damned non- sense" about himself. It is not a case of "No flowers by re- quest," but "11 you dare offer me any Ili break your head ! " Charles Adams is indeed proud to pose as a beast but a just beast—an "arbitrary gent" like the man who in Thaokeray's story so much impressed and delighted the cabman. Ah the same, that kind of "arbitrary gent" is not half so Unsympathetic as he pretends to be and is quite well • A Ova. of Adams Loners, 1881-1865. By Worthington Chauncey Ford. 2 vols. London : Con.stable. [tbs. nat.]

understood by his men. Here is the justification of our comment

Meanwhile the re-enlistment question has destroyed all discipline and nearly broken our hearts. It has reduced our regimont to a caucus, and finally three-quarters did not re-enlist. My company alone has kept up to the mark. I told them that I expected myself to go to Europe for sixty days, and that I would therefore have nothing to do with individual re-enlist- ments, but that if the whole company would re-enlist I would remain here and see them home, if I had to remain all winter. The result was highly satisfactory, and more than three-quarters of my men have been mustered into the service for three years from the first of this month. I cannot express how gratified and yet how pained I am at this, as well as almost innumerable little evidences lately of the great confidence in, rather than attachment to me, of the men of my company. They seem to think I am a devil of a fellow. They come to me to decide their bete and to settle questions in discussion ; they wish to know before they re-enlist whether I am going to remain in the regiment ; and finally they come to the conclusion that it would be safe to recruit if I promised not to go away until I saw them home for their furloughs. To be egotistical, I think I see the old family traits cropping out in myself. These men don't oars for me personally. They think me cold, reserved and formal. They feel no affection for me, but they do believe in me ; they have faith in my power of accomplishing results and in my integrity.. . ."

We venture to say that if this passage with the re-enlistment context omitted had been read out to any body of intelligent Englishmen, as having been written by an officer, say, on the Rhine during demobilization, nobody would have found a word odd in it

There is something particularly delightful in the anxiety lest anyone should think that his company felt personal attach- ment rather than mere confidence in him. These Trans- Atlantic and Republican privates of the sixties had, in fact, just the feeling about their officers and what was expected of them which is so well described in Dr. Johnson's "Essay on the Courage of the English Common Soldier."

But what a family was the Adams family for words as well as deeds ! The young soldier constantly tossed out striking and apposite phrases. The knowledge that we poor literary people attain to such things only after much toil, and when we do attain to them cluck like hens, apparently never seemed to have entered his head. "When bad news comes," he writes, "I like to hide my head in the trenches as much as I may." Admirable is the gibe at those who will not take the trouble to read trustworthy military publications, but prefer still to get their information "from that uncontaminated fountain of pure lies, the correspondence of the Daily Press."

Thoroughly sound, too, is the reflection : "One can never be certain of results in war, but fighting generals of Divisions make, as a rule, poor work of it in command of armies." Where, in Heaven's name, did this wise young man get such an insight into the mysteries of G.H.Q. as this ? It took Lord Haig and Sir William Robertson, and small blame to them, all the experi- ence gained from three years' fighting to team the full import of this aphorism. The congenial Adams irony comes to the front in such a passage as that describing the great assault on the works at Petersburg—the assault which failed. "I did not see the mine exploded, though most of my officers did, and they describe it as a most beautiful and striking spectacle—an immense column of debris, mixed with smoke and flame, shooting up in the form of a wheat sheaf some hundred and fifty feet, and then instantly followed by the roar of artillery. . . . Very speedily I began to be suspicious of our success. Our soldiers didn't look or act to my mind like men who had won a victory. There was none of that elation and excitement among the wounded, none of that communicative spirit among the unin- jured which always marks a success. . . . It is agreed that the thing was a perfect success, except that it did not succeed ; and the only reason it did not succeed was that our troops behaved shamefully. They advanced to the crater made by the explosion, and rushed into it for cover and nothing could get them out of it. These points being agreed on, then begins the bickering." The bitterness of this is, however, withdrawn, or rather explained, by Captain Adams. His comment is a mixture of shrewdness, kindliness, and pathos. "Meanwhile, as I see it, one person alone has any right to complain, and that person is Grant. I should think his heart would break. He had out-generalled Lee so, he so thoroughly deserved success, and then to fail because his soldiers wouldn't fight.! It was too bad. . . . I find but one satisfaction in the whole thing. Here now, as before in June, whether he got it or no, Grant deserved :success, and, where this is the case, in spite of fortune, he must ultimately win it. Twice Lee has been saved in spite of himself. Let him look to it, for men are not always lucky."

These last sentences are admirable examples of military writing. They are Roman in their austere magnanimity. Caesar, the Duke of Wellington, Charles Napier, and Kinglake might one and all have been proud to have written them.

Taken at random here also is a reflection in a thoroughly English spirit, on the Draft Riots in New York when the Irish refused to obey the Conscription Law. Mr. Lincoln, unlike our Government, did not give in to the Irishmen's desire to kiss our Lady Peace at home and at the same time claim their share of the laurels abroad :— " AB to the conscription the army is delighted with that, and only regrets that it had no chance to discuss the matter with the gentlemen of New York. We, who have borne the heat and burden of the day, are tired and disgusted at seeing men bought by immense bounties, leaving home one day to return a hero the next, ovations to regiments with unthinned ranks. The three years men receive no bounty. Now we do so much want to see all those who kiss our Lady Peace at home come in for a share of OUT laUTO113. Bo the army feels none the less pleased because it sees an iron hand on the rioters at home."

History does not, however, repeat itself merely in regard to the Irishmen's willingness to fight their friends rather than their enemies. Here is a passage about the Germans and their methods of fighting which seems almost uncanny at the present moment :— "Everywhere war is horrid—no more so here than elsewhere, and we are not so bad as other nations, as we see from the fact that of all our troops the Germans, as ruffians, thieves, and scourges, are most terribly dreaded by all natives of Virginia. They say they don't fear the Cavalry, but they dread the Infantry and the Germans. They turn pale at the name of the 11th Corps."

We must give one more quotation to prove that the officer of English blood is always the same. We venture to say that the fathers, mothers, and wives of officers in the London and English County Regiments who read the following passage will remember that just such words reached them from their sons or husbands :— "As for looking for this regiment in the papers—God forbid you should find it ! Certain regiments are always in the papers. Such are always very green or make up in lying what they lack in character. We have been much amused lately by meeting tall stories of the 2nd Penn. Cavalry, notoriously the greenest regiment in the Division. People at home believe these yarns, but we who know what the work is quietly laugh at the blow- hards. For myself I do not care ever to see my regiment's or my own name mentioned outside of the official documents of the army."

As a postscript to our review of this fascinating volume we may mention two things. One is the passage about the Golden Treasury which Charles Francis Adams, Senior, sent to his elder son. The cavalryman says he laughed when he opened it, for it seemed such an odd book for a camp and the field. "But, strangely enough, I find that I read it more than any book I have, and that it is more eagerly picked up by my friends.

It is very pleasant to lie down in all this dust and heat and to read some charming little thing of Suckling's and Herrick's." We wonder how many thousand Golden Treasuries went to the field in the late war, and this time not merely in the pockets of officers, but also of privates ? It was the good luck of the present writer to give a copy to a private, an Old Contemptible, not a public school university private. This man, by the way, when he came into the hospital asked to borrow a Pope's Homer, because when at the Dardanelles he had been so close to the site of Troy. When he went back to France he took the Golden Treasury with him, and stuck to it as the most valuable possession he had till he was taken prisoner in March, 1918.

The other half of our postscript is the one quotation we shall make from the writings of Charles Adams, Senior. The words . from Jefferson might well have figured in the list of "Desperate Sayings" recently published in these columns :— "How full of significance is this history, which all of us are now helping to make ! It is -literally the third and fourth generation which is paying the bitter penalty for what must now be admitted were the shortcomings of the original founders of the Union. It was Jefferson who uttered the warning words : • I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.' Yet even he in his latest years recoiled in equal terror from the opportunity then presented of applying at least a corrective to the fatal tendency of that moment. We have had it all to do at a period when the dangerous evil had reached the plenitude of its power and threatened to expand its sway over all. Practi- cally the task may be said to have been accomplished. But at what a penalty to the generations now alive, and perhaps to their posterity 1"