LORD WOLSELEY ON SOLDIERLY SUICIDE.
TORD WOLSELEY sends a paper to the Fortnightly 4 Review this month, containing an obiter dictum which is odd, or at all events looks so odd when coldly expressed in
prose—Byron said the same thing before in poetry—that we are tempted to say a word about it. The paper itself, we must premise, is a statement of the attractions which, in Lord Wolseley's judgment, make the soldier's life an attractive one.
These are, first of all, patriotism, which Lord Wolseley ranks very high in the list of virtues ; secondly, the variety, or, in other words, the excitement of the career even when there is no fighting actually on hand; and thirdly, that series of burning emotions which only the successful fighting man can feel, and which Byron summed up in four lines more poetic in expression than Lord Wolseley's, though on this theme his prose becomes poetic, and also more condensed in form :—
"The triumph and the vanity, The rapture of the strife, The earthquake voice of victory, To thee the breath of life."
Directly, Lord Wolseley adds nothing to this short list of reasons why a soldier should think life worth living; but in- directly, he shows that he is conscious of a fourth, which we have heard considerable soldiers say was to them one of the strongest attractions to the military profession. Soldiering is, of all possible careers, the one least harassed by many forms of doubt, the one in which you derive most assistance from certainty as to what your duty is. The rule, "obey your orders," is at once absolute and reasonable, and to an enor- mous number of minds is as comforting and strengthening as, in a different direction, the absolutism of the Roman Catholic Church is to minds similarly constituted. So far from re- volting against discipline, they crave to be disciplined, seek
strength in unquestioning submissiveness, and feel that while obeying they can rise to a height even of heroism of which, if left to their own impulses and judgments, they would be absolutely incapable. Half the troubles of life are over for them, because all its indecisions are removed, because the course is marked out, and they have nothing to do but march on, whether it be to victory or defeat. The relief of having to take an order has for them a never-failing charm. Lord Wolseley does not mention this attraction—he always, in his public deliverances, writes a little too hurriedly, as if the "time for his operation "had been fixed in his chief's orders— but he cannot be insensible to it, for he tells, and tells with a literary skill which we wish he had bestowed on his whole paper, the following moving story :—" One night, in that dismal winter of 1854-5, the Russians forced their way into our second parallel, and having driven out the overworked handful of men on guard there, held it for some short space of time. When we, in our turn, drove them back helter- skelter to their own lines, and reoccupied the parallel, we found on its extreme left, where it dipped down into the Woronzoff ravine, one of our sentries at his post. The enemy had not had enough time to spread out as far as his post, although they had gone very near it. He was not, however, one of those who run before they have been actually attacked. He saw that his comrades had bolted in a panic, and he must have fully recognised the danger he was in of being surrounded and taken prisoner. When found at his post, coolly looking over the parapet towards the Redan, as his orders were, he said that he had been posted there by his officer, and had no intention of leaving his post until he had been properly relieved. His coolness and high sense of duty made a deep impression upon my young mind at the time. No Marshal's baton was in his knapsack ; he expected nothing, he got nothing. It was by accident only that his gallant conduct on that dark winter's night was even known to any one ; but he must have had the
satisfactory consciousness in his heart that he had done his duty." And also the satisfaction, to many minds the supreme satisfaction, of knowing clearly from a source outside of him- self what his duty was. Whatever else was uncertain, it was certain that his orders were to stop there, and that orders ought to be obeyed ; and what did the rest matter ?
Enough of the general paper, however: what we want to argue about with Lord Wolseley is his opinion as to the occasional
duty, or if he likes it better, the occasional becomingness, of suicide in a soldier. So keen in him is the horror of defeat, "the madness of the misery," as Byron puts it, that he is half- inclined to plead excuses for the General who, when defeat is certain, puts a pistol to his head—as Bismarck said he would have done, had Sadowa been lost—but, on reflection, he represses that inclination, and acknowledges—is it perchance a little regretfully ?—that "the leader who fighting for his country only, with no thought of self, committed suicide merely because his pride did not allow him to brook defeat, might by so doing seriously injure his country's interests. To leave an army at such a time without the head accustomed to command, might be its ruin. The battle may be lost, but its loss may not render hopeless the attainment of the aim, the interests for which the nation was contending. As long as a man can be of any use to his country, it is highly criminal on his part to end his days because of any personal consideration." But, "not taking into account the religious aspect of the question," which is, we may just remark, very like a soldier not taking into account the Articles of War, Lord Wolseley thinks selfish men, and especially selfish men who have built up thrones or are defending thrones, should obey a different rule :—" It was but fit and becoming that Richard III. should die on the field of Bosworth. Had James II. had any nobility of sentiment, instead of galloping from the Boyne to Dublin, he would have ended his useless life by a charge into the ranks of William's Enniskilleners. If Monmouth had been made of the stern stuff from which heroes are moulded, he would have died in the 'Busses Rhine' on Sedgetnoor with the poor country folk who had risen in his cause ; and surely, if Napoleon had been truly a gentleman, his body would have been found at Waterloo amidst the fallen of that glorious Guard who had lived and died for him and for his dynasty." In other words, a man of that kind should, when defeated, seek death of set purpose ; and, "not taking religion into account," we should, as a matter of intellectual curiosity, just like to know why. The majority of men are selfish, and if a selfish man ought to seek death when defeated in a big struggle, that is counsel to be considered. Of course, if a charge, however hopeless. can protect the defeated soldiers, or hinder the enemy of his full advantage. or restore the reputation of an army, we see Lord Wolseley's argument, and have no controversy to maintain with him. Leonidas was no suicide, even though he were hopeless, nor is any leader of any forlorn-hope. however desperate the endeavour. But Lord Wolseley clearly intends a voluntary death from despair, and why he should consider that " noble," or " becoming." or even " gentlemanly," it puzzles us to discover. Perhaps he will say that the man who for his own interests leads others to die ought to die too ; but that argument, if it were true, would apply to successful combat for selfish ends, just as much as to un- successful. Napoleon, whom we take. with Lord Wolseley, to be the grand example of a perfectly selfish soldier, was just as selfish at Austerlitz, and led to death a great many more men than at Waterloo ; yet because his enemies retreated, it would not, on Lord Wolseley's theory, have been either becoming or noble or gentlemanly to seek an honourable death on that pre- eminently bloody field. Why not ? Lord Wolseley may say that by winning, Napoleon at Austerlitz compensated his soldiers for the battle caused by his own ambition ; but he surely would not extend the idea of that compensation to the dead. The French have a theory, which they defend in their literature and act on in practice, that a voluntary death is a kind of sacrifice, cleansing the soul of crime and the reputation of stain, and even maintain—or, at least, their novelists do—that it wipes from the children the taint which they otherwise contract from the father's or mother's criminality or misconduct. But then the French are logical, apply their theory in all cases, and pardon the fraudulent bankrupt or the exposed seducer, if only he will execute sentence of capital punishment upon himself. Lord Wolseley, we suspect, would not be so logical ; and why, then, does he apply his theory to the soldier ? Is it, perhaps, for this reason ? There runs through his whole paper a trace of a feeling of which we never knew a real fighting soldier to be quite devoid, and of which a great many civilian critics of armies are entirely unaware.—the feeling, namely, that the danger of the soldier, his perpetual readiness to lose his life, makes him separate from other men, even from military doetors or engineers, places him under a different code not only of virtue but of morality, and operates in some sense as a compensation even for ill deeds. He was a blackguard, but what a soldier !" has been said of more men than the private in the Buffs, if, therefore, a selfish ruler, seeking his own advantage, brings an army into trouble, and does not give them the compensation of victory, he, to use theo- logical terms, sins, and should purge himself by sharing the fate which he has brought on others. The thought is subtle, and is, we arc nearly sure, the one in Lord Wolseley's mind ; but where is the purgation ? Neither suicide in a useless charge, nor suicide like King Saul's, does any good, or brings any comfort to the dead soldiers ; while for the living soldiers, it only deepens their sense of the utterness of their overthrow, and for the ruler himself, it is nothing but a retreat from the retributive despair he has brought upon himself. It seems to us that Lord Wolseley's conception of the non-patriotic soldier who dies voluntarily in the moment of defeat, is not a high, but a low one ; and that the cool adven- turer who fights to the last, and then bows to ill-luck, and pays his stake with a smile, has mon idea of the becoming, and the noble, and especially the gentlemanly, than Lord Wolseley's imaginary hero. Wholly apart from religion, as that is to be left out of the discussion, coolness, endurance, tranquillity under misfortune, used to be inseparable from the character either of hero gentleman, and are surely ill superseded by a readiness to meet a volun- tary death because you have been unsuccessful. Let the morality be only that of Marcus Aurelius, or even of Lord Chesterfield, and still to be able to endure misfortune, whether caused by one's own acts or no, is part of the character which either of them would have admired. It is trite the Stoics held suicide to be permissible, or even, under certain conditions, obligatory ; but we never heard that in their philosophy the right or the obligation was limited to the moment of defeat. Lord Wolseley is really arguing, in expressing the opinion we have quoted, that the WM1 wtpux ie arduis is not a constituent part of the character either of the hero or of the great gentleman, and he can hardly intend
to teach that. Byron, it is true, agreed with him, and held that Napoleon, in surviving Waterloo, was 'most ignobly brave ;" but Lara is not the highest ideal, even of the soldier who fights for his own hand.
Previous page
