LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. KIPLING ON THE APPOINTMENTS TO THE FIRST AND SECOND ARMY CORPS.
[To TEE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR.")
Stn,—In your protest against the appointments of Generals Buller and Wood to command the First and Second Army Corps, it seems to me you have missed one aspect of the case, —its likeness to the aged anecdote of the man with the ferret-bag of whom a fellow-traveller inquired the contents. "Mongooses," was the answer. "My brother sees snakes, and I'm taking the mongooses up to kill them." "But your brother doesn't see real snakes." "No, but these aren't real mongooses." Three or four years ago we should have accepted both imaginary army corps and imaginary Generals as serious additions to our defences ; but in the past twenty-four montha we have been manufacturing a real Army, &c., in South Africa. Thanks to "God and the Mauser," we have there now large bodies of men habituated to the use of arms, as well as leaders who possess certain ex- perience of the conditions of actual warfare. Not a few of the latter have by this date acquired sympathy, insight, and comprehension as regards matters that touch their pro- fessional work and the needs of the nation. In like manner, each according to his lights, but all more or less, the rank-and- file have imbibed new notions of the detail and aims of war. Behind these men—it is well to remember—stand a large proportion of the English people intimately connected with them by means of the penny-post ; and through that post informed with minuteness of the defects in fact and in essence of the sYstem under which their kin are employed. They have paid no small price in money and in blood that there might be born an Army, handled by fit and proven leaders. They feel that the nomination to vital commands of the Generale above zneationed is, perhaps, an inadequate return for their outlay. The step suggests a revival of certain impenitent and unlearned methods • which they have been many times assured the nation has abandoned for ever. It seems to ink. cute that, in spite of the pledges of the Government, the whole Army machine is to be hauled back as soon as may be to the old ruts of impotence, pretence, and collapse. Men see that the chosen commanders are not quite in touch with the real Army which with a little tact and a little seriousness might so easily survive. It is not the triviality or ineptitude dis- played in this matter that appals, but the cynical levity,.
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