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reformer on other than fashionable lines; for he will seek to conserve to the poorer classes the virtues and the chances of virtue of which the bourgeoisie in a mistaken patronage would rob them.

A meagre imagination in social questions makes the Cockney treat all conditions of life which differ from his own as pathological states. But the fact of poverty is not in itself pathological: it may be normal and wholesome and socially beneficent. There is, however, one aspect of it which is a fit subject for pathology, and here the Cockney falls into another kind of error. The sight of the slums of our cities moves the honest fellow deeply. He sees no alleviations, and in certain cases, it may be, there are no alleviations. But instead of facing the problem squarely he is apt to fall into emotional abstractions. He loves to point the difference between West Ham and Mayfair, finding a satisfaction half sentimental, half literary in the task. But he is rarely fruitful in remedies; and for drastic measures which go to the root of the mischief he shows all his familiar aversion. He will have nothing to do with stateaided emigration-he calls it "shelving the question" or "a confession of failure." He shrinks from the segregation of wastrels because it does violence to his special brand of humanity. He is guilty, moreover, of a worse blunder. He sees only the pathological side of the community, and, on the plea of desperate urgency,

would suspend the multitudinous activities of the State while this or that sore is diagnosed. So complete is his absorption that the whole of the normal and beneficent activities of a great Empire are as nothing to him in comparison with the ill-humours of a little part. Because he wants to give the steerage passengers better food and quarters he is quite willing to disregard the soundness of the vessel, to fling the chart overboard, and select a casual dock-loafer as captain. It is true he calls the part he is concerned with "the heart of the Empire"; but it is no more the heart of the Empire than the steerage is the heart of the ship. It is the old story, a lack of perspective. so engrossed with the disease of one organ that he has no regard for the sanity of the whole.

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Two centuries ago Lord Bolingbroke defined political genius as "great coolness of judgment united to great warmth of imagination." If this be true the Cockney temperament has none of it, for its judgment is apt to be hectic and its imagination as cold as a stone. The inhabitants of that narrow world have lost touch with their origins, and because the gates of the past are bolted there is also no avenue looking into the future. Their sphere is self-contained and artificially complete; but, to use the jargon of science, it is unrelated and inorganic. They feed greedily upon phrases and emotions, but the verities of life are too gross and solemn

for their favour. They flee them, and by the old selfdeception of man persuade themselves that they never existed. A dapper urban civilisation is all very well, if it is seen by its devotees in its true proportions. It is only when the canons of a suburb are exalted into laws of the universe that the danger begins. Men whose fate it is to live much alone or in wild places, who in their daily round are brought face to face with primitive nature and elemental passions, who see often the bare ribs of our social structure, may lose much in elegance and the minor moralities, but at least they have a sound perspective. They know what qualities of mankind are marked for survival, and they are assured that he who makes light of facts is himself made light of in grim earnest before the end. They know that only out of conflict comes what is worth possessing, and that the world is only the heritage of the meek when the meek go armed against folly and wrong. Let us be very fair to the Cockney temperament. It is essentially second-rate, but in its place it has genuine merits. In literature, if carefully circumscribed, it is the parent of much agree

able work. In society it fosters good manners and pleasant company. In ethics, too, it has its specific place. We need not be dogmatists and call “la petite morale" the enemy of "la grande," for both have their realm. Even in politics it may be useful as the corrective-the illogical corrective if you like—of such follies as the Superman and the pseudoBismarckian. But the fact remains that outside its limits it is an evil, that it perpetually tends to transgress those limits, and that such transgressions cover the larger and more vital part of human affairs. We are too prone nowadays to forgive a blundering statesman because he is a good fellow and a kind father, or because he is full of sympathy with misfortune and profuse in expressing it. Such qualities may fit a man for private life, but they have no earthly connection with public life. What is needed above all things is a more rational and masculine standard of judgment, which shall demand in each sphere the things that properly pertain to it. Then and only then shall we be rid of the folly of the belletrist in politics, and the professional peacemaker in the problems of armed defence.

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FIELD-MARSHAL SIR NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN.

"FOR Empire and Greatnesse it importeth most, that a Nation doe professe Armes, as their principall Honour, Study and Occupation." So says Bacon in an essay which is full of lessons for us in this twentieth century. Just as an honourable war will call forth and foster the noblest qualities of a people, so in the case of individuals the profession of arms surpasses every other pursuit in giving scope and opportunity for all that is most generous in human nature. Examples may be found in all ages, but no country has produced more brilliant instances of the ideal soldier than have the islands of Great Britain. Among these, although others may have attained to wider celebrity, certainly none more truly deserved the title of hero than did Neville Bowles Chamberlain, the subject of this sketch.

Readiness with sword and pen do not often go together, but fortunately in this respect Sir Neville Chamberlain was an exception to the rule. His letters are remarkable for their graphic power as well as for the simplicity which discloses his character and qualities. With even more rare good fortune they fell into the hands of one who preserved them with loving care and for years devoted herself to the task of

arranging them and of collecting other information regarding his career and that of his brother Crawford. It thus came about that Neville Chamberlain's biographer,1 Mr George Forrest, who has just given to the world the story of the Field-Marshal's life, was able to base on exceptionally complete material his glowing picture of one of "the most splendid officers and gallant gentlemen" who ever graced the roll of the Indian Army.

From his earliest years Chamberlain was remarkable for his fearlessness and his oraving for action and adventure. Years afterwards he wrote: "How often, as a youth, have I bewailed not having been born in stirring times." He had Danish blood in his veins, and his biographer, with much show of reason, finds in this fact the source of some of those qualities so characteristic of the Viking race. From the time when as a boy of fourteen he spent most of his probationary year at Woolwich in fighting (with disastrous results to his career at the Military Academy), down to his last campaign when, as the General commanding on the Ambela Pass, he was severely wounded in personally leading his troops to the recapture of the Crag Picquet, he was never so much in his element as when in the

1 Life of Field-Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, G. C.B., G.C.S.I. By G. W. Forrest, C.I.E. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons.

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXV.

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thick of a combat and at the point of the greatest danger. "You can fancy," exclaims this born fighter, "how annoying it must be to have an enemy in front of you and not to attack him;" and again, when telling of some street fighting in which, 88 & subaltern of cavalry, he had little call to participate, he writes: "I was sent with orders to the infantry, ... and once among the fun I could not tear myself away."

As has been hinted, his career at Woolwich was brief and inglorious. Like many another whose character was to be formed and strengthened in the hard school of active service, his boyish spirit was impatient of control and rebelled against academic discipline. He left Woolwich in disgrace, and there was danger of his future being wrecked for want of a congenial field for his energies, when, fortunately for him, he was given a cadetship in the service of the East India Company, and in February 1837, when a little more than seventeen, he set sail for Calcutta. He arrived in India within a few months of the opening of the Afghan campaign, which was destined to be fraught with so much disaster to the British arms, and he was fortunate in being appointed to a regiment which was included in the expeditionary force. On the 10th of December 1838 Neville Chamberlain, with his regiment, the 16th Bengal Infantry, started from Ferozepore a lighthearted, high-spirited boy, on

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the long march to the NorthWest. Just four years elapsed before he once more set foot in British India, and he returned a man, sobered by the trials and toils, the responsibilities and dangers of service in the field, his frame scarred and to some extent crippled for life by wounds, his courage tried and proved in a score of fights in which he had earned such a reputation for gallantry that Sir Charles Napier, himself the most dauntless of veterans, called him "Coeur de Lion,' and James Outram, who also knew not fear, wrote of him as "the most noble and the bravest soldier who ever trod in Afghanistan." It is hard to guess what a young man of such high spirit, and so thirsting for excitement and action as Neville Chamberlain, might have become if condemned to the inactivity and drudgery of life in an Indian cantonment; but a perusal of his letters is sufficient to disclose the remarkable development of his character between his nineteenth year, when he started for Afghanistan, and his twentythird year, when he returned from that country; and it is not unfair to ascribe to the experiences of those years, and to the training which he thus obtained, many of the qualities which made him thenceforward conspicuous as an accomplished soldier and leader of men.

It was at the storming of Ghuznee in July 1839 that Neville Chamberlain first distinguished himself by an act of signal bravery in rescuing under a hot fire a wounded

brother officer. After this more than a year passed almost without incident, Chamberlain (as well as many others who should have been able to form a more accurate judgment) fully persuaded that hostilities were at an end. But when he was chafing at the inaction the sudden revolt of the Ghilzais showed how false was the security in which the British officials had trusted, and Chamberlain's spirits were raised by "a very brisk affair" with the enemy

"No favour or affection on either side-every man for himself and God for us all. I hope [he adds] you will not think that I am of a bloody disposition from what I have said, but you must remember that it is a

soldier's profession to kill his enemies in battle, and had I not done my utmost I should have failed in my duty to my masters, the Queen, and John Company."

Thereafter followed in rapid succession the outbreak the outbreak at Kabul, the disasters to the British force there, the murder of the Envoy, the retreat of Elphinstone's brigade and its complete annihilation in the terrible passes of Khurd-Kabul, Haft Kotal, and Jagdallak. But in these events Chamberlain, fortunately for him, had no share. His regiment formed part of the garrison of Ghazni throughout 1840. In the early summer of 1841 it was withdrawn to Kandahar, and it had actually started from that place on its return march towards India when, on November 8, 1841, news reached General Nott, commanding in western Afghanistan, of the

rising at Kabul and the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes. The 16th Native Infantry was immediately recalled to Kandahar, and in all the fighting of the next nine months, during which Nott held his own at the western capital, Neville Chamberlain was prominent. He was appointed to the 1st Cavalry of Shah Shuja's Contingent, more commonly known as Christie's Horse, to which his brother Crawford had already been attached, and he quickly showed his peculiar aptitude for the work of a cavalry leader. In August, 1842, Nott's force marched for Kabul, and after a series of minor engagements, in which the tribesmen sought to stop his advance, he reached that place on September 17, two days after the arrival by way of the Khyber of the "avenging army" under Pollock. A month later, the British prisoners, survivors from Elphinstone's ill-fated force, having been set at liberty, and the great bazar of Kabul having been destroyed as a mark of British vengeance, the withdrawal to India was begun. Even now the wild tribes of Afghanistan, though worsted, were by no subdued. Day after day the rear-guard was attacked, and Nott's gallant division, which held that post of honour, day by day paid its toll of killed and wounded. At length, on November 7, 1842, four years from the time when the Bengal division had set forth from Ferozepore, the last of the British troops issued from the Khyber. Thus ended our first ill-advised embroilment with

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