“WHAT THEY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR”
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“WHAT THEY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR”
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“ WHAT THEY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR ”
Standing in front of a portrait of the late Lord Fisher, and contemplating it through a lorgnette a Young Person in Pink, whose bump of veneration must have been represented by a slight depression, was overheard to exclaim, in a pleasing voice, but with a kind of drawling disdain: “Is that the face that launched a thousand ships?” An unkind quotation this, for the features of the gallant gargoyle (1) in question must have borne about as much resemblance to those of Helen as a real idol does to a matinée idol. But it sets one meditating on the causes of wars, or as the ingenuous Peterkin put it to his long-suffering grandfather, Old Kaspar, “what they fought each other for.” And here it should be remarked that the causes of a war are very different from the pretexts for, or the occasions of, a war. One can rarely put one's finger on one particular point and say that it, and it alone, was the cause of any given war. Take the Trojan War, for instance. It is only fair to Helen to remember that when Paris left Sparta and took her with him, he also included in his baggage, with culpable carelessness, a considerable sum of money belonging to Menelaus. This may have rankled, and perhaps Helen's face was not entirely to blame.(2) It is not safe to trust generalizations. Swift, with that engaging cynicism which makes his works such pleasant reading, remarks “Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak.” Bismarck made the Topsy-like remark of the wars which he engineered, not disdaining in one case to go perilously near to forgery.(3) that they “lay in the logic of history.” No doubt he had his Prussian tongue in his Junker cheek when he said this, for it is the kind of argument that might (if he were daft) be used by a dishonest jockey carpeted before the stewards for pulling a horse. One would give much to see the faces, and to hear the language, of those august beings, on a jockey urging that his mount was predestined to be beaten. Unfortunately there is no international tribunal empowered to “warn off” unscrupulous statesmen. Bismarck's methods, indeed, remind one rather of the behaviour of the Bedouin as described by Gibbon. “If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying with a loud voice, ‘Undress thyself, thy aunt is without a garment.’” Anxiety inspired by the nudity of other people's aunts is, no doubt, most laudable on general principles, but it should not be used as a pretext for theft. One can get a general sort of idea of the causes of wars by classifying them. There are, for instance, religious wars, wars of aggression, wars of succession, balance-of-power wars, trade wars and wars on a point of honour, to mention a few. International lawyers also talk, oddly enough, of “unsolemn wars”, i.e., when two nations slip into a war without any solemnity or formal declaration. They also used to write of an odd “kind of war” which they called “general reprisals.” This was when the sovereign gave his subjects permission to seize the persons and property of another power. De Witt, the Grand Pensionary (this sounds a very pleasant job) of the States General, declared that he saw no difference between general reprisals and open war. He appears to have been a sensible man, except, perhaps, to these same international lawyers. And here I would remark that to the uninitiated, those who have received a call to no bar but the saloon and the private, there are two very curious things about international law. In the first place, it is not law and in the second place, many of the authorities on it have such extraordinary names, witness Bynkershoek, Miltitz, Kluber, Wolfius, Burlamaqui, Travers Twiss, Wenk, Puffendorf, Kamptz and F. E. Smith. Could any one invent more tortuous reasonings than a man called Travers Twiss? Is not an authority called Bynkershoek likely to make any subject he touches as clear as mud? Who could withstand the Prussian arguments of a Kluber? (4) And are not some other of these names, as Voltaire said of Habakkuk, capable de tout? Even Vattel, one of the greatest authorities on the Law of Nations, does not seem to be free from the midsummer madness that these names suggest. Talking of the Rape of the Sabines, he says it was entirely justified, because “a nation can only preserve and perpetuate itself by propagation. “This, as the dog's-meat man said, “is a self-evident proposition.” But he hastily adds – “how damnably unjust!” any woman reader may rightly exclaim – “No nation was obliged to furnish the Amazons with males.” (5) Religious wars are, happily, in civilized countries at all events, a thing of the past. The Crusades are, perhaps, the most remarkable instances of religious wars, but even here trade was to a certain extent making use of religion as a pretext. In 1096, the Doge of Venice “recommended the official acceptance of the Crusade upon the grounds of religion --- and of commercial utility.” (6) A similar religious enthusiasm caused the Venetians to join the Fourth Crusade, and, incidentally, to sack Constantinople. The world will probably never see again such enthusiasm for war as there was for the First Crusade. “The most savage countries,” as Malmsbury puts it, “contributed followers.” He proceeds to dot the i's; “the Welshman left his hunting, the Scotch his fellowship with vermin, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian his raw fish.” And here, as an odd instance of the way in which national characteristics persist through the ages, it is interesting to note that Macaulay, writing of the English traveller in Scotland, in 1689, says, “he would rise from his couch half poisoned with stench and half mad with the itch.” But, Look who's here!” as they say at the cinema: Caledonia, looking even sterner and wilder than usual! So let us hastily apologize by asking, Where in these isles is there a finer - or colder - city than Edinburgh? What part of England produces brawer (i.e. more, or rather mair, braw) lassies than Scotland? Has not modern research proved that Nero (as if his character were not black enough already) while Rome was burning, played, not the fiddle, but the bagpipe? Can London point to any street, with the possible exception of that noble thoroughfare, the Edgware Road, (known to the aborigines as “Edgerro”) at all like Sauchiehall Street? No wonder that in Glasgow they have adopted the Neapolitan proverb, and exclaim with pride to the bewildered southerner, “Hoots, mon, see Sauchiehall Street and gang oot!” But to return to the Crusades. Bishops,(7) it will be remembered, as the Church abhorred the shedding of blood, went armed with clubs, and would knock down a Saracen and beat him to death quite calmly. And they had odd companions, “vulgus, tam casti quam incesti, adulteri, homicidœ, fures, perjuri, prœdones, quin et sexus fœmininus.” One may well ask, que diable allaient-ils faire dans cette galére? A far more motley crowd than the Duke's son, cook's son, and their companions, of Mr. Kipling's verse. Amongst wars due to religious fervour the Hussite Wars should be of interest to soldiers, owing to the use made in them of the hradba vozova. This, the invention of Ziska, was a kind of medieval kinsman of the tank. It was, in fact, an armoured wagon, and owed its existence to the fact that Ziska had to evolve for his forces, which consisted almost entirely of infantry, some means of coping with the attack of horsemen. Lashed together with iron chains they made a kind of lager in defence, but were also used f or attack, sharpshooters being placed next to the drivers of the wagons.(8) Ziska, one-eyed, pious and simple, has been compared by historians to Oliver Cromwell. His martial ardour was such that (so it is said) when he died he left directions that his body should be flayed and his skin used as a drum, an instance of professional zeal of great, and in these days unequalled, rarity. The Hussite Wars are also of interest from their connection with King Wenceslaus, that excellent monarch who, on a famous occasion, emerged from wherever he was, “looked out” and contemplated a wintry world. Historians mention the deplorable fact that he was “much addicted to drunkenness”; this is hinted at in the carol, in which, it will be remembered, he calls loudly for wine. Wars caused by a point of honour are probably a thing of the past. In 1661, Louis XIV nearly declared war on Spain, because the Spanish ambassador in London, De Watteville, placed his coach in front of that belonging to the French ambassador. This resulted in what modern reporters call “un ugly fracas”, in which the Spaniards dragged the coachman from the French ambassadorial box after ham-stringing the horses. A somewhat similar case occurred in 1830, when one of the reasons why the French invaded Algeria was that the Dey in an audience with the French Consul-general, lost his temper and “lui porta plusieurs coups d'un chasse-mouche qu'il tenait à la main, et lui ordonna de se retirer.” No one could be expected to stand this, for, as the anonymous Junius says, “to depart in the minutest article from the niceness and strictness of punctilio, is as dangerous to national honour as it is to female virtue. The woman who admits of one familiarity seldom knows where to stop, or what to refuse; and when the counsels of a great country give way in a single instance, when they are once inclined to submission, every step accelerates the rapidity of their descent.” As the old saying puts it, “Familiarity breeds attempts.” Somewhat akin to the point-of-honour wars are some of the minor British campaigns, when some dusky monarch has objected to or ignored our Civis Britannicus attitude. The Abyssinian War comes partly, into this category. It might, however, be argued that the real reason for this war was the dilatoriness of the Foreign Office. The British Consul in Abyssinia, C. D. Cameron, was charged by King Theodore to forward to Queen Victoria a letter containing a proposal that he should send an embassy to England. The letter was duly sent. It was a most polite letter. It began, “I hope Your Majesty is in good health. By the power of God I am well.” But the Foreign Office appears to have filed it, or mislaid it, or forgotten it. Theodore was annoyed, and imprisoned the British Consul; having acquired the habit, when Mr. Rassam arrived, bearing at last an answer to the long-neglected letter, he threw him also into prison. Perhaps the moral is that a Government Department should be punctiliously polite to a descendant of the Queen of Sheba --- a descendant who was so proud of his lineage that it is said that he contemplated making the widowed Queen of England an offer of marriage. To tell the truth, at this period, Whitehall does not appear to have been at its best. A few months later, in 1869, a Mr. Higginbotham complained in the Legislature of Victoria, that “the Colonies were governed by a person named Rogers”, referring, to the chief clerk in the Colonial Office. It has also been stated that about this time, in another Government Office, which shall be nameless, an official letter was sent to Stowe House, addressed, “Messrs. Buckingham & Chandos.” But it was a Minister, not a permanent official, who, when his private secretary (let us call him the Hon. Harry Highbrow, afterwards Lord I'amtoadd) casually remarked that he had discovered an anacoluthon in a recently received dispatch, exclaimed with horror and dismay depicted on his noble and intelligent countenance, “Good God! Did you kill it?” As befits a nation of shopkeepers(9) many, wars have been trade wars. A good instance is the first Dutch War, which was occasioned by the Navigation Act of 1651, directed against Holland's overseas trade. This war brought in its train the expedition against the Spanish West Indies, a filibustering expedition largely due to the fact that Cromwell, having made peace with the Dutch, found himself with “one hundred and sixty sail of brave and well-appointed ships swimming at sea.” The Protector's apologists say that this expedition was not for plunder, but a “spirited Protestant demonstration in force.” This sounds a Pickwickian, not to say Pecksniffian apology. It would be equally difficult to justify another of England's trade wars, the Opium War of 1840, with China. It was chiefly trade which was responsible for the American War of Independence, or Revolutionary War, according to one's point of view. An American historian, J. Fiske, puts it well. “As in Mrs. Gamp's case, a teapot became the occasion of a division between friends.” There are many “if's” in history, and one of the most curious is, if on the 8th of May, 1767, Charles Townshend at dinner had not drunk too much champagne he would not have made his celebrated “champagne speech”, which had such a wild success that it appears to have gone to his head, and he might not have brought forward, as he did a few days later, his mad “plan for producing a revenue on imports into America.” And, another quaint “if”; if the House of Commons had taken the advice of Alderman Beckford (father of the author of “Vathek”), “Do like the best of physicians and heal the disease by doing nothing,” the Boston Tea Party might never have taken place, and England might now “shorely” be a part of “those United States”, and be using instead of the languid “Hear! Hear!” the vivacious “Attaboy!” Amongst the wars that ought never to have been allowed to take place an outstanding example is England's war with America in 1812. As Colonel Vestal of the United States Army puts it in his most interesting volume, “The Maintenance of Peace”, “the country which professed liberty as a creed arrayed itself on the side of a nation which threatened to enslave the whole world.” Tactless English ministers, American statesmen blind to what Great Britain was fighting for, the old question of the Right of Search, gratitude to France for help during the Revolution, all these helped to bring about the war. It is very pleasant to know that this same gratitude was one of the reasons why the United States took up Germany's glove in 1917. One of the most picturesque incidents of the late war must have been General Pershing standing in Paris in front of the statue of Lafayette, saluting and crying, with a loud voice, “Lafayette, nous voici!” Another American historian, W. F. Johnson, approves Lord Liverpool's words that “the war [of 1812 ] on the part of America had been a war of passion, of party spirit, and not a war of policy, of interest, or of necessity.” In Boston, which was bitterly opposed to it, it was called at the time: “Mr. Madison's(10) War.” There were two curious incidents connected with this war. On June 16, 1812, the British Government announced that the Orders in Council, which were the chief bone of contention, would be withdrawn. But before this news could reach Washington, the United States officially declared war on the eighteenth of June. Peace was signed on December 24, 1814, but, before this was known in the United States, the battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, and England received a bad beating. Of wars of aggression one of the most monstrous and unjust wars ever waged was that of Frederick the Great Robber King when he invaded Silesia. He was perfectly frank about it. One of his excuses was “the desire to make a name.” “I scorn your European system of international law” was another of his pleasant remarks. According to Voltaire he gave as a pretext, “Troops always ready to act,(11) my well-filled treasury and the vivacity of my disposition --- these were my reasons for making war upon Maria Theresa.” The situation of Austria was another admirable reason: as Frederick puts it in his “Histoire de men temps”: “Les finances étoient dérangées, l'armée étoit délabrée et décour agée . . . avec cela placez à la tête de ce gouvernement une jeune princesse sans expérience.” This last excuse for breaking a solemn engagement, the Pragmatic Sanction (what a name for a state paper!), must surely satisfy any reasonable being. It certainly seems to have satisfied Carlyle, who, in a passage rather resembling Mr. Curdle's comments on the Infant Phenomenon, writes, “a veracious man he was, at all points, not even conscious of his veracity.” So may a highwayman who holds a pistol to his victim's head, observing, “I am armed and you are not: your money or your life,” be called a veracious man. This much may, however, be said for Frederick: that he did not indulge in the canting humbug of a successor who, in 1870, wrote home, in the often quoted parody of Coventry Patmore:- The Lord be praised, my dear Augusta, We've won a battle --- such a buster! Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Nor would he have been guilty of the hypocrisy of a later successor, whose heart “bled for Louvain.” The reasons given at the time for embarking on a war are often of the most trivial nature. In 1672 Charles II declared war on Holland on a very flimsy pretext. In the words of Hume, “the detention of some English in Surinam is mentioned, though it appears that these persons had voluntarily remained there: the refusal of a Dutch fleet on their own coasts to strike(12) to an English yacht is much aggravated; and, to piece up all these pretensions some abusive pictures are mentioned.” This was an allusion to a portrait of Cornelius de Witt, showing in the background some ships on fire in a harbour, which the touchy Charles rightly assumed to be Chatham, and resented. But, alas! the real reason for this war was a bribe from Louis XIV, which took the form both of hard cash and “the childish, simple baby face” of Mlle de Querouaille. Still, Stuarts will be Stuarts and it is difficult not to forgive them anything. Another trivial excuse was that of Peter the Great who justified his war on Charles XII of Sweden by publishing a manifesto to the effect that “they had not paid him sufficient honours when he went incognito to Riga, and that they had charged his ambassadors too high for provisions.” Of recent years this last pretext might well have set the whole world a-fighting again. The Muse of History in ancient times appears to have resembled a blowsy, bouncing, rustic maiden, ready, as is the custom of rustic maidens (so one has read), to listen eagerly to any story and to swallow it without so much as saying “My!” Nowadays Clio is a very different person, a regular unbelieving Thomasine, a kind of a Girtonized Miss Blimber, with horn-rimmed glasses, and as capable as any judge on the Bench - more, perhaps, than some - of weighing evidence for and against. The statement that oysters induced Julius Caeser to invade Britain is, as Huckleberry Finn remarked of some passages in the books lent him by Miss Watson, “interesting, but tough.” Still, there it is, “spes margaritarum,” so Suetonius tells us, was one of the reasons why the Romans invaded us. One can picture the legionaries “a-opening oysters like steam”, as Mr. Ben Allen did, and one can fancy their disgust at finding inside no pearls, but simply “bivalva suculenta”, as, no doubt, they called them. It was probably disappointment that led Julius Caeser to pen the unkind remark that “no one ever thought of visiting Britain unless he had some substantial reason for it.” The amiable Anacharsis remarked, “the general character of all wars is the same: they originate in the ambition of princes and terminate in the misery of the people.” There certainly have been many wars in which the winning side has had little to show for its expenditure of life and money. Apart from honour and glory and Miss Nightingale(13) and her reforms, what benefit did Great Britain derive from the Crimean War? All that the writer can think of is a collection of Russian books, now under his charge in the War Office Library, which came from the Garrison Library at Sebastopol. The custody of the Holy Places was made the pretext, but the causes of the war would seem to have been partly personal and partly the so-called will of Peter the Great, which urged his successors at all costs to extend northward and southward and to advance as far as possible towards Constantinople and India: "”to work out this raise wars continuously.” On the personal side one cause undoubtedly lay in the Czar's attitude to Napoleon III, whom he persisted in addressing as “mon cher ami” instead of “Monsieur, mon frére.” In this matter, however, Napoleon III scored with true French politeness: he said to the Russian Ambassador at his first audience, “vous remercierez chalereusement Sa Majesté Impériale de sa bienveillance et surtout du mot de bon ami dont elle s'est servie, car l'on subit ses fréres et l'on choisit ses amis.” " Décidément,” said the Ambassador as he left the Tuileries, “c'est quelqu'un.” Another personal point is that the Czar Nicholas and Stratford Canning, whom he had refused to receive as British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, (14) had always been opposed to each other. Moreover, the Czar never believed that Great Britain would show fight: he was certain that “because of her Peace Party, her traders and her Prime Minister, it was impossible for England to move” (Kinglake). Of recent years another Emperor and his advisers made almost exactly the same mistake --- this is why we are called “perfidious." It was a violent explosion that helped to bring about the war of 1859, for it was Orsini's bomb, in 1858, which caused Napoleon III to decide that it was necessary to “do something for Italy.” It also had another remarkable result. The bomb was Birmingham-made, and this so inflamed the French nation that the Journal Officiel was filled with letters, ostensibly of congratulation on the Emperor's escape but really denouncing England. Most of these letters came from the colonels of various French regiments, one of whom went so far as to demand: “que le repaire infâme où s'ourdissent d'aussi infernales machinations soit détruit à tout jamais: le pays le demande à grands cris, et l'armée saurait y dépenser jusqu'à la dernière goutte de son sang.” The result in England was the Volunteer movement of 1859, so the Birmingham bomb helped to free Italy, and revived the Volunteers. Secret diplomacy, the ambitions of sovereigns, the vagaries of their mistresses, the intrigues of ministers, all these have been often blamed as the causes of wars in the past. But were they any worse than the modern Press? The Spanish-American War, owing to Spanish misgovernment, and American interests, in Cuba, was no doubt inevitable. But it is impossible to say anything in defence of the journal which dug up from its files an old plate representing an eclipse of the sun and reproduced it as a photograph of the hole made in the Maine, which, it is extremely probable, was destroyed by a mine placed in position not by the Spanish, but by the Cuban insurgents. Another paper got hold of, and printed, a private letter from Señor de Lome, the Spanish Minister in Washington, in which President McKinley was described as “a cheap politician.” The real Yellow Peril is not China or Japan, but the yellow Press. Many hard things have been said about the Balance of Power by those who think that Utopia can be run up as quickly as a jerry-built villa, and it has been blamed as the cause of many wars. But what exactly is the Balance of Power? It exists, as has been well said by Professor Oppenheim, “to prevent any member of the Family, of Nations from becoming omnipotent.” Louis XIV and Napoleon I both threatened the balance of power; to restore its equilibrium was the object of the nations who combined against le Roi Soleil, and, as our simple ancestors put it, the Corsican Ogre. Up to 1867, in the preamble to the Mutiny Act, “the preservation of the balance of power in Europe” was given as one of the reasons why we maintained an army. These words were struck out at the instigation of Mr. Bright,(15) to whom Europe meant nothing and Manchester everything. He described it (the balance of power) as “a foul idol --- fouler than any heathen tribe ever worshipped.” Perhaps, perhaps not, but by no means so foul, all decent people will agree, as child labour in factories, an infamy which had this good man's cordial approval. To the average person it is a mystery why this eloquent orator, who had so many noble ideals, should have thought that children should have been better employed sweating their little hearts out in factories rather than playing in fields, or what pass for fields in the Black Country. After all, to denounce the balance of power is rather like denouncing a dentist's forceps: this may be a very foul instrument when one thinks of it while sitting in the dentists' waiting room, but it serves an excellent purpose. So does the policeman's truncheon, though no doubt many have a violent objection to it. There were printed on the events leading up to the late European War, Blue Books, Yellow Books, Red Books, Green Books and White Books: indeed, a German publisher, with unwonted humour, combined them all in a Regenbogen Book. But the historian of the future will search them in vain for any mention of the real original causes of the war, though he will find many pretexts. But when a parvenu empire indulges extensively in aspirations for Weltmacht, and in general swollen-headedness; when it takes as a motto for its mercantile marine, “Mein Feld ist die Welt”; when it develops an Army and Navy all dressed up and nowhere to go; when “Ich”, its ruler, perpetually talks about “buckling on” (“swashbuckling on” would be a better term) “shining armour” in a style of eloquence rather like that of the showman outside a tent, inside which the Fattest Lady in the World and the United States are coyly lurking --- all these, taken together, are more than enough to make the delicate balance of power wobble like the hand of an automatic weighing machine when the most famous citizen of Beaconsfield gets on the foot plate. Perhaps a minor cause would be obvious to any one who gazes on a photograph of the ex-Emperor in mufti which was very popular in Germany before the war, although to an Englishman it seems most astonishing that the photographer did not spend the rest of his unartistic life in a fortress for Majestätsbeleidigung. One should always be polite to Fallen Grandeur, and indeed, to all members of what somebody (perhaps O. Henry) has called the largest club in the world, the “Down-and Out Club.” It is enough, therefore, to say, in a dead language, that this photograph might with justice have inscribed under it “Arrius, totus, teres atque rotundus.” The editor of the Tailor and Cutter, that stern arbiter elegantiarum, would probably add the lines:-
Those pressing prevailers, But what of the future, now that, in most countries, King Demos is sitting, in some cases rather uneasily, upon the throne? Religious wars and wars of succession are, as a Café Royaliste would say, démodé. Perhaps Demos, though it seems a hard thing to say, has not such a nice sense, we will not say, of honour, but of punctilio, so we can rule out wars on a point of honour. But trade and the necessity for new markets still remain a possible source of dispute; the blessings of modern civilization (and, incidentally, of partition) have not yet permeated China as they did Africa during the nineteenth century; the Pacific Ocean seems destined to belie its name; the question of “nationalities” is a very prickly question. But at least we have made a certain amount of progress. Somebody said in the Victorian age: “After all, what is Europe? Half a dozen wicked old baldheads sitting round a green table.” Now, democrats, like other people, may be wicked, unless they live at some Asses-milk-cum-Water, but they are not as a rule bald. Often indeed, they are horribly hirsute. (1) “Your face was absolutely demoniacal” --- King Edward, to Lord Fisher, according to one of the latter's "Memories." return (2) Mr. Payne Knight was so ungallant as to argue that no nations would be so mad as to go to war "for one little woman" --- no true knight this. return (3) It is quite usual in French accounts of the Ems Dispatch to see Bismarck described as le faussaire. "That night Bismarck said his prayers with unusual fervency" (C. G. Robertson). He may well have done so! return (4) I wonder if he was any connection to Sir Thomas Clubber, the officer in command at Chatham Dockyard in the eighteen-thirties. Sir Thomas may well have been, unlike Crummles, a Prussian. return (5) But it has been pointed out to the writer by a kind and learned critic that the Amazons were known as men-slayers, “who killed any men with whom they had any commerce,” so one can understand the reluctance of their contemporaries to intermarry with them. No one would like to see an announcement of his marriage in the papers, knowing that his name would in consequence shortly appear in an adjacent column. return (6) Brown's “Venetian Republic.” return (7) General Leonidas Polk, of the Confederate States, who was killed in the Atlanta campaign in 1864, was before and throughout the war, Bishop of Louisiana. He baptized General J. E. Johnston between two battles, and “thought nothing of it”, like the late Mr. Gear. return (8) See Count Lutzow's " Bohemia." return (9)This phrase, often used by Napoleon, first occurs in a book by M. A. B. Mangourit, a French spy, Vogue en Hanovre, 1805. return (10) Whom that extraordinary character, G. F. Cooke, the American tragedian, called “the King of the Yankee-doodles.” But he atoned for this. When he was hissed at Liverpool he shouted from the stage, “There's not a brick in your dirty town but what is cemented by the blood of a Negro.” The hissing stopped. return (11) The now defunct, or camouflaged, Grosser Generalstab, in its history of the wars of Frederick the Great, is equally frank, and gives as an excuse for the invasion, “die Schlagfertigkeit des preussischen Heeres gegenüber der militarischen Schwache Oesterreichs” --- gross and unblushing candour indeed. return (12) i.e. lower their colours. The yacht in question was the King's yacht the Merlin, with Lady Temple on board; the Commander, Captain Crow, as the scheme miscarried was, on his return to London, thrown into the Tower. return (13) Who, however, according to Mr. Lytton Strachey, seems to have been rather a blessing in disguise. return (14) Mr. Labouchere said “the Crimean War was Stratford Canning's revenge.” return (15) Whom Palmerston, a typical John Bull, regarded as “a displeasing mixture of the bagman and the preacher.” (Lord Morley.) return |
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