The extent to which this method brought me into conflict with the martial imaginings of the critics is hardly to be conveyed by language. The notion that there could be any limit to a soldier's courage, or any preference on his part for life and a whole skin over a glorious death in the service of his country, was inexpressibly revolting to them. Their view was simple, manly, and straightforward, like most impracticable views. A man is either a coward or he is not. If a brave man, then he is afraid of nothing. If a coward, then he is no true soldier; and to represent him as such is to libel a noble profession.

The tone of men who know what they are talking about is remarkably different. Compare, for instance, this significant little passage from no less an authority than Lord Wolseley, who, far from being a cynic, writes about war with an almost schoolboyish enthusiasm, considering that he has seen so much of it :

"One of the most trying things for the captain or subaltern is to make their men who have found some temporary haven of refuge from the enemy's fire, leave it and spring forward in a body to advance over the open upon a position to be attacked. It is even difficult to make a line of men who have lain down, perhaps to take breath after a long advance at a running pace, rise up together."Fortnightly Review, Aug., 1888.

This, you will observe, is your British soldier, who is quite as brave as any soldier in the world. It may be objected, however, by believers in the gameness of blue blood, that it is the British officer who wins our battles, on the playing fields of Eton and elsewhere. Let me, therefore, quote another passage from our veteran commander :

"I have seen a whole division literally crazy with terror when suddenly aroused in the dark by some senseless alarm. I have known even officers to tackle and wound their own comrades upon such occasions. Reasoning men are for the time reduced to the condition of unreasoning animals, who, stricken with terror, will charge walls or houses, unconscious of what they do... [Here Lord Wolseley describes a scare which took place on a certain occasion.] In that night's panic several lost their lives; and many still bear the marks of wounds then received.”Ib., pp. 284-5.

Now let us hear General Horace Porter, a veteran of the American War, which had the advantage of being a civil war, the most respectable sort of war, since there is generally a valuable idea of some kind at stake in it. General Porter, a cooler writer than our General having evidently been trained in the world, and not in the army, delivers himself as follows:

"The question most frequently asked of soldiers is How does a man feel in battle?' There is a belief, among some who have never indulged in the pastime of setting themselves up as targets to be shot at, that there is a delicious sort of

exhilaration experienced in battle, which arouses a romantic enthusiasm; surfeits the mind with delightful sensations; makes one yearn for a lifetime of fighting, and feel that peace is a pusillanimous sort of thing at best. Others suppose, on the contrary, that one's knees rattle like a Spanish ballerina's castanets, and that one's mind dwells on little else than the most approved means of running away.

"A happy mean between these two extremes would doubtless define the condition of the average man when he finds that, as a soldier, he is compelled to devote himself to stopping bullets as well as directing them. He stands his ground and faces the dangers into which his profession leads him, under a sense of duty and a regard for his self-respect, but often feels that the sooner the firing ceases, the better it would accord with his notion of the general fitness of things, and that if the enemy is going to fall back, the present moment would be as good a time as any at which to begin such a highly judicious and commendable movement. Braving danger, of course, has its compensations. 'The blood more stirs to rouse a lion than to start a hare.' In the excitement of a charge, or in the enthusiasm of approaching victory, there is a sense of pleasure which no one should attempt to underrate. It is the gratification which is always born of success, and, coming to one at the supreme moment of a favourable crisis in battle, rewards the soldier for many severe trials and perilous tasks.”—(Article in The Century, June, 1888, p. 251.)

Probably nothing could convey a more sickening sense of abandoned pusillanimity to the dramatic critic than the ignoble spectacle of a soldier dodging a bullet. Bunn's sublime conception of Don Cæsar de Bazan, with his breast "expanding to the ball," has fixed for ever the stage ideal of the soldier under fire. General Porter falls far beneath Bunn in this passage:—

"I can recall only two persons who, throughout a rattling musketry fire, always sat in their saddles without moving a muscle or even winking an eye. One was a bugler in the regular cavalry, and the other was General Grant."

It may be urged against me here that in my play I have represented a soldier as shying like a nervous horse, not at bullets, but at such trifles as a young lady snatching a box of sweets from him and throwing it away. But my soldier explains that he has been three days under fire; and though that would, of course, make no difference to the ideal soldier, it makes a considerable difference to the real one, according to General Porter.

"Courage, like everything else, wears out. Troops used to go into action during our late war, displaying a coolness and steadiness the first day that made them seem as if the screeching of shot and shell was the music on which they had been brought up. After fighting a couple of days their nerves gradually lost their tension; their buoyancy of spirits gave way; and dangers they would have laughed at the first day, often sent them panic-stricken to the rear on the third. It was always a curious sight in camp after a three days' fight to watch the effect of the sensitiveness of the nerves: men would start at the slightest sound, and dodge the flight of a bird or a pebble tossed at them. One of the chief amusements on such occasions used to be to throw stones and chips past one another's heads to see the active dodging that would follow."

A simple dramatic paraphrase of that matter-of-fact statement in the first act of "Arms and the Man" has been received as a wild topsy-turvyist invention; and when Captain Bluntschli said to the young lady, "If I were in camp now they'd play all sorts of tricks on me," he was supposed to be confessing himself the champion coward of the Servian army. But the truth is that he was rather showing off, in the style characteristic of the old military hand. When an officer gets over the youthful vanity of cutting a figure as a hero, and comes to understand that courage is a quality for use and not for display, and that the soldier who wins with the least risk is the best soldier, his vanity takes another turn; and, if he is a bit of a humorist, he begins to appreciate the comedy latent in the incongruity between himself and the stage soldier which civilians suppose him. General Porter puts this characteristic of the veteran before us with perfect clearness :

"At the beginning of the war officers felt that, as untested men, they ought to do many things for the sake of appearance that were wholly unnecessary. This at times led to a great deal of posing for effect and useless exposure of life. Officers used to accompany assaulting columns over causeways on horseback, and occupy the most exposed positions that could be found. They were not playing the bravo: they were confirming their own belief in their courage, and acting under the impression that bravery ought not only to be undoubted, but conspicuous. They were simply putting their courage beyond suspicion.

"At a later period of the war, when men began to plume themselves as veterans, they could afford to be more conservative: they had won their spurs; their reputations were established; they were beyond reproach. Officers then dismounted to lead close assaults, dodged shots to their heart's content, did not hesitate to avail themselves of the cover of earthworks when it was wise to seek such shelter, and resorted to many acts which conserved human life and in no wise detracted from their efficiency as soldiers. There was no longer anything done for buncombe: they had settled down to practical business.-Ib, p. 249.

In "Arms and the Man," this very simple and intelligible picture is dramatised by the contrast between the experienced Swiss officer, with a high record for distinguished services, and the Bulgarian hero who wins the battle by an insanely courageous charge for which the Swiss thinks he ought to be court-martialled. Result: the dramatic critics pronounce the Swiss "a poltroon." I again appeal to General Porter for a precedent both for the Swiss's opinion of the heroic Bulgarian, and the possibility of a novice, in "sheer ignorance of the art of war' (as the Swiss puts it) achieving just such a success as I have attributed to Sergius Saranoff :

"Recruits sometimes rush into dangers from which veterans would shrink. When Thomas was holding on to his position at Chickamauga on the after

noon of the second day, and resisting charge after charge of an enemy flushed with success, General Granger came up with a division of troops, many of whom had never before been under fire. As soon as they were deployed in front of the enemy, they set up a yell, sprang over the earthworks, charged into the ranks, and created such consternation that the Confederate veterans were paralysed by the very audacity of such conduct. Granger said, as he watched their movements, 'Just look at them; they don't know any better; they think that's the way it ought to be done. I'll bet they'll never do it again.'

According to the critics, Granger was a cynic and a worldling, incapable of appreciating true courage.

I shall perhaps here be reminded by some of my critics that the charge in "Arms and the Man" was a cavalry charge; and that I am suppressing the damning sneer at military courage implied in Captain Bluntschli's reply to Räina Petkoff's demand to have a cavalry charge. described to her :

:

"BLUNTSCHLI-You never saw a cavalry charge, did you? "RAINA-NO: how could I ?

“Bluntschli—Of course not. Well, it's a funny sight. It's like slinging a handful of peas against a window-pane-first one comes, then two or three close behind them, and then all the rest in a lump.

"RÄINA (thinking of her lover, who has just covered himself with glory in a cavalry charge)-Yes; first one, the bravest of the brave!

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BLUNTSCHLI-Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse. "RAINA-Why should he pull at his horse?

"BLUNTSCHLI-It's running away with him, of course: do you suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be killed?"

Imagine the feelings of the critics-countrymen of the heroes of Balaclava, and trained in warfare by repeated contemplation of the reproductions of Miss Elizabeth Thompson's pictures in the Regent Street shop windows, not to mention the recitations of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," which they have criticised-on hearing this speech from a mere Swiss! I ask them now to put aside these authorities for a moment and tell me whether they have ever seen a horse bolt in Piccadilly or the Row. If so, I would then ask them to consider whether it is not rather likely that in a battlefield, which is, on the whole, rather a startling place, it is not conceivable and even likely that at least one horse out of a squadron may bolt in a charge. Having gently led them to this point, I further ask them how they think they would feel if they happened to be on the back of that horse, with the danger that has so often ended in death in Rotten Row complicated with the glory of charging a regiment practically single-handed. If we are to believe their criticisms, they would be delighted at the distinction. The Swiss captain in my play takes it

Leaving the

for granted that they would pull the horse's head off. difference of opinion unsettled, there can be no doubt as to what their duty would be if they were soldiers. A cavalry charge attains its maximum effect only when it strikes the enemy solid. This fact ought to be particularly well known to Balaclava amateurs; for Kinglake, the popular authority on the subject, gives us specimens of the orders that were heard during the frightful advance down "the valley of death." The dramatic-critical formula on that occasion would undoubtedly have been, "Charge, Chester, charge! on, Stanley on!" Here is the reality :

"The crash of dragoons overthrown by round shot, by grape and by rifle-ball, was alternate with dry technical precepts: 'Back, right flank!' 'Keep back, private This,''Keep back, private That!' 'Close in to your centre!' 'Do look to your dressing!''Right squadron, right squadron, keep back!'”

There is cynicism for you! Nothing but "keep back! keep back!" Then consider the conduct of Lord Cardigan, who rode at the head of the Light Brigade. Though he, too, said " Keep back," when Captain White tried to force the pace, he charged the centre gun of the battery just like a dramatic critic, and was the first man to sweep through the Russian gunners. In fact, he got clean out at the other side of the battery, happening to hit on a narrow opening by chance. The result was that he found himself presently riding down, quite alone, upon a mass of Russian cavalry. Here was a chance to cut them all down single-handed and plant the British flag on a mountain of Muscovite corpses. By refusing it, he flinched from the first-nighter's ideal. Realising the situation when he was twenty yards from the foe, he pulled up and converted that twenty yards into 200 as quickly as was consistent with his dignity as an officer. The stage hero finds in death the supreme consolation of being able to get up and go home when the curtain falls; but the real soldier, even when he leads Balaclava charges under conditions of appalling and prolonged danger, does not commit suicide for nothing. The fact is, Captain Bluntschli's description of the cavalry charge is taken almost verbatim from an account given privately to a friend of mine by an officer who served in the Franco-Prussian war. I am well aware that if I choose to be guided by men grossly ignorant of dramatic criticism, whose sole qualification is that they have seen cavalry charges on stricken fields, I must take the consequences. Happily, as between myself and the public, the consequences have not been unpleasant; and I recommend the experiment to my fellow dramatists with every confidence.

VOL. XI.-No. 62.

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