ency. "From the earliest days We could not have denuded of my Volunteer service," says In reading Sir John Macdonald's book we cannot but be struck by the unsympathetic attitude assumed by the War Office towards the Volunteers. The Government seems always to have been more desirous of avoiding expense than of securing efficiency. Neither party can escape blame in the matter. The treatment of the Artillery is typical. Though the corps were formed with the approval of the War Office, the War Office took care that their practice should always be useless. They were asked to fire "with old cast-iron smoothbore 32-pounders, using round shot, at distances at which rifle - fire would be effective." For many years this foolish farce was played. As Sir John says, "our military bureau knew, and every foreign country knew through its secret service department, that for any purpose of actual national defence these guns, and the practice carried on with them, were as useless as it would have been to arm the foot Volunteers with the Brown Bess of the Peninsular Campaigns." The episode is discreditable enough, and the plea of economy may not be advanced in extenuation. It would have been far wiser not to have permitted the Volunteers any artillery at all than to have given foreign nations the impression that the Volunteers of England were merely playing at soldiers, and were encouraged in this foolish pastime by the meanness or indifference of their Government. Still worse was the episode of the MartiniHenry rifle, worse because it might have been attended with far more serious results. When this rifle was first adopted, it was suggested that, as its barrel was shorter than that of the Enfield, the bayonet should be lengthened. This was done, with the result that the weight of rifle and bayonet together was greater than it should be. An order was issued, therefore, to diminish the metal in the barrel. "On hearing this,' writes Sir John Macdonald, "Henry at once went to the War Office and pleaded that they should not alter the weight of the weapon-that it had been determined after much calculation and experiment. He pointed out that if the weight was tampered with, the recoil would be seriously affected and rendered unsatisfactory." He spoke to the deaf. The War Office, arguing from false premises, refused to change its conclusion, and those who used the new rifle, thus injured by the officials, had the greatest difficulty in hitting the target at all. Then, still further to tinker the ruined weapon, the charge of powder in the cartridges was diminished, and had not wiser counsels presently prevailed the Martini-Henry would have been rendered useless for ever. We can Sir John Macdonald, as in duty bound, is concerned chiefly with his own Edinburgh. There the warlike spirit awoke at a word. In a brief three months there were formed in the Scottish capital an Advocates' Company, a Citizens' Company, a Company, a Writers to the Signet Company, a University Company, a Solicitors' Company, an Accountants' Company, a Bankers' Company, a Civil Service Company, a Merchant Company, and a Highland Company, all on the condition that they should pay for their own arms, equipment, and uniform. not set forth the patriotism of Edinburgh more eloquently than in this simple statement. As Sir John Macdonald says, the Volunteers were animated by a genuine feeling of selfsacrifice. Though he himself declares that he gave up no more than "a very promising pair of Dundreary whiskers," many there were who cheerfully surrendered their sport and their comfort to the service of their country. So keen were the Advocates to defend their fatherland that they did not wait for their uniforms. They began their drill in the Parliament House at once, and a motley regiment they must have been. "Many," we are told, were comparatively old men, and some of mature years were the despair of the drill - sergeant, who, when the heads of all were in perfect line, saw at intervals many ugly bulges at the level of the waist-belt, protruding their curves of corpulence obtrusively and spoiling the dressing." That the beginning of the movement should be spiced with ridicule was inevitable, but even ridicule was no check to the zeal of the newly-enrolled Volunteers. In the terms most of them did their two drills &day, and often three. Between July and November Sir John himself attended 99 drills out of 101, as is proved by the rollbook of the Advocates' Company, and these attendances by no means satisfied his energy. The zeal of Scotland was presently rewarded. On August 17, 1860, the Queen ordered a review of Volunteers in Edinburgh, and no less than 22,000 marched past. It was a triumph of which the northern half of the kingdom was very justly proud. "The ranks were filled," wrote Queen Victoria in her Diary, "by the very flower and manhood of a hardy and spirited race." And with an equal enthusiasm she wrote to King Leopold of Belgium: "It was magnificent, finer decidedly than London. There were more men, and the scenery there is so splendid. The Scotch are very demonstrative in their loyalty." As Sir John Macdonald's eagerness was keen, so keen, so his promotion was swift. We will let him tell his own tale. VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXV. "In May 1864," he writes, "after I had been in practical command of our Second Battalion for three years, I received my commission as lieutenant-colonel, being at the time twenty-seven years of age. It may interest the reader to know that my receiving a command in the Volunteers of the latter half of the last century brought about a remarkable coincidence. The Volunteers of Edinburgh at the time of the Napoleonic wars were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hope, a member of the Bar, who became Lord Advocate and then the Lord JusticeClerk, and retained his command while he had these offices. It was to be the Colonel Commandant of the Queen's same in my case, as I was LieutenantEdinburgh Rifle Volunteer Brigade when I became Lord Advocate, and continued to hold the command when I was placed on the Bench as the Lord Justice-Clerk." It is a coincidence honourable alike to Advocates and Volunteers. As we have said, the history of a stay-at-home force cannot but be uneventful. Shamfights and shooting competitions at Wimbledon are the most vividly thrilling episodes in the life of a Volunteer, and in both of these Scotland has gained far more than her share of triumphs. The men of Sir John's old brigade have won five Queen's Prizes, a distinction which they share with no other corps, and the Scots have uniformly done themselves justice in international matches. If they failed at first it was because they lacked organisation, because they shot not as a team but as a chance assembly of individuals. But the tireless Sir John Macdonald changed this, and his are the reward and satisfaction of seeing the team of which he G was captain victorious in 1873, 1874, and 1875. A year before the earliest of these victories he had what he calls his "first brush with regulars" on Salisbury Plain, and he confesses that he did not learn much, except what to avoid, from the experience. However that may be, it was resolved to hold manœuvres on a vast scale while the memory of Sedan and Metz was fresh. Two companies of the Queen's Edinburgh were told off for a fortnight's training, and Sir John Macdonald was appointed to the command. The journey from Edinburgh to Salisbury was no doubt a sound lesson in the transportation of troops, and it was not accomplished with out difficulty. No sooner were the Scots arrived at Salisbury than they are given a fine illustration of War Office pedantry. "Before leaving home"-it is thus that Sir John tells the story-"I had sent in a requisition for a supply of water-bottles for my battalion, and had been informed that they would be served out to us on our arrival at the camp. On this day a servicewaggon arrived, in answer to our requisition. I was sent for by the quartermaster, and on coming to the place found a fatigue party unloading out of the waggon a number of wooden articles of coopers' work about a foot in diameter and five inches deep, painted in a strong blue colour. The quartermaster was looking very glum, gazing at one which he held in his hand, like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick. As I came up he handed it to me, and said, 'Look, sir, what they have sent us for waterbottles.' I looked. The squat little barrel had evidently been made many years before, as it was of a pattern which I have seen represented in a picture of incidents in the Peninsular campaigns. These things had evidently been lying neglected in some store for years. It was abso lutely impossible that they could hold water. Their staves were loose, and had gaps between them, and a great many of them had fungoid filth clinging to them. There were no bungs for the holes, and no straps for carrying them." It is certainly not a credit to the Department that such things should be sent, even to the Volunteers, and it is a piece of the same carelessness which considered that guns of any obsolete pattern were good enough for the artillery of defence. But it is not a good method of arousing the enthusiasm of willing defenders, and there is not much that can be said by way of apology for the War Office. As for the Scots, they made the best of their water bottles. They found them invaluable as tablelegs, and when the last of the camp-chairs was broken they piled the barrels until they made convenient seats. These complaints are trivial, and by no means the worst that Sir John Macdonald has to make. He remembers with displeasure that the first march exacted of his soldiers was of twenty-two miles, and that the untrained men were kept six hours without food. Nothing but pride, as he tells us, could have carried them safely through the ordeal. He criticises adversely the decisions of the umpires, and declares that the Guards were awarded a victory which should have been his. But his battalion did not go without its due reward of praise. After the first engagement the Brigadier, Colonel Stephenson, issued an order to the effect that "the manner in which the battalion sustained their fire and main- Grierson tells us that in the tained their position against last twenty years the propor the right of the enemy was highly approved of by the umpire staff and himself." Such are the victories of peace in which an expert's approval takes the place held in actual warfare by the defeat of the enemy. The gratification of the successful Volunteer, though of course far less intense than that of the soldier victorious in war, is the same in kind, and it has been Sir John Macdonald's many times during a long career. Indeed, for length of service and command, Sir John has no rival among the Volunteers of Great Britain, and his eminence is due to the indefatigable zeal and unchanging seriousness with which he regarded his duties. He has always realised the importance of efficiency and discipline. He knows that if the officers of a Volunteer corps fail, the result is an instant falling off in numbers. "As surely as a captain is defective in fitness or in diligence," he says, "so surely will his company diminish in number; and equally, if the senior officer is incompetent or neglectful, the tendency will be for many to resign, and for those who remain to find it difficult to induce others to join, and so to become disheartened and to fall off from steadiness themselves, feeling that discredit will come on them, and that they had better throw the whole thing up. In short, having a right to desert, they do desert by sending in their resig nations." It is therefore the highest tribute which can be paid to the Scottish officers of Volunteers that they have kept their corps up to a high and uniform standard. Major-General tion tion of Scottish Volunteers to the male population has been 1 in 38; the proportion in England has been no more than 1 in 75. How can we praise the national spirit of Scotland more highly than by a recital of these figures? Sir John Macdonald has not merely been an enthusiastic Volunteer for half-a-century; he has proved himself also a keen critic of military discipline and drill. He brought to his adopted profession a mind keenly trained in the law and unprejudiced by a superstitious respect for the soldier's craft. He was a lawyer first, an officer afterwards, nor was he bound hand and foot in the chains of convention. In brief, he regards the discussion of military affairs with the free and open brain of a layman, and the justice of many of his criticisms is proved by their acceptation by a large number of eminent soldiers. From beginning to end Sir John's ambition has been to simplify the DrillBook, and to urge upon our military authorities the importance of making the soldier a fighter, not an ornament. He does not agree with the Russian Grand Duke, quoted by Kinglake, who said: "I hate war, because it spoils the soldiers." Nor does he put forth his views as the result of whim or inexperience. He has profoundly studied the question, not merely on the drilling-ground, but in the literature of war. He has a wide and deep knowledge of soldiers' treatises, and he quotes them |