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. would suspend the multitudin- 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 whole. emotional abstractions. He Two centuries ago Lord loves to point the difference Bolingbroke defined political between West Ham and May- genius as "great coolness of fair, finding a satisfaction half judgment united to great sentimental, half literary in the warmth of imagination." task. But he is rarely fruitful this be true the Cockney temin remedies; and for drastic perament has none of it, for measures which go to the root its judgment is apt to be hectic of the mischief he shows all and its imagination as cold as He will a stone. his familiar aversion. The inhabitants of have nothing to do with state that narrow world have lost aided emigration-he calls it touch with their origins, and "shelving the question or because the gates of the past "a confession of failure." He are bolted there is also no shrinks from the segregation of avenue looking into the future. wastrels because it does viol- Their sphere is self-contained ence to his special brand of and artificially complete; but, He is guilty, more to use the jargon of science, humanity. over, of a worse blunder. He it is unrelated and inorganic. sees only the pathological side They feed greedily upon phrases of the community, and, on the and emotions, but the verities plea desperate urgency, of life are too gross and solemn of If for their favour. They flee able work. In society it fosters them, and by the old self- good manners and pleasant deception of man persuade persuade company. In ethics, too, it themselves that they never has its specific place. We need existed. A dapper urban civil- not be dogmatists and call “la isation is all very well, if it petite morale" the enemy of is seen by its devotees in its "la grande," for both have true proportions. It is only their realm. Even in politics when the canons of a suburb it may be useful as the correoare exalted into laws of the tive-the illogical correotive if universe that the danger be- you like-of such follies as the gins. Men whose fate it is Superman and the pseudoto live much alone or in wild Bismarckian. But the fact places, who in their daily round remains that outside its limits are brought face to face with it is an evil, that it perpetually primitive nature and elemental tends to transgress those limits, passions, who see often the often the and that such transgressions bare ribs of our social struc- cover the larger and more vital ture, may lose much in elegance part of human affairs. We are and the minor moralities, but too prone nowadays to forat least they have a sound give a blundering statesman perspective. They know what because he is a good fellow and qualities of mankind are marked a kind father, or because he is for survival, and they are as- full of sympathy with misforsured that he who makes light tune and profuse in expressing of facts is himself made light it. Such qualities may fit a of in grim earnest before the man for private life, but they end. They know that only have no earthly connection out of conflict comes what is with public life. worth possessing, and that the needed above all things is a world is only the heritage of the more rational and masculine meek when the meek go armed standard of judgment, which against folly and wrong. Let shall demand in each sphere us be very fair to the Cockney the things that properly pertemperament. It is essentially tain to it. Then and only then second-rate, but in its place it shall we be rid of the folly of has genuine merits. In litera- the belletrist in politics, and ture, if carefully circumscribed, the professional peacemaker in it is the parent of much agree the problems of armed defence. What is FIELD-MARSHAL SIR NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN. arranging them and of collect- "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 the title of hero than did Neville Bowles Chamberlain, the subject of this sketch. From his earliest years Chamberlain was remarkable for his fearlessness and his craving 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 Readiness with sword and of the Viking race. From the pen do not often go together, time when as a boy of fourteen but fortunately in this respect he spent most of his probationSir Neville Chamberlain was ary year at Woolwich in fightan exception to the rule. His ing (with disastrous results to letters are remarkable for their his career at the Military graphic power as well as for Academy), down to his last the simplicity which discloses campaign when, as the General his character and qualities. commanding on the Ambela With even more rare good Pass, he was severely wounded fortune they fell into the hands in personally leading his troops who preserved them to the recapture of the Crag with loving care and for years Picquet, he was never so much devoted herself to the task of in his element as when in the of one 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. B 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 8 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 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 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 that place on September 17, two to stop his advance, he reached 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 means 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 |