Roberts and Wellington

1895

The Lord Puts on Record His Estimate of the Iron Duke.

Lord Roberts has put on record his estimate of the great Duke of Wellington. "A study of Wellington's life and writings," he writes, "leads me to the conclusion that he has been somewhat overrated as a man and greatly underrated as a commander. Stress is often laid on the strict sense of duty by which he is supposed to have been specially actuated, the inference being that personal ambition had little to do with his efforts to succeed in the tasks intrusted to him. That Wellington was honorable, straightforward, resolute and patriotic none can deny, but there appears to be no instance in his military career of adopting a course where his duty was opposed to his own interests, or of his being called upon to sacrifice the latter in order to carry out the former.

"In his case the paths of duty and of personal advancement were identical, and it seems, therefore, hardly reasonable to assume that he differed from other great military leaders — such as Caesar, Marlborough or Napoleon —in being devoid of that desire for distinction and power which is one of the most potent incentives to exertion. At the beginning of the peninsular war his own words were, 'The ball is now at my foot, and I hope I shall have strength enough to give it a good kick!' and the principal reason he gave for wishing to leave India was that he would be more likely to get on in Europe. Possessed of many admirable qualities, Wellington gained the esteem and confidence, but not the affection, of his soldiers. By nature reserved and unsympathetic — perhaps a little selfish — he regarded his army in the light of a fighting machine. When its task was performed and peace established, he ceased to associate with the officers who had been most intimately connected with him in the field, and he did little or nothing to promote the welfare of his soldiers or to make the nation understand what a debt of gratitude it owed them." — Scottish American.

Note: The last word in the original article was "him," which doesn't make any sense in the context.

Wellington and the Toad

1895

Napoleon was worshiped and feared, but men loved and adored the Iron Duke. Of the former, how few are the kindly human traits recorded, while of the other to this day fresh proofs keep coming to light of simple sweetness dwelling long in the minds of men! The following anecdote concerning a letter lately exhumed may serve as one instance out of a thousand illustrating the sympathetic nature of the great commander. The letter, so far as my memory serves, was in some such terms as these:

"Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington begs to inform William Harris that his toad is alive and well."

It seems that the duke, in the course of a country stroll, had come upon a little boy weeping bitterly over a toad. A strange trio they must have been — the lean, keen eyed old soldier, the flushed, sobbing boy, and between them the wrinkled reptile squatting, with tearless eyes and throbbing sides. The boy wept because he was going to school next day. He had come daily to feed his toad. The little heart was racked with grief because he feared his darling would be neglected when he was gone and might starve. The duke's heart was as soft as the boy's, for he undertook to see that the toad was looked after, and the letter above quoted is one of the subsequent bulletins. — Boston Post.

If Bullets Were of Butter

1903

Curious Phenomena of Penetration of Glass By Soft Objects

Somebody — probably that indefatigable interviewer, Lord Mahon — once asked the Duke of Wellington why Souham did not press him more closely in that terrible retreat from Bourgos in 1812, during which, out of a total of about 31,000 men, he lost 7,000 by disease, straggling and desertion. "Because," he replied, "the French had learned that our bullets were not made of butter!" No doubt they were very awkward "pats," those terrible leaden spheres, weighing twelve to the pound, which Brown Bess spread with such deadly result up to her effective range of a little over 100 yards, and the lesson had been read to French conscripts upon many a bloody field. What would have been the bill of mortality had these bullets really been made of butter? An idle question, it may seem, yet one upon which I was set cogitating the other day by a singular incident.

Returning one evening to my own house. I noticed a large round hole in the plate glass window of the library, as if a football had been driven through it. There were no boys about, or the cause might have been such as saute aux veux. Upon reaching the library, I found the floor covered with shattered glass, showing that the impact had been from the outside, but nothing was visible within to account for it. The hole in the plate glass window of the library was as if a football had been driven through the window frame.

More puzzled than ever, I summoned my better half to discuss the problem. She, being of a practical turn, began looking under the furniture for the agent of destruction; while I stood idle, considering such search superfluous, mutely speculating how the deuce a plate glass window was to be replaced in a remote corner of western Scotland. For, mark ye, it was in the first days of the recent frost, and a keen north wind was blowing through the orifice. Presently my wife exclaimed: "Here it is, poor thing!" Between a large arm chair and the fireplace crouched a hen pheasant, which I caught. It showed no wound or sign of damage and straggled vigorously to get free. When it was released upon the terrace it flew a short distance, alighted, ran away strongly and was seen no more. It seems to me very remarkable that a bird should fly uninjured through plate glass as simply as a circus rider jumps through a paper hoop. One has always been told that any man of ordinary strength can drive his fist through a door panel. The only one whom I ever knew to attempt it succeeded, indeed, but at the cost of a dislocated little finger knuckle. It was explained to him that if he had aimed at a point a foot behind the panel instead of at the panel itself, his hand would have passed through without a scratch. But who is there of fortitude to put that to the test? How often has one not cause to wonder at the thickness and strength of an oaken rail through which the slender cannonbone of a horse may be driven, often without an abrasion of the skin. Reverse the process; let the horse's leg be stationary; and the oaken rail be driven against it at high velocity, and who can doubt which would be shattered?

A signal example of the imperious nature of momentum was given a few years ago, when a horse ran off with his rider in the Mall or Constitutional Hill (I forget which), charged the high iron railings in front of Buckingham palace, made a clean breach in them, and both landed unhurt within the inclosure. Force is undoubtedly one of the most intangible, inexplicable of mysteries. One is warned against the use of anthropomorphic terms in discussing it, which tend to divert the intellect from precise analysis, and we are bidden to regard it as no more than the rate per unit of length at which energy is transferred or transformed. But this carries the ordinary mind not very far, in fact, no distance at all, in apprehending what avails in the transference of energy from a soft substance to a hard one, to protect from injury such vulnerable surfaces as the skin on a horse's leg against oak or iron, or a hen pheasant's head against plate glass. — Herbert Maxwell in London Pall Mall Gazette.