binet a list of names of officers suggested for the conduct of a
campaign, said, "I do not know what effect these names produce upon you,
gentlemen, but I confess they make me tremble." The South African war
can hardly be said to have revealed that we have many generals who
closely corresponded to Wordsworth's description of the Happy Warrior,
but rather induced the tremulousness which Lord North experienced.
Still, if, in the strategical region, our solitary recent campaign
rather tends to prove a deficiency of men of supreme gifts, it at all
events proved a considerable degree of competence and devotion. I could
not go so far as a recent writer who regretted the termination of the
Boer War because it interrupted the evolution of tactical science, but
it is undoubtedly true that the growing aversion to war, the intense
dislike to the sacrifice of human life, creates an atmosphere
unfavourable to the development of high military genius; because great
military reputations in times past have generally been acquired by men
who had no such scruples, but who treated the material of their armies
as pawns to be freely sacrificed to the attainment of victory.

Then there is the region of statesmanship; and here it is abundantly
clear that the social conditions of the day, the democratic current
which runs with increasing spirit in political channels, is unfavourable
to the development of individual genius. The prize falls to the
sagacious opportunist; the statesman is less and less of a navigator,
and more and more of a pilot, in times when popular feeling is
conciliated and interpreted rather than inspired and guided. To be
far-seeing and daring is a disadvantage; the most approved leader is the
man who can harmonise discordant sections, and steer round obvious
and pressing difficulties. Geniality and bonhomie are more valuable
qualities than prescience or nobility of aim. The more representative
that government becomes, the more does originality give place to
malleability. The more fluid that the conceptions of a statesman are,
the greater that his adaptability is, the more acceptable he becomes.
Since Lord Beaconsfield, with all his trenchant mystery, and Mr.
Gladstone, with his voluble candour, there have been no figures of
unquestioned supremacy on the political stage. Even so, the effect in
both cases was to a great extent the effect of personality. The further
that these two men retire into the past, the more that they ar