children were being carried in the arms of brawny Scotsmen, or were holding on to their kilts as they crossed the village street. Kindly hearts and trusting innocence everywhere. A few hours later those same men were sweeping in waves over the German trenches, leaving their dead and wounded by the thousand. Had there only been adequate reserves to support them, history might have been very different. Were they less formidable warriors because they were gentle and chivalrous? Such a question needs no answer.

It has not been always so. To go back in history, to the beginnings of modern armies, to the era of renaissance and reformation in the 16th century, let us take one instance only-it is horrible but characteristic of the time. It illustrates by the sequel how example and moral influence do effect extraordinary results. In 1557 the King of Spain declared war against France, and his wife, Mary Queen of England, furnished him with what was then a substantial contingent, 8000 men, under Lords Pembroke and Clinton. This force joined the main body of the Spanish king's troops, some 45,000 strong, composed of Netherlanders and Germans, before St Quentin, then being besieged.*

St Quentin fell. The following account of the sack of this fortress is quoted from Motley's 'Rise of the Dutch Republic':

'To a horrible carnage succeeded a sack, and a conflagration still more horrible. In every house entered during the first day, every human being was butchered. The sack lasted all that day, and the whole of the following till the night of the 28th (August). There was not a soldier who did not obtain an ample share of plunder, and some individuals succeeded in getting possession of two, three, and even twelve thousand ducats each. The women were not generally outraged, but they were stripped almost entirely naked, lest they should conceal treasure which belonged to their conquerors, and they were slashed in the face with knives, partly in sport, partly as a punishment for not giving up property which was not in their possession. The soldiers even cut off the arms of many among these wretched women and then

* Incidentally it may be mentioned that England had no share in the quarrel between France and Spain, and that one result of the English queen's assistance to her husband was the loss of Calais.

turned them loose, maimed and naked, into the blazing streets, for the town, on the 28th, was fired in a hundred places, and was now one general conflagration. . . . The work of killing, plundering, and burning lasted nearly three days and nights. The streets, meanwhile, were encumbered with heaps of corpses, not a single one of which had been buried since the capture of the town. The remains of nearly all the able-bodied male population, dismembered, gnawed by dogs, or blackened by fire, polluted the midsummer air. The women, meantime, had been again driven into the cathedral, where they had housed during the siege, and where they now crouched together in trembling expectation of their fate.'

We do not know what part, in this hellish carnival, was played by the 8000 English; but as they formed about one-sixth of the whole force, they must have been sharers with the remainder to some extent. We do know that, from His Catholic Majesty downwards, the leaders and officers made no attempt to mitigate the devilry, indeed they seem to have acted as the German leaders did in Belgium and France in recent times, encouraging the men on the ground of 'frightfulness' having its military value. The whole revolting history has too strong a resemblance to the facts brought to light in recent Belgian investigations to enable one to cherish any illusion about modern civilisation having mitigated the horrors of war where moral and spiritual influence is absent, the only difference being that presentday cruelty appears to be more diabolical through being more refined.

But, we also know, on the testimony of Mr Fortescue, whose History of the British Army' is a literary monument of abiding strength and outstanding quality and authority, that less than a century later beyond all doubt the English standing Army, from 1646 to 1658, was the finest force in Europe,' its excellence being due to the fact that its discipline was moulded on moral conduct. This truth was learned mainly from one great leader, Oliver Cromwell, who in his well-known letter to Hampden said, 'You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go,' not 'old decayed serving men, and tapsters, and such-like fellows, to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them.' In January 1643, Cromwell went

to his own county, as he said, 'to raise such men as had the fear of God before them and made some conscience of what they did.' These men were subject to a discipline that took cognisance not only of 'mutiny, desertion and other crimes not taken cognisance of in a court of justice-as our military law used to run-but of profanity, lying, immorality, and such. The result was admirable.

Cromwell, a great soldier, our greatest cavalry leader until Lord Allenby, deserves infinite credit for this result; but in comparing his army with that under Lords Pembroke and Clinton at St Quentin, it must be remembered that influences had developed and experiences had been gained which take away to some extent from the originality of his action. Before his time there had been the struggles of the Dutch against the Spaniards and the assistance given by the English to the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The English leaders, especially the two famous brothers known as 'the fighting Veres,' scions of one of the noblest houses of English aristocracy, were men of fine moral character, imbued, in their constant association with Maurice of Nassau, with the lofty religious spirit which had enabled that prince and his father, William of Orange, to achieve victory over Spain and gain their country's freedom. Vere's English troops acquired there a discipline, cohesion, and training eliciting the best qualities of their race, and the officers trained there included some of those who at a later date were associated with Cromwell.

In the early years of the 17th century there came to Maurice of Nassau a young Swedish prince, who was destined to carry the experience of war in the Low Countries to a greater development than the generals of that day and school imagined, and to show himself one of the greatest captains of any age. Gustavus Adolphus -for this was he-modelled his splendid Swedish army, not only on the skill and science of Maurice, but, recognising the moral control which was combined with the rigid discipline of the Dutch, he insisted as carefully as Cromwell did, a decade or two later, on the character and conduct of his soldiers. Among these troops was the famous Scots brigade, and some English detachments. When the Lion of the North' entered the field in the

Thirty Years' War, with 13,000 Swedes and 5000 Scots, the cause he espoused seemed to be hopelessly lost. He had behind him very meagre resources, and confronting him the whole power of Spain and Austria, with many German princes actively hostile, and many dispirited and cowardly. Yet in two short years he led his armies through Germany from the Baltic to the Danube, scattering his foes and putting new life into the oppressed people of that land. Whatever share his military skill and administrative arrangements unquestionably had in these successes, it is equally unquestionable that the moral power of his personality, his religious influence over his troops, and the vital hold he had on the loftiest standards of conduct were factors of enormous value. He allowed no pillage, no rapine, no reprisals even for outrages against his troops; he respected the property of the peasantry, the honour of their women. Men of British birth who had fought under him (the immortal Dugald Dalgetty, for instance, who, although a fictitious character, is undoubtedly a sample) found their way back to Great Britain and fought in the Civil War. The Royal Scots to-day are the lineal descendants, in a military sense, of Gustavus Adolphus's Scots Brigade, just as are the Coldstream Guards of Cromwell's New Army. These noble regiments inherit a magnificent tradition in this association with the past.

With the Restoration of the Stuarts moral influence in the army deteriorated, and during the 18th century went from bad to worse. The American colonies were lost, not only because a king was narrow and obstinate and statesmen were bigoted and short-sighted, but because the army was inefficient, or deficient in the true spirit of the profession. There were, of course, brilliant exceptions in the case of individuals and, more rarely, of corps; but the general condition of the army then warrants the accusation.

So we come to the early days of the 19th century and the Peninsular War, to Sir John Moore, one of the greatest leaders of men our country has ever produced and the forerunner of much that is best in our modern military training. The great task Sir John had before him in the Peninsula brought him against Napoleon in the full zenith of his career of victory. Moore required in such

a critical situation, not only the personal equipment of clear courage and wise decision, but the most perfect instruments possible for giving his plans their proper development and effect. In the army under him, however, such instruments were of very indifferent quality. The men were able to fight well, but their spirit was bad, their conduct a reproach and a disgrace. On Dec. 27, 1808, Sir John was obliged to issue a General Order in which he calls attention to the concern which 'the extreme bad conduct of the troops at a moment when in contact with the enemy' had given him. He adds 'the misbehaviour of the troops in the column . . . exceeds what he could have believed of British soldiers.' A few days later we learn that at a time when the most important strategic operations were in progress, and, therefore, when it was imperative that the Commanderin-Chief should be able to rely on the most implicit obedience, discipline, and sobriety, excesses of all sorts were committed, hundreds of men were inebriated, the magazines were plundered, houses were broken into. Officers, even of high rank, set a deplorable example. Again Moore had sternly to rebuke all ranks. It was with such troops that he conducted the famous retreat to Corunna, and it adds not a little to the credit of the brave and ill-fated leader that he did so with such troops and with a success which elicited the praise of so great a master of war as Napoleon. Later in the same era, Wellington experienced similar difficulties.

'As to the army at large, Wellington at the end of 1809 declared it to be better than it had been, but still stigmatised the behaviour of the men as infamous. When with their regiments they behaved themselves well, but when detached ... they committed every description of outrage. They would rob the British convoys or the Portuguese peasants with absolute impartiality, and did not stick at murder from mere lust of destruction.

...

After the capture of Badajos, 'the assailants gave themselves to an orgy of rapine, drunkenness, and pillage. . . . It is undeniable that for a time, the British army in Badajos was dissolved into a dangerous mob of intoxicated robbers.'t This was Wellington's army. We may

* Fortescue, vol. vII, p. 421.

† Ib., vol. VI, p. 403.