WARRIOR LOVERS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 52, 2 March 1926, Page 3

WARRIOR LOVERS

PERILS PAID BY PLEASURES

HISTOBIC INSTANCES.

Lord Bacon, man of r universal i mind, declared that martial men were given to love. He div not know why, bot thought it was for the same reason that

they were given^ to wine, for perils commonly ask to be paid in pkisuret. The war which ended in 1918 provided ample illustration, both of the fact and its explanation (writes M.K. in the ' Melbourne "Age"). Upon the common level, and under normal conditions, great spirits and great business may rule out what Bacon calls "tie weak passion of love," but he wcj too shrewd 3 judge of men not to obserxe that, history provided many exceptions. One soldier he names is Mark Antony, half"" partner of the empire of Borne. ■ ■;■■-/■■ v This warrior's glittering, profusion of strong points and .weak ones.; gave ■ Shakespeare material for one of his greatest triumphs. In his earliest youth Antony-served'himself heir to every firm of dissipation, and knew .every corner of Beelzebub's orchard.: Amost active partisan of Caesar, he offered him the kingly / diadem, and after Caesar's murder- pronounced the speech over his body, and read the will to the pe»ple. Amongthe stir and tumult of later days he met Cleopatra in Cilicia, and the rest of the story need scarcely be told. "Samson went down to* Timinath, and saw a woman of the Philistines." From.that point the river flows intj a new and troubled channel; -

Cleopatra had previously captured the-affections of the great Caesar, borne > him: a son and followed him to Bone. .":fter his murder she had to choose which side to take. Antony summoned her to Tarsus to give an accoun' of her conduct in the polities of the empire, and "the serpent of old Nile" sailed up the river Cydnus to meet him. She was arrayed as Venus rising from the sea; her galley was gorgeobs, and she , seemed like a jewel set in the romantic ' splendour of the East. Had that galley gone down, or had Cleopatra's eyes been of a" different colour, \r L.r nose short and stubby,^ the history of the world might have been, different, fßut she was 28, in the matured perfection of Greek beauty, and gifted witi rare wit and womanly skill. Antony surrendered unconditionally, flung 'away' his Boman pride,; :his ambition, his' hopes, arid life 4taeU. He followed her to Egypt, and dallied there in delirious revels while his position wasv being! undermined in Borne. After the battle . of Actium he fluug away half the world „ to follow her, "and committed suicide on .hearing that she had killed herself.

Tne report was; false,; and he.lingered long:enough after ids mortal wound to be carried into her presence and die in her- arms. Tne two were buried together, and Octavia, lawful wife -of Antony, generously brought up the twin children born by Cleopatra to him as if they,had been her own.>-.

Students of history cannot fail to notice >a remarkable parallel at somo points between Anthony and our own ■ Lord Nelson. In 1787 V he; had married Mrs. Nisbet, widow of a doctor, and in 1798 after the brilliant victory at „ Aboukir Bay, he returned with bis shattered fleet to Naples. - This was the Tarsus at which he met'his Cleopatra. The English .Ambassador at this^timo was Sir William Hamilton, and when Nelson appeared Lady Hamilton fell on his breast in a paroxym of hysterical rapture. Her beauty was known over all England; her moral history was unspeakable. She had'given birth to two children by different fathers, had been the mistress of < Charles Greville for four years, and also of Sir William -Hamilton for, five yean before she became his wife. From.the day Nelson met her his fate was sealed, his glory tarnished. . "He was ill and she nursed him, he was victorious and she praised him, she was beautiful and he admired loveliness; eho had n warm heart and he was susceptible; his wife was reserved and his f friend' was vivacious." A lady's judgment upon another lady may demand discounting, but the beautiful and clever Mrs. St. George described Lady Hamilton as bold, for- ■\ ravel, coarse, assuming, and vain.- Her i;?tire was colossal, but well-shaped, suiil her i'cet were hideous. Nelson became her slave, remained at' Naples when he should have been elsewhere, disobeyed a superior's orders,'and like Anthrny, risked all for a woman. The ii or.'d nghtly censures him for his moral breach, shudders at the attitude of Sir William Hamilton, is horrified at Nelson's effort '■ to secure his paramour a peerage and a pension, but will never ue so unreasonable as to ' allow his (jrfrat lapse to 'obscure his services to his country. He sleeps in St. Paul's; Lady Hamilton died in obscurity and ' poverty at Calais in 1815. It would require volumes to record at any reasonable length the liaisons of eminent naval and military men, and indeed the work %vould be somewhat unsavoury. But Mr. F. J. Hudleston, librarian of the War Office, has just published a book called "Warriors hi Undress,' in which he writes caustically and sometimes flippantly about the weaknesses of great commanders. Na-

turally he gives a prominent place to the Duke of Wellington, whom George ' IV. nicknamed "King Arthur." Wellington always declared that no lady loved him, yet he was distinctly a lady's man. A staff officer of the Waterloo period stated thai-he saw Wellington meet a lady apparently by.appointment, and immediately they had disappeared the lady's mother drove up in search of her daughter; correspondence is said to have followed in which the Duke declined to have cocmunication with tho lady's mother. ' Tho Duke prided himself on answering all letters, and is credited with having written three hundred and. ninety to a Miss J., who suffered from religious mania and pelted him with letters and tracts. She persuader him to call upon her, and to his intense astonishment she seized his hand anf exclaimed, "Oh, how I lovo you!" T!ieL Duke's reply was an oath which resounded through the corridors of time. Garibaldi also belongs to the company of warriors who showed the courage of lions and the tenderness of lovers, tho latter in a general and surprisingly undiscriminatory fashion. In early and middle life his adventures put those of the Moor of Venice entirely in the- shade. Of an exceptionally impulsive nature, ho fell precipitately in love with this Anita in South America, aud declared with a" touch of melodrama: "Thou oughest to be mine.'The formality of a marriage wa- ever looked; but Nemesis did not forget., One day Garibaldi appeared on parade wityi his golden locks close shorn, because the amorous virgins of Monte Video had excited Anita's jealousy.' He scandalised the citizens of.' Autun by hw crack corps of young Italian boys and girls living fu Bohemian fashion.. An Italian Deputy declared that since Gari- ■ baldi's troops left'ltaly.thW-was noth-' '■ ing for the police to do.- The last might bo -'ndefinitely extended, ■•- and a very different catalogue might be d. ;wn up of men who kept their virtue and exemplified Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, or Tennyson's Sir Galahad., What ii of importance is to note that militarism tends to looseness of morals because it sends men away from home life and al! its gentle influences. It sets upon hu man nature a strain too great for or- ' dinary mortals. - Herein, perhaps the constitution of the world 'ears witness against war and its implications, supports the imperiousness of the seventh commandment and clothes with regrel all who set aside the eternal verities.