BISMARCK’S STORY OF THE SENTRY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5599, 4 February 1879, Page 7

BISMARCK’S STORY OF THE SENTRY.

All tlie 'world has beea laughing at Pstibb* - Bismarck’s story about the Russian sentry, standing in the middle of a lawn. He didi not know why he was sent there, (he officer* who sent him did not know, nor was the Czar, when questioned, a whit more capable of giving the raison d’ilre of that stolid sentinel. It turned out that the Empress Catherine, just a hundred years ago, wishing to preserve a snowdrop from being plucked, set a sentry to watch it. The snowdrop faded, summer came, and yet the sentry remained, and there he remained for a century. The story is an apt illustration of the me* chanical nature at once of the official mind and of Russian militarism. But we fear it is all but apocryphal, for a similar tale is told in half-a-dozen countries. For instance, in “ G-reville’s Memoirs ” it is related that a sentry used to stand in one of (he corridors of the Foreign Office. His only business was to request all comers to “ keep to the left.” Why they should keep to the left, or why he was tent to tell them so, nobody knew. Finally 'it was discovered that many years before, the walls being painted, a soldier was temporarily posted there to warn people off the wet paint. He had remained—or rather a succession of soldiers had—ever since. But a tale told by General Klinger, one of Goethe’s early friends, is exactly the same as Bismarck’s, only in Klinger’s anecdote it was a mossrose which had been guarded for a century, and the lawn was one m front of a German palace instead of a Russian one. Bat these variorum readings of the same story do not end there. The Empress Catherine found her son Paul charged with many thousands of bottles of brandy. As the Prince never touched that liquor she caused an inquiry to be made, and found that, when a child, he had on one occasion required a glass of brandy as a lotion for an excoriation on his leg. From that time a bottle of brandy had been either sent to him or charged to him. Hence the liquor bill. Finally, not to multiply these tales, not many years ago some inquisitive person noticed that year after year the sum of £4O was charged in the Estimates as the salary of a British noncommissioned officer in the Low Countries. He found, moreover, that it had been charged for a great number of years—indeed, nobody remembered when it was not charged in the English Army Estimates. This led to inquiry, when it was discovered that after the battle of Malplaquet, fought in 1709, the Duke of Marlborough left a sergeant to take charge of some stores. The sergeant was in time forgotten, but liking his post, took care not to remind his superiors of his existence, and so continued drawing his salary to the end of his life, and his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren did so after him. We are afraid, however, that all these good stories must be bracketed as myths.