THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, FUTURE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6695, 2 October 1882, Page 3

THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, FUTURE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

"Kosmoa,” who contributes a series of very cleverly written “Letters to Eminent Persons” in the columns of “The World,” thue addressed His Royal Highness just previous to his departure, at the head of a brigade, for Egypt:—“Sir,—The time has arrived when you are likely to figure more prominently before your countrymen than you have h?.d an opportunity of doing. The air is full of martial sounds. The battalions are mustering, and the transport-ships are ready. Visions of warlike enterprise pass before the imagination of an excited and an anxious people. The English temper is at the present moment very much like that of a regiment which has long endured, without returning it, the fire of the enemy, and to which at last the command to advance is given. All the pent-up impetuosities are let loose in an instant, and the well-disciplined troops advance to the onset with a force as irresistible as the elements. The inhabitants of these islands have patiently tolerated, during many months and years, the gibes and reproaches of foreign countries. Epigram and satire have been levelled at them by the light artillery of European wits along the whole line from Brussels to Bucharest. They have been taunted with treason to the traditions of their Imperial greatness ; they have been accused of deliberately effacing themselves in the councils of Europe. There is not a braggart print, stained with coffee and absinthe, bn the tables of a boulevard restaurant which has failed to twit the conquerors of Waterloo with pusillanimity and impotence. But the whirligig of time brings its revenges, and now the English nation feels that it has a chance of giving the lie to its accusers, and of showing that it has not degenerated from the nobility of its ancestors. - This sentiment is thoroughly natural and creditable, and your Royal, Highness is in a peculiar mauner regarded as its representative, or identified with its expression. It is now generally known that in the event of an expeditionary force being despatched to Egypt you will have command of a brigade. Nothing could be more in accordance with the national wish ; nothing, so tar as your relations towards your fellow-countrymen are concerned, could be more fortunate for you. “ If you were less popular now with the people of this country than is the case, such an event would go far towards endearing you to every one of the Queen’s subjects. The hearts of Englishmen are firmly set upon ; Royalty. They love their Princes with an intense affection, and all they ask of them is that they shall exhibit some discretion, and fill to tbe best of their capacity that place in the national life to which circumstances have summoned them. Each of yonr brothers has done this with conspicuous success. The Prince of Wales has performed for nearly two decades the social duties of a Regent. The Duke of Edinburgh has connected himself not only by profession, but by hard work and actual achievement, with the Navy. The Duke of Albany has taken the arts of peace into his tutelage. Yon, sir, elected the army as your calling ; you are now likely to have an opportunity of proving to the world that the choice was rightly made. Thus far, all which the English people know about you is that you are a young man of agreeable presence, and that you have shirked none of the routine duties of a British officer. There is little to distinguish you in appearance from a score of other young men who may bo seen in the course of a field-day in the Long Talley, You have the same face, bronzed by the sun, the same well-cut features, the same clear eyes, that are the distinguishing marks of the healthier branches of Young Aldershot. You look, indeed, like what you are—a smart Hussar, who only requires experience in the field to develop into a item tabreur. We have all known that you inherited in a special degree from your Royal mother that keen military instinct, in virtue of which Her Majesty is so acute a critic of a review or of a march-past; which enables her to tell at a glance -whether the general condition of a particular regiment is satisfactory, and to detect anything like imperfect time in the measured tread of the infantry, as rapidly as the Prince of Wales observes an infringement of Court etiquette, or the ear of tbe Duke of Edinburgh would resent a false note on a fiddle-string. Only the occasion has been wanting, we have all felt, to convince the public that you were no mere carpetknight. That occasion appears to have arrived. There is not an Englishman or Englishwoman in any part of tbe globe who will fail to watch with deep interest (hut with nomisgivings) the way in which yon quit yourself in the stirring drama that is opening before this country. “ Hitherto yon have been absolutely witheut reproach. What are only negative merit* in

ordinary subjects become, it must be remembered, positive, and even supreme, virtues in princes. Not only has your career thus far been blameless, but calumny herself has never insinuated a whisper against it. This is the more remarkable, because even slander, in the case of illustrious personages, is but a form of flatter—. Sycophancy itself requires sometimes the piquant flavor of malice. There are few courtiers and parasites, however lowly and venal, who do not sigh for an occasional soupcon of scandal ; and it may be that they sometimes have no great difficulty in finding it. But detraction is, as I have said, simply a species of homage. The gossip may be idle, and perhaps a trifle ill-natured—perhaps also wholly untrue ; but the only significance with which sensible persons invest it is that of a testimony to the degree in which Royalty and its doings dominate the popular mind. It is, then, nothing less than extraordinary that the chatter of the many-headed beast has at no time, directly or indirectly, even in the paltriest way or on the moat contemptible grounds, incriminated your Royal Highness, and that the Sueerwells of St. James’a, and the Candours of Pall Mall, have left you alone. You are now commencing the active duties of your profession in earnest. The attention, not only of England, but of Europe and the world, will be upon you. It is no secret that, if you had been permitted to act independently of others, you would have hastened to the scene of our late wars in Afghanistan and in South Africa ; for you are a true soldier at heart, and a believer, like a fashionable Mayfair clergyman, in the god of battles. The English people will see in your departure for the banks of the Nile a fresh illustration of that spirit of patriotism which they have always known animates you. They will welcome you back with an enthusiasm that even English Royalty has seldom witnessed. I can imagine no surer idol of popular devotion than a Prince who puts foot again on his native soil, after having served, with distinction, in a foreign campaign. Only half a century has passed since the Duke of Wellington filled a position in public opinion, which made him, his Sovereign not even excepted, the first person in the Empire. He was a real dictator, and he might have done with the inhabitants of the United Kingdom what he would. But his loyalty as a subject was equal to his greatness as a general, and all his influence was employed to strengthen the foundations of the Throne in the national mind, and to prevent another estate of the realm; the Lords, from jeopardising their existence by a policy of blind infatuation. What the Duke of Wellington was once, there is no reason why you should not yet become. If you achieve a tithe of his influence and renown, who will doubt that you will use both as wisely ? “Yeti cannot be blind f to the fact that there are difficulties and dangers in yonr path. It is, indeed, no exaggeration to say that there has seldom rested upon any young man of thirty years of age such a burden of responsibilities. It is not, of course, that you will be held, in any sense, accountable for the conduct of the expedition ; the explanation of the fact is to be found rather in the future than in the present. Under ordinary circumstances, your desire to proceed to Egypt at tbe present moment would be overruled, just as was your wish to go , to India and the Cape. But it is felt in high quarters that it is not too early for you to quality for the august post in which you have a close reversionary interest. You are, as every one is aware, the destined successor of the Duke of Cambridge. The present Gommander-in-Ohief may not be likely to retire for some time. The preposterous attacks which were made upon him have died away. He enjoys, the confidence of the English people, and he has lived to witness the entire justification of many of those views which were once most vehemently denounced. He is still in full vigor of mind and body. His capacity for work is unimpaired ; he has certainly no wish to abdicate. Nevertheless, his retirement will probably bo witnessed so soon as you have reached an age when you can fairly be appointed to his place. You have acquired the rudiments of a knowledge of the duties which in this position will devolve upon you. Other names, in competition with that of your Royal Highness,' have from time to time been mentioned, but none with much plausibility. I shall venture upon no rash prediction if I say that in out time a Royal personage will always be at the head of the army. This is one of those prerogatives which the Court is not inclined to surrender, and her present Majesty’s slumbers would be troubled if she knew that the chief of the Horse Guards was an ordinary subject. But it is a condition-of your promotion to the highest military office in the kingdom that you should have given indisputable proofs of your caoacity. Hence it is that you are now, about to set out for Egypt. “Let us look a little'ihto the future. As Commander-in-Chief, ..yqu, will be one step nearer to the throne than’ the Duke of Cambride. It would not be an easy thing to call even the cousin of the.. Queen to account; it would be a thing almost impossible to call a son of the Queen to account. The aegis of that divinity which hedges kings would be thrown over him, and it would be a serious affair to attempt to penetrate it. It cannot, therefore, be concealed that your nomination to the office of Commander-in-Chief will be something in the nature of an experiment. It depends entirely upon yourself whether that experiment shall issue in failure or success. In such a question as this nothing is to be gained by obscuring or minimising the facts ; and though there was, perhaps, never a time when the English Monarchy had less to fear from democratic attack, it is not wise to ignore that the public opinion "of this country is traversed by a strong vein of Republican sentiment. At present it is suppressed ; but a very little provocation might elicit its active display. Certainly there is l a tendency on the part of the classes enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1867 to regard, with extreme jealousy, anything like the concentration of power in the hands ot Royalty or of Royalty’s immediate representatives. On the other side English sentiment, if it is disposed to be democratic, is also rigidly just. It will give a Prince of the blood Royal fair play and a favorable trial If your Royal Highness make bis calling and election clear; if the credentials with which he enters upon his functions, are of a character whose genuineness admits of no dispute ; if, in a word, he is felt to be in any sort the right man for the place, then he has nothing to fear. If, after He has actually acceded to power, he shows the requisite aptitude, and administers his office, not only with ability, but with fairness, he has everything to hope, Your Royal Highness has reached the moat critical period of your career ; and, on the grounds which I have now adduced, it seems literally true to say that, in a degree scarcely second to the Heir Apparent, you are likely to exercise an influence for good or evil on the English monarchy itself.”