CRITICISMS IN CAMPAIGNS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7293, 4 January 1902, Page 4

CRITICISMS IN CAMPAIGNS.

UNGUAGE PAINFUL AND FREE. A contributor to the " Saturday Review" notices and! refers to the. assertion, thai) soldiers and generals are more freely criticised in these days than in fanner times. " n Such, he says is not the case. ' ' "" As far back as itH« second century before Christ, and earlier, the generals of the Roman Republic (vide Livy, book 44, chap. 22) found it necessary publicly to appeal against the clamour of the stay-at-home critic. In the admirable speech by the Consul Lucius Paulus, which Livy quotes, reference is made to Fabiua (presumably Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, B.C. 217) as on© of the few Roman generals whose constancy and! firmness of mind' enabled them to face injurious report, but eyen then not without prejudice to his authority. The clamour of public opinion — and what is the Press of to-day but public opinion in' print? — achieved the suppression of Fabius, and' the result was the disastrous defeat of Cannse. Sir Charles Napier was a man doubtless of a very different stamp from Fabius, though in constancy and 1 firmness of mind not his inferior. His great enemy in India, was Dr Buist, ihe editor of the " Bombay Times." In the playful freedom of has private journal' Sir Charies was wont to write of him as "the blatant beast." The term is certainly not complimentary, but we may regard it, perhaps, witih leniency, when vre remember that the " Bombay Times " had written of Sir Charles as " an, imbecile ruffian, delighting in carnage"; " at liar who disgraced' the Army and stained the glorious age of Wellington^" " the liar at *h!e> head of the Scinde Government," "ariMnsane old 1 man," etc. The South African war has called forth very bitter attacks on the British officer and Army in general, and 1 on Lord® Methuen, Kitchener and Stanley in particular, but no language quite so immoderate as this has been used.