THE IRON DUKE.

Wairarapa Age, 14 March 1929, Page 6

THE IRON DUKE.

Stupid Boy Who Became A Great Soldier. (By Edward Shanks in “John O’London’s’’ Weekly There are few figures in English history which otter more to the biographer with a sense of character than the Duke of Wellington, and no figure so great which has been more consistently neglected or (perhaps I ought to sav) avoided. Therefore Mr. Oliver Brett's “Wellington” is to be warmly welcomed. He does not overcome all the difficulties which have hitherto made the task unpopular, but he atlacks them gallantly and hie does succeed in conveying an impression that the Duiko was a great human being a«s

well as a great soldier. The difficulty is, of course, that Wellington was a great soldieir, and biographers are justly diffident of their ability to make military history interesting to the general reader or, for that matter, to themselves. Consideration of the strategist, the tactician, and the administrator cannot be ommitted, but there has remained, beyond all this, a tradition of the Iron Duke as a person at ond amusing, lovable, and wise, a tradition which Mr. Brett very pleasant upholds. THE IDLE The birth of Arthur Wesley (he did not lengthen, his name by a .syllable until he was nearly thirty) is an occurrence which Mr. Brett, with the disdain of the modern biographer for mere usefulness, does not mention. It took place on May Ist, 1769, just in time for him to be the finest fruit oi the English aristocratic system in tin eighteenth century. Under that system the aristocracy regarded itself as ® sort of college, choosing from among its own members the leaders of th< country. It was willing to adm.il “new men,” but even the obscuresl and poorest member, by birth, if he showed signs of ability, was given far wider opportunities than the most brilliant outside candidate. Arthur, to be sure, showed no signs of ability. He was slow, .stupid, and either lazy or of a very languid constitution, and, like Mr. Winston Churchill, he was sent into the Army because ho was thought too dull to make his way anywhere else. After Waterloo his mother told that mild gossip, G-lenberrie, that she removed him from Eton on the advice of his masters, but that, wherever he wos sent, “ he continued 1 incapable, from idleness and want of any disposition to apply, of redeeming his character in point of scholarship.* ’ She said at t:he samp time that, since his .greatness, she never had the chance of more than a moment with him. She seemed not to have thought her earlier treatment might make him indisposed to share his with her. FIRST OE BRITISH SOLDIERS. Luckily he had • a brilliant elder brother, and, with Richard’s assistance, he was already a colonel when, at the age of twenty-fivoi, he first took the field in the Duke of York’s luckless campaign in the Low Countries. He did well there, and perhaps the con sciousness of it was the turning-point of his life. Certainly he seems st this point to have gained vigour and self confidence. In India he still had his brother to help him on (indeed, the helping* was done in a rather barefaced manner), but he accepted all advancement as his right, and was willing to fight for his rights, since he knew himself to be the one man- capable of get ting things done. He had not been long in Spain l before it was obvious that he was the first of British soldier«. He defeated the invincible French armies and, if he retreated before them, it was for their discomfiture. As he gradually wrested the Peninsula from them his prestige grew and, even before Waterloo, it was enormous. After Waterloo, he was the greatest subject in. the world and greater than many princes THE LOST ARMY. It is during the Peninsular years that we first : f ee his character in its maturity. Here he first stands out of history as a living figure and we begin to see him. as something more than a successful general, with his passion for hunting (he once, in the middle of a battle, let out a view-hallo and gallope.! after two greyhounds pursuing a hare), his conviction, so natural in an imperious disciplinarian, that no one could ever be got to obey him, and the gift of sal tangy speech which one especially associates 1 with him. Tn this he was the counterpart among men of action of Samuel Johnson among men of contemplation. His talk was the sublimation of direct, unaffected English. “Well” he said to a private in the retreat from Burgos, “I can't be surprised that you have lotst your baggage, for I cannot find my army.” Direct, too, was his writing. Hi's despatches, a passage from which was rightly included by Sir Arthur Quillcr Couch in the “Oxford Bock of Engli sh Prose, ’ ’ commanded universal admiration when they were published' in 1837. When he .was told of the praise they had received he -said: “It is very true: when I read them I was myself astonished, and I can’t think how the devil I could have written them. “MUCH EXPOSED TOO POETS.” He had style. Nothing can be better than the best, and * *My dear Jenny—Publish and be damned” is a little masterpiece; because no other words could so well have expressed, his meaning. So, too, is the, letter declining the dedication of a poem on the ground that “the Duke is much exposed to poets.” He resembles- Johnson •n the fact that his sayings, through whatever channel they reach us, are unmistakably his. Nothing could be better than his two descriptions of Waterloo. The first was given to Creevey on the day after the battle: ‘‘ It has been a damned serious business. It has been a damned nice thing—the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. Blucher got iso damnably dieked on Friday night, I could not find him on Saturday morning. By God, I don’t think it would have been ' lone if I hid not been there.” The second was to an effusive lady, who demanded it of him- “Wo pummelled them, they pummelled us, and I suppose wo pummelled the hardest, since

s we gained the day. ’•' Again, in a 1 leeper mood, how admirable is his . other comment on the battle; “Notht ing is more tragical than a victory, exr cept a defeat. ’ ’ It perfectly -states } his deep-seated horror of war (in » which he was much in advance -of his i time), all the more effeetivey for it? i avoidance of mere sentimental pacifism. 3 “WITH SWORD OR PICK-AXE.” t Most of these sayings, and many L more are quoted by Mr. Brett. I wish > he could have found room for the de- ) claration to the Houise of Lords (be t fore the passage of the Reform Bill) that the British Constitution was the J best in the world and could not at any - point be improved. For the Duke’s - simplicity, directness, -and, very often, } profundity of utterance arose very iargely from the fact that on fundamentals his mind was made up. He r was a Tory, and very much the same kind of Tory as Johnson. But his ’ mind was made up also on something . even more important than the desirab- ? ility of resisting change—-it was made , up on his own purpo.se in life. “That man’s first object, ’ ’ said Brougham, r from whum adulation was not to be s expected, “is to serve hi® country, with a sword if necessary, or with a , pick-axe. * Whenever a crisis occurred which ini valved him in a choice of personal position, he asked only one question—- } how could he be useful? This, because it lay deeper than his Toryism, sometimes brought him under the reproach J of unscrupulous opportunism. But, , when he followed .Peel in abolishing . the Corn Laws, an observes said “he , looked on himself as one of the rank * ' and fi!6, ordered to fall in, and he set about doing his duty, .and preparing ‘for battle/’ He himself said, “The Queen's Government must be carried on. We have done all that we could for the landed interest Now we must f do ail that we can for the Queen/’ A PRECIOUS GIFT. In politics as in war, he thought it ( wicked to- attempt to hold an unten- . able position. In war, as Tennyson ■ said, he:— 1 Gain’d a hundred fights Nor ever lost an English gun. l So much cannot be said of his political p battles, but here, too, he was a great

general and had the priceless gift of knowing wh°n to retreat. Let us add one story by way of an J epitaph. A chance' stranger had helpj ed the Duke across a street and exJ pressed his joy at being of assistance s lto the greatest man that ever lived, r* Don't be a damned fool,” said the ' Duke, and walked on. i __