servant' (II, 47). Robertson refused to abdicate the authority of his office in London or go to Versailles where he would have no authority at all. He was dismissed. Wilson was appointed in his place. Haig was too powerful to be moved. Sir Henry Wilson's first business in his new position as Chief of the Imperial General Staff was to call upon Sir Douglas Haig; he fortified himself by calling upon Lloyd George as he went. To his immense relief, Haig said what he might have been expected to say, 'All these quarrels had nothing to do with him, and that he was prepared to accept whatever was decided by the Cabinet' (II, 62).

A diary is of interest only when it discloses an interesting mind. As a record of external events it has the same value as a newspaper. One does not read Pepys for naval purposes, nor Montaigne for history, nor Amiel for an account of Geneva. To one familiar with the literature of the war during the past ten years there is no further enlightenment in these diaries. There is little more than talk; it is mainly the talk of Sir Henry Wilson, not enough of what was said in reply, and not enough certainty that the replies are correctly reported. There is much absurd gossip captured from the army air, which is usually false and often malicious. It is rich in surmise, prophecy, strategical and tactical suggestion, advice, and judgment upon the correct procedure for meeting hypothetical situations. But even if these entries had been transmitted to Sir Douglas Haig on the day they were written, it is doubtful if he would have found much assistance from them, for he had the Times' newspaper every afternoon and Mr J. L. Garvin's writings once a week. And one who has knowledge of certain events current in those days is compelled to ask himself if the whole diary is not as fabulous as the entries concerning those of which he has knowledge. Bonar Law asked me if I would take command of the Canadian Corps. He will get Aitken to come and dine to-night, and I will hear what he has to say; but Aitken was not able to come, so I heard no more of the Canadian Corps' (1, 279). The editor himself seems to have a similar suspicion in his own mind when he employs as if in detachment the words, 'according to Wilson's own account' (1, 192). Nor is there any

6

thing that will be a 'revelation' to any one who has been reading the newspapers, excepting this: that the Cabinet created twice a position, extra to establishment, unauthorised by Statute, unrecognised by Regulations, and placed in it an officer who had been carried on the strength merely as a colonel and afterwards as commander of an English area, from which he was enabled to threaten the commander-in-chief in France, engage in a 'duel,' and 'defeat' and 'triumph' over the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (II, 57, lines 7, 19). Had this book been in the hands of soldiers during the war, it might well have caused despondency and despair.

Sir Henry Wilson had a hidden mind. But the shell does at times break to disclose what lay within. It breaks in March 1917, when he went to Haig's and told him that in point of fact I probably could put him out if I wished' (1, 326). It breaks in his interview with Haig on March 25, 1918, at the moment when that soldier was barely holding the Germans: 'I could not help reminding him that it was he who killed my plan for a General Reserve. An impossible situation, for here is the attack I foresaw and predicted in full blast, and really no arrangements to meet it.' And yet Haig did meet it. It breaks again on May 11, 1918: 'I advised Haig being brought home. But Lloyd George and Milner would not decide'; and again on May 20: I told him that I had suggested to Lloyd George that he should bring him home to succeed Johnnie. He was nice as could be. He did not say anything' (II, 99, 101). But Sir Henry Wilson made one supreme error; the fault was Lord Milner's. Lord Milner had returned from France, and the same day informed him that, 'he thinks Haig ridiculously optimistic.' Sir Henry believed him, although the date was Sept. 23, 1918. That was the moment for dismissing Haig, and taking his place. Within ten days the war was over. Sir Henry Wilson would then have achieved the last things. In reading the diary, one is continually amazed at the discrepancy between the secret written word about his friends and the spoken words as they were face to face; but those who yet bear any ill-will to him may gratify their malice by elaborating this antithesis for themselves.

Up to this point one reads in vain for any support to

the editor's thesis of Wilson's personal winsomeness. The book is punctuated with laughter,' but it is the laughter of boys and subalterns, and they laugh easily. Mr Balfour is reported to have exploded with laughter, and yet the incident does not seem to justify the explosion (II, 91). Sir William Orpen, who is not a dull man, found that no one had any idea what he was laughing at' (1, 8). His excessive laughter irritated Lord Northcliffe; there was always something behind his permanent smile and professional laugh. He seems

a very comic fellow,' was the comment of a staff officer on the Dover musketry ranges in his subaltern days, and 'Henry gloated over' the remark. A telegram addressed to the ugliest officer in the Army was delivered to him, and he told the story with glee in Flanders (1, 10). He must be unique. In his numerous crossings of the Channel, he would take a station on the bridge, where he could say to the world, M'as-tu vu? All observers agree that he was a fine figure of a man. Sir William Orpen looked upon him with the sure eye of the artist on the platform of the little railway station in Blackrock: 'Such a perfect figure, such perfect clothes, spats to wonder at, boots to dream of; with a rain-coat thrown over one shoulder, yellow-gloved hands clasped behind. Him we called "Rake-faced Wilson": his brother, "Droop-eyed Wilson." Yes; it was as if the Assyrian princes mentioned in Ezekiel had arrived amongst us' (I, 8). And several years afterwards this figure remained unimpaired (1, 275).

Of humour, wit, irony, there is not a trace, save in two sentences; and in those the only humour is that he failed to see the humour in them. 'Lloyd George is seedy or meditating a speech'-that is the only amusing sentence in the book. When Sir Robert Borden proposed to hand over the captured German colonies to the United States, the delicacy of that jest was too subtle for him. By this lack of humour he failed to understand the distinction between the ridiculous and the amusing (1, 12); the situation in which a man is taken for a fool is humorous just according to the extent to which he is, or is not, one. By this lack of humour he mistook Lord Milner's irony for praise-'Too clever, too French, summed up people too quickly' (1, 327). He mistook the

implication in the term 'boyishness' so commonly applied to him. This boyish summing up' amounted to nothing more than 'calling names,' and scribbling them in the secret places of his diary: President Wilson-ass; Lloyd George, Asquith, Grey, Kitchener, Briand, Gallieni-fools; the Cabinet-idiots, a miserable crowd; peace delegates -madmen; statesmen-Frocks, timid, ignorant, blustering, useless, beneath contempt; public policies-criminal folly; difficult negotiations-complete chaos; medical management of a foreign influx of typhus patientsterrible, criminal, appalling; recruiting — scandalous, monstrous. This bestowal of nicknames is, of course, a habit of the army, and a nickname is the cachet of the professional soldier, although Haig, Robertson, Plumer, Horne had none. These nicknames bespot the diary, a primitive remnant of school-boy days in minds that remain childish until the end. His own familiar name was Long Job Wilson, bestowed upon him with amazing perspicacity by Lord Roberts' daughters (1, 44), and perpetuated by his grandson as Ze Long Job (II, 210).

He was fond of dressing up. At the Staff College he wore a chequered plaid so remarkable that it was known as the Wilson tartan. On Jan. 30, 1917, he was to be seen at a gala dinner in the Russian Foreign Office: 'I wore the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour and the Star and Necklace of the Bath, and my medals; also Russian shoulder straps, and grey Astrakan cap, and altogether I was a fine figure of a man. I created quite a sensation. I was much taller than the Grand Duke Serge, and altogether a "notable," as I was told. Superb.' That was his own final judgment (1, 314). This love of the spectacular, the dramatic, nearly cost him an eye in Burma; in the end it cost him his life.

The supreme example that is offered of his optimistic, encouraging, tonic, inimitable assurance, cheerfulness and moral courage-these are the words-is his conduct at headquarters in the Retreat from Mons. Late at night, 'in a long dark room, Murray who for the last five days had been severely taxed night and day with a crushing weight of anxiety and practically no sleep suddenly dropped forward in a dead faint.' Whilst Sir Archibald Murray was being carried away, Wilson is observed again with a comical, whimsical expression

on his face, clapping his hands softly together to keep time, as he chanted in a low tone, "We shall never get there, We shall never get there." "Where, Henri?" And he chanted on "To the sea, to the sea, to the sea' (1,170). Of a somewhat similar performance staged in the War Office after Neuve Chapelle by him and the actual editor of the diary, the editor offers the opinion, 'Had a War Office messenger come in, we should have been set down as crazy.' He himself has said it. A clown at a circus will do very well: there is no place for a comedian at a funeral-and the war was one vast and continuous funeral. His eulogist offers as an excuse and reason for every eccentricity, that he was a typical Irishman.' The typical Irishman is not easy to establish; and to none is the stage Irishman more offensive than to the Irish themselves.

Lying in the book, although so difficult to discover, is the secret of Sir Henry Wilson's power to advancement. When all members of a species are of the same quality, the slightest accidental variation in any one will send it upward on its biological career. By a succession of French governesses Wilson learned to speak French. That was his variation from his fellowofficers. He had a natural affinity with the French; they were alert and bright in thought; he loved talk (II, 43); he had an affection for them because they were not English. He had loquacity; skill in presenting an argument either in speech or in writing; a countenance so open and a manner so boisterous, they must be witness of an ingenuous mind and a heart that was sincere. These qualities appealed to the English because they were strange. He impressed the English by what he appeared to be, and the Scotch and Welsh who governed England by what he really was. In addition, he had a native capacity for intrigue, for ingratiating himself, for insinuating himself into high places, a suppleness, as one said, a cleverness as Lord Milner put it. He had a political mind, and a firm foothold in Ulster, where he was our General Wilson.' The Ulster men formed one coherent body, and they stood resolutely behind this staff official of their own breed. They were powerful in Parliament, and went so far as to offer him the post of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1, 325);