[51] The Story of a Soldier's Life. Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley. Constable.
[52] After carefully reading the book, I am in doubt as to the specific occasions to which allusion is here made.
[53] This expression is used with reference to a warning to civilians that they should "keep their hands off the regiment." I do not know if any recent instances have occurred when civilians have wished to touch the essential portions of what is known as the "regimental system," but I have a very distinct recollection of the fact that this accusation was very freely, and very unjustly, brought against the army reformers in Lord Cardwell's time. Of these, Lord Wolseley was certainly the most distinguished. I think he will bear me out in the assertion that it was only by civilian support that, in the special instances to which I allude, the opposition was overcome.
[54] Much the same proceeding appears to have been adopted in the Red River expedition, which was conducted with such eminent success by Lord Wolseley in 1870. But there was a difference. Lord Wolseley, in describing that expedition, says: "The Cabinet and parliamentary element in the War Office, that has marred so many a good military scheme, had, I may say, little or nothing to do with it from first to last. When will civilian Secretaries of State for War cease from troubling in war affairs?" In the case of the Soudan campaigns, on the other hand, Lord Kitchener and I had to rely—and our reliance was not misplaced—on the Cabinet and on the parliamentary elements of the Government, to prevent excessive interference from the London offices.
[55] I was present for a few weeks, as a spectator, with Grant's army at the siege of Petersburg in 1864, but the experience was too short to be of much value.
[56] Art of War, Jomini, p. 59.
[57] I think I am correct in saying that Sir Evelyn Wood was of a contrary opinion, but I have been unable to verify this statement by reference to any contemporaneous document.
[58] On the 21st of March 1884 Sir Alfred Lyall wrote to Mr. Henry Reeve: "The Mahdi's fortunes do not interest India. The talk in some of the papers about the necessity of smashing him, in order to avert the risk of some general Mahomedan uprising, is futile and imaginative."—Memoirs of Henry Reeve, vol. ii. p. 329.
[59] Subsequently published in The Nineteenth Century and After for September 1910.
[60] Life of Cobden, Morley, vol. i. p. 231.