Discussing John G. Nicolay’s explanation of Lee’s action in April, 1861, in resigning from the army and accepting command of the Virginia troops, an action which, according to Nicolay, came from selfish motives, General Maurice comments, “It would be difficult to compress into a similar number of words a greater misrepresentation of fact.” His latest biographer says of Lee’s decision and conduct, “He had but one thought, 'What is my duty?’ No motive of self-interest entered his mind. He was prepared to make any and every sacrifice.”

He takes up briefly the problems of the Confederacy. In the author’s opinion the Civil War throws valuable light on what should be the nature of the relation between the statesman and the soldier in a modern democracy at war. The claim that the soldier should be left in free and complete control is ridiculous. The general direction of a war should be in the hands of one man, and in democratic countries that man must be a statesman and his supreme qualification should be the ability not only to co-ordinate military, naval and air forces but to develop and co-ordinate all the physical and moral resources of his country. Lincoln, after he had been taught by experience, was the model of such a statesman. Lee was the model of the perfect soldier. General Maurice then proceeds to prove the latter statement by describing the Defence of Richmond, the first offensive, the first Maryland campaign, the battle of Chancellorsville and the second invasion of Maryland.

Before recounting Lee’s catastrophe, General Maurice interpolates a most interesting chapter on Delay as a Weapon of War. After Lee had given up hope that the defeat of the Army of the Potomac on Northern soil was possible, his strategy sought new aim. He no longer attempted to thrust battle on the enemy, on the contrary he sought delay that he might exhaust their patience: “If the campaign of 1862, from Richmond to the Potomac, is a model of what an army inferior in numbers may achieve in offence, the campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbour is equally a model of defensive strategy and tactics. Some commanders have excelled in the one method, some in the other; few in both and amongst these few must be remembered Robert E. Lee.”

Pleasant reading for an American, this book by Britain’s foremost military writer. Some will shrug their shoulders and say: “The English were always sympathisers with the South,” but this book is not the product of a biased mind. It was not conceived in emotion, generated by bitterness, or prompted by prejudice. It is the deliberate judgment of a man temperamentally adapted to the task he set himself and intellectually fitted for it by his training and experience. So long as he sticks to the field in which he is expert he is persuasive and convincing, but when he goes into history or psychology he is neither.

General Maurice would have been wisely counselled had he confined himself to Lee, the Soldier, as the title of the book intimates was his intention. He may have taken his measure correctly as a warrior, but I am sure there is little justification for “Lee was never what is called a man’s man. He did not drink, he did not smoke, he had no taste for the ordinary amusements and weaknesses of the male sex.” If he were that sort of a man, the less said of it the better. It is a man’s human side that testifies his godship. Some one should enumerate the “weaknesses of the male sex” that there may be no doubt in readers’ minds what they are.

General Maurice would have us believe that Lee was a studious, serious, silent, solitary, superman who devoted his nights to study and contemplation, his days to action and prayer. He was probably not so playful as Osler and more of an anchorite than Anatole France; it is likely that he was more abstemious than Grant and that he had less humour than Lincoln; but he had some of all their qualities in miniature and it is a pity he was not more liberally endowed for then he would have had imagination or vision. That was the great hiatus in the personality of Robert E. Lee; he lacked vision. He could run a complicated machine, he could get great efficiency out of it, he could keep it going even when it seemed to be worn out, but he could neither design nor assemble it.

Many will seek to fathom the process of reasoning, or find the source of information that led General Maurice to write: “He not only espoused but was the main prop of a cause history has proved to have been wrong. That is the tragedy of his life, and his conduct after the war makes it clear that he realised that it was tragedy ... the whole tenor of his life from the surrender of Appomattox to his death is evidence that he believed in his heart of hearts that his State was wrong in seceding.” This is neither evidence nor testimony. It is merely rhetoric.

His country has already selected Lee for its greatest military executive and it is pleasant to witness a General of another great nation laying the oaken crown on his tomb, and it is gratifying that he can write: “Distinguished as was Lee’s conduct while an officer of the Army of the U.S.A., splendid as was his career in the field, nothing in his life became him more than its end.” He heard Lincoln’s charge to bind up the Nation’s wounds and he hearkened to it.

VII
EDITORS

Memoirs of an Editor, by Edward P. Mitchell.
Twice Thirty, by Edward W. Bok.
The River of Life, by J. St. Loe Strachey.
Joseph Pulitzer, His Life and Letters, by Don C. Seitz.