A Student of War
Thirty-Five Years, 1874-1909. By Henry Spenser Wilkinson. (Constable. las.)
WHEN Mr. Spenser Wilkinson left Fleet Street in 1909 to become the first Professor of Military History that Oxford had appointed, he had behind him a whole generation of strenuous and well-directed effort for military reform. He tells the story of those years very clearly and frankly in his new book. Mr. Wilkinson was the son of a well-known Manchester Liberal, the late T. R. Wilkinson. He served for ten years as a leader writer on the Manchester Guardian and afterwards became principal leader writer on the Morning Post. But his main interest was the study of war and of army organiza- tion. As an undergraduate he joined the Oxford Volunteer Corps, then very little in favour, and helped to form the Oxford Kriegspiel Club. When he returned home to read law, he took a commission in the Manchester Volunteers and started a Tactical Society which generals were induced to support. Mr. Wilkinson in his Youth saw much of Germany ; he had a German step-mother and his wife was the daughter of Sir Joseph Crowe, the well-known Consul-General at Dusseldorf and authority on art. He read. German military literature end made friends with some of the leading generals 'and with Liberal politicians like Bamberger. His stiidies convinced hin that the German General Staff held the secret of Germany's
military efficiency, and he described it in his first well-known book, The Brain of an Army, in 1890. The politicians and the War Office naturally ignored the layman's argument that
General Staff might be useful here. But the book won for the author the friendship of Lord Roberts, and one of the most attractive chapters in the book describes Mr. Wilkinson's tour in India in 1892-3, when he saw much of the Commander hi-Chief and learned a great deal from him. It was character- iitic of Lord Roberts that, though Mr. Wilkinson afterwards disapproved of the National Service League to which Lord Roberts devoted much time- before 1914, their friendship was never broken.
The author was closely associated for a time with the late Sir Charles Dilke, to whose character and ability he pays high tribute. He was also an intimate friend of the late Lord Milner and shows—as indeed the Milner Papers have done-- that Milner in 1897-98 foresaw that the Boers meant to fight, while the Government at home refused to credit his warnings or to make military preparations before the crisis came. Mr. Wilkinson prints some drastic comments on Sir Redvers Buller's generalship which came to him at the time from friends like Sir Ian Hamilton, who were serving in Ladysmith. A historic interest attaches to his account of a long tour through Eastern Europe in 1907, on the eve of the Austrian annexation of Bosnia that fired the train which led to the explosions of 1912 and to the Great War. Mr. Wilkinson's discussion of military and naval problems is, as always, dispassionate and realistic. He has no very high opinion of politicians but he is very much alive to political facts, such as the traditional British dislike of conscription and distaste for foreign adventures. For the period in which our Army and Navy were remodelled in view of the threatening outlook in Europe his engaging book has more than a personal
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