BOOKS.

DR. CONAN DOYLE ON THE WAR.* THE conditions under which Dr. Conan Doyle's animated and valuable record was written, while excluding the qualities of fin-dity or absolute precision of detail, at any rate relieve it from the dangers of red-hot impressionism. The greater part of it, as he tells us in his preface, was written in a hospital tent in the intervals of duty during the epidemic at Bloem- fontein. "Often the only documents which I had to consult were the convalescent officers and men under my care." But as a set-off to these drawbacks, be had "the inestimable advantage of visiting the scenes of this great drama, of meet- ing many of the chief actors in it, and of seeing with my own eyes something of the actual operations." He further availed himself freely of his facilities for conversing on military and political questions with the Boers—" these bard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles "—of whom he invariably speaks with respect, often with admiration. When to these opportunities are added that manly temper and command of forcible and picturesque language which have won him distinction in the field of fiction, it is not to be wondered at that the result should prove as engrossing as any of his novels.

The concise historical summary of the origin and growth of the Republics, and of the events that immediately preceded the outbreak of the war, is marked by the dis- passionateness which is the keynote of the book. Dr. Doyle has no quarrel with Afxikander aspirations ; he is none the left convinced that their realisation is in- compatible with the ultimate wellbeing of South Africa.

• The Great Boer War. By A. Conan Doyle. London : Smith, E]der, and Co. [7a Gd.)

He holds no brief for the British Government in the past, which he sums up as in the main "mild, clean, honest, tact- less, and inconsistent " ; nor for our diplomacy since 1880.

But he has no great difficulty in showing that Great Britain has always been the enemy of race ascendency, and in regard to the native question. Ministry after Ministry has adhered to the maxim that "British justice, if not blind, should at least be colour-blind." He admits errors of unsympathetic adminis- tration and aggravating circumlocution, but he sets forth none the less clearly the risks of mistaken magnanimity; he sees the disgraceful Jameson Raid in its true perspective, not as an insuperable bar to reconciliation, but as the golden oppor- tunity of President Kruger's career; and be effectively dis- poses of the fallacy that the war was a capitalists' war. If any proof were needed at this time of day of the genuineness of the grievances of the Johannesburg Outlanders, it is to be found in the splendid record of the Imperial Light Horse. It may not be generally known, and Dr. Conan Doyle makes no mention of it, that the members of this corps, Outlanders of every grade from capitalists to clerks, took an oath never to be taken alive, and that the oath has never been broken. Dr. Doyle not only shows how the true issues were obscured by the Raid, but how the attitude and action of the Johannes- burghers was misrepresented and maligned. The extent and nature of the "questionable forces" behind them, in spite of two Commissions of inquiry, have never been properly revealed, and, in Dr. Doyle's words, "it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented, and with justice, the immunity of Rhodes." On the subsequent part played by Mr. Rhodes, whose great qualities he freely acknowledges, Dr. Doyle speaks with judicial severity :—

"He may be a Napoleon of peace, but his warmest friends could never describe him as a Napoleon of war, for his military forecasts have been erroneous and the management of the Jameson fiasco certainly inspires no confidence in the judgment of any one concerned. That his intentions were of the best, and that he had the good of the Empire at heart, may be freely granted; but that these motives should lead him to cabal against, and even threaten, the military governor, or that he should attempt to force Lord Roberts's band in a military operation, is most deplorable. Every credit may be given to him for all his aid to the military—he gave with a good grace what the garrison would otherwise have had to commandeer—but it is a fact that the town would have been more united, and therefore stronger, without his presence. Colonel Kekewich and his chief staff officer, Major O'Meara, were as much plagued by intrigue within as by the Boers without."

It may be added as a proof of Dr. Doyle's just sense of per- spective that he refuses to devote much space to the siege, or as he prefers to call it, the investment, of Kimberley.

Turning to the narrative of the warlike operations, a terse yet animated record, enlivened by many vigorous pen portraits of the British and Boer leaders, we may note amongst its many excellent features a generous appreciation of the fine qualities of our opponents—notably their entire absence of exultation in the hour of victory—and a sparing yet effective use of criticism. Dr. Doyle points out how often our tactical victories were strategic defeats. He tells, not without emotion, but without extravagance, the terrible story of Magersfontein and Coleus°, of Stormberg and Spion Kop. He notes that "it is to the credit of our generals as men, but to their detriment as soldiers, that they seem throughout the cam- paign to have shown extraordinary little powers of dissimulation." He might have devoted more room to what was undoubtedly the most dramatic and crucial moment of the entire campaign, the repulse of the great assault on Ladysmith on January 6th, culminating in the Homeric series of hand-to-hand encounters between British officers and Boer commandants, but the significance of the engage- ment is fully realised, and full justice is done to the splendid achievements of Lieutenant Digby-Jones, who had earned the V.C. at least twice before he fell in the moment of victory. In relating the further course of the campaign Dr. Doyle throws into proper relief the services rendered by the officers

in charge of the transport and commissariat. He dissociates himself entirely from the violent attacks on Lord Kitchener, without exempting his generalship from temperate criticism. He pays a due tribute not only to the broad sweep of Lord Roberts's strategy, but to the self-command and patience which never let him be diverted from his main aims by regrettable mishaps. And it is a characteristic sign of the author's self-suppression that he should only devote a couple

of pages to the episode in which he himself bore so honour- able a part,—the enteric outbreak at Bloemfontein. But though his remarks on the epidemic are brief, they are ex- tremely pointed. He regards it as the greatest misfortune of the campaign, and in a notable passage emphasises the necessity of preventive measures :—

"Enteric fever is always endemic in the country, and especi- ally at Bloemfontein, but there can be no doubt that this severe outbreak had its origin in the Paardeberg water. All through the campaign, while the machinery for curing disease was excel- III lent, that for preventing it was elementary or absent. If bad water can cost us more than all the bullets of the enemy, then surely it is worth our while to make the drinking of unboiled water a stringent military offence, and to attach to every com- pany and squadron the most rapid and efficient means for boiling it—for filtering alone is useless. An incessant trouble it would be, but it would have saved a division for the army. It is heart- rending for the medical man who has emerged from a hospital full of water-born pestilence to see a regimental water-cart being filled, without protest, at some polluted wayside pool. With precautions and with inoculation all those lives might have been saved. The fever died down with the advance of the troops and the coming of the colder weather."

In the record of recent operations—brought down to the close of September—the role of hero is inevitably assigned to the wily and indefatigable De Wet, whose only unsportsman- like action, according to Dr. Doyle, was his burning of the

mails at Roodeval. Charred fragments of these home letters are still blowing about the veldt, and Dr. Doyle mentions seeing one himself which began : "I hope you have killed all those Boers by now." The arrival of Mr. Kruger at Loureneo Marques is commented on by Dr. Doyle in a passage which may be quoted in illustration at once of the style and temper of the author :—

"On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown the most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed lost. On that date Paul Kruger' a refugee from the country which he had ruined, arrived at Lourenco Marques, abandoning his beaten commandoes and his deluded burghers. How much had happened since those distant days when as a little berdsboy he had walked behind the bullocks on the great northward trek ! How piteous this ending to all his strivings and. his plottings ! A life which might have closed amid the reverence of a nation and the admiration of the world was destined to finish in exile, impotent and undignified. Strange thoughts must have come to him during those hours of flight, memories of his virile and turbulent youth, of the first settlement of those great lands, of wild wars where his hand was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant days of the war of independence, when England seemed to recoil from the rifles of the burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the years when the simple farmer found himself among the great ones of the earth, his name a household word in Europe, his State rich and powerful, his coffers filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who worked so hard and paid taxes so readily. Those were his great days, the days when he hardened his heart against their appeals for justice and looked beyond his own borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a South Africa which should be all his own. And now what had come of it all ? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man, clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not from his own narrow and cor- rupt administration, but from some departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed out from the active history of the world."

Of the extremely suggestive and valuable final chapter on "Some Military Lessons of the War" we have already spoken when it appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for October. Dr. Conan Doyle speaks courageously rather than confidently about the future. Of the Boers generally he says that if we could only have them as willing fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all the gold mines of their country. He predicts more difficulty with the Orange River Colony than the Trans- vaal, as the former is likely to remain exclusively Dutch, and

sums up the chances of settlement in the last passage that we can quote from an honest and able book :—

" Kruger's downfall should teach us that it is not rifles but Justice which is the title-deed of a nation. The British flag under our best administrators will mean clean government, honest laws, liberty and equality to all men. So long as it con- tinues to do so we shall hold South Africa. When, out of fear or sloth or greed, we fall from that ideal, we may know that we are stricken with that disease which has killed every great empire which has gone before us."