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FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K. P., P.C., G. C. B., G. C. M. G.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH SPECIALLY TAKEN FOR "THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS" BY THE STEREOSCOPIC Co.

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The New

THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD.

LONDON, Sept. 2, 1895.

The appointment of Field-Marshal Lord Commander-Wolseley to the command-in-chief of in-Chief. the British army, in place of the Duke of Cambridge, has been hailed with general satisfaction. The Duke lingers reluctant at the wings, being loath to quit the stage on which he has been so long a conspicuous figure. But although he delayed his departure, feeling, as he says, he has the spirit of a young man of twenty-five under the hair silvered by the snow of seventy-six winters, he has gone at last, and Lord Wolseley reigns in his stead. With the passing of the Duke disappears the last link which connected the army of to-day with the army that fought in the Crimea. Lord Wolseley, who fought as a youngster before Sebastopol, is a man of the new school, the worthy head of an army which regards soldiering as a profession and a science rather than as an amusement. If any one can give us twenty shillings for one pound in the shape of efficient soldiers, Lord Wolseley is that man. Let us hope that the uniform good luck which has followed him through all his career will not desert him now that he has achieved the summit of his ambition.

The Chances of War.

too soon.

as to the dangers which menace the tranquillity we have so long enjoyed. I don't think there will be war. But I do feel that it will depend upon the courage and resolution and resource of Lord Salisbury and his colleagues, whether we reach the New Year in peace. In Armenia, China, Siam, and Central Africa there are plenty of questions which may at any moment explode like a bomb, and it will need all the firmness of a Ministry with a majority of 150 at its back to prevent the local explosion firing the general powder magazine.

Peace.

The Chief The peril, the only serious peril, to peace Hope of is now as always in Paris. And our chief security, that the innumerable questions which are at issue between England and France all round the world will not be allowed to culminate in war, lies in the strength and the efficiency of the British fleet. Those French journalists who are perpetually writing as if they desired nothing so much as war with England, although they may inflame the relations between the nations, are not after all the real rulers of France. When the French Ministers and Deputies look seriously into the question of peace or war, they will find themselves confronted by a series of considerations which will almost certainly lead them to avoid pushing matters to

The change has not been made a moment extremities. I hope that the year will pass without any outbreak of war, but the barometer seems to be falling rapidly, and in the time of storm and stress Britain does well to have

her most capable captain in the saddle. There is a feel of cannon thunder in the air. I am not an alarmist. I think I may fairly claim to have been always one of the optimists as to the prospects of peace. But not for many years have I felt so uneasy

A war with England would be of necessity a naval war, and in a naval war France without allies, or with an ally whose fleet could not effect a junction with her squadrons, could not keep the sea. She would either have to face battle in the open against superior numbers, in which it is almost a mathematical certainty that the victory would remain with the stronger fleet, or she would have to confine herself to furtive expeditions from

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keep the sea. And as every colony over sea depends in the last resort upon the naval strength of the mother country, it is evident that France outre mer is also a hostage for whose safety French statesmen must reckon. A victorious war against France would be a dire calamity which every good citizen must dread as only one degree less horrible than a war But terminating in defeat. thanks to our fleet and the unquestioned preponderance of our naval power, we could do so much more injury to France than France could do to us, that if French statesmen keep their senses they will not allow of any the frontier controversies to drag the Republic into a war for which they are not prepared, and which, however it might result, would entail the indefinite postponement of the long hoped for reconquest of their lost provinces.

50

100

In

The area left white shows the part still in dispute.

fortified ports and a war on Our commerce. either case the first month of the war would reveal to every one the one undisputed but seldom vaunted fact underlying the controversy, that the French flag would of necessity disappear from the sea. Imagine the condition of a French Government with a million armed men excited to madness against a perfidious Albion, absolutely beyond reach of their guns, with the British fleet in command of the sea, and every French colony a hostage in the hands of the British Government. I do not say this in any spirit of Chauvinist boasting. It is a simple statement of what would happen to us if we exchanged navies with France. We cannot wage aggressive war upon any European Power. Alone among the nations we have preserved our youth from the curse of compulsory soldierhood. But if we were to be attacked, unless all the laws governing naval warfare were to be suspended in favour of our foe, there is no Power in Europe whose flag could float on the high seas a month after declaration of war.

Hostages to Fortune.

The Power that has the weaker fleet has

The Dispute on the Mekong.

150 MILES

The most dangerous question between England and France is the controversy as to the sovereignty of the Shan State, Kiang Kheng, on the Upper Mekong. This State, which straddles across the Mekong, was a dependency of Burmah. When we annexed Burmah, we took over all its dependencies, including Kiang Kheng. We ceded the northern province of Kiang Hung to China on condition that China would not part with it again except to us. The French when they made their treaty with Siam put forward claims to the territory east of the Mekong which conflicted with the sovereignty we took over from Burmah. France and England agreed to a friendly delimitation of their respective territories on the spot. But while negotiations were in progress the French twice attempted to establish themselves in the disputed territory. Thereupon our representatives bundled the French out, garrisoned Mengsin, the capital, with a force of Goorkhas, and publicly declared that Kiang Kheng was and would remain part and parcel of the British Empire. At the same time the French have made arrangements with China as to Kiang Hung which are incompatible within the condition on which we ceded that State to China. We have protested and refused to recognise

practically given its ironclads as hostages to the Power which has the stronger fleet. Allowing that every French ironclad afloat is as good as the best English ironclad of its class, and recognising that the French seaman is as good as our blue jacket, our preponderance of force is sufficient to enable us to render it impossible for the French to

the French arrangement. Altogether it is a very pretty quarrel, and a single hot-head on either side might create an imbroglio from which a peaceable escape would be difficult.

The Mahdi

Buffer State.

and the rough-and-ready expedient of burning a General alive who did not make adequate defence of an outpost, is not likely to encourage the others. The Queen is said to have taken to gambling, and the wildest counsels prevail amongst her Ministers. Some propose to drown the town under eleven feet of water, others to make it a plague-spot by slaughtering some thousand head of cattle and leaving their bodies to decay in the streets, while the Moscow precedent naturally commends itself to many. In time, no doubt, the French will get there, but when they get there they will only find they have the wolf by the ears a luxury for which they will have to pay many millions sterling and thousands of lives. The experience of Spain in Cuba is not in Cuba. calculated to encourage the French in their projects for establishing their authority in Madagascar. Cuba has been Spanish for 300 years,

The danger of a collision with France is land as a increasing in the far East. There seems to be a slight diminution of the risk in Central Africa. This is due not to any slackening of the rival ambitions of England and France, but rather to the evidence which has reached us of the vigour of the Mahdi's government. It is a somewhat melancholy reflection that just as the Roman Catholics and the Greeks are kept from cutting each others' throats at the Holy Sepulchre by the presence of a Mohammedan guard, so England and France are kept from crossing swords in Central Africa by the fact that the country between them is occupied by the Mahdi and his men. The English officer Cunningham, who made his way in the beginning of the year down the Nile from Uganda, reports that the Mahdi's men have established themselves at a place called Regaf, below Lado, and at the same time the officers of the Congo State report that they have had more than one smart collision with the Mahdi's troops. In one of each, at least, the Belgians are said to have come off second best. So long as the Tom Tiddler's ground of the Nile basin is occupied by the Mahdi in sufficient force to deal out instant death to any European who crosses his frontiers, we need not be alarmed as to the adventurous French expeditions that are launched into the interior. The Buffer State theory may have broken down on the Mekong, but it seems to be a very lively reality in the Upper Nile.

The

The Revolt

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For the moment the French have a Campaign in little war in their hands which occupies Madagascar. them sufficiently. Their campaign against the Hovas in Madagascar is being prosecuted without intermission; but so far almost the only enemies whom they have had to encounter have been the malarial forces under the command of the

well-known General Fever. Accounts vary widely

as to the extent to which the French soldiers are invalided, but there seems to be no doubt that at least one-third of the seasoned troops are down either with fever or dysentery. The expedition is lying weltering in a vapour bath of marshes at the foot of the hills which stretch for one hundred and fifty miles between them and the capital. At Antananarivo everything seems to be in confusion. The Hovas are said to be even better armed than the French, but their hearts fail them because of fear,

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[August 10, 1895. THE TROUBLE IN CUBA. UNCLE SAM: "I've had my eye on that morsel for a long time; guess I'll have to take it in!"

but Cuba at the present moment is in revolt, and the Governor-General is said to have telegraphed that there are no alternatives, except the despatch of an army of 100,000 men, or the concession of some form of Home Rule. The struggle between the Cubans, supported as they were by the unconcealed sympathy of the North Americans, goes on with unabated ferocity. A hundred Spanish soldiers are

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said to be dying daily with yellow fever, and everything seems to show that the present insurrection will defy all the power of Spain for another twelve months. In the end, no doubt, if the Spaniards will spend enough money, they can restore the island to a sullen condition of obedience. Cuba never pays its way, and all this struggle and misery and blood shed are incurred solely in order to avoid the disgrace of retiring from a position which has become impossible.

The

Notwithstanding these object lessons as Retention to the costliness of the luxury of atof Chitral. tempting to establish authority among hostile populations, Lord Salisbury has begun his Administration by what we can only regard as its first blunder. The late Government decided to retire from Chitral. Most unfortunately Ministers had kept their secret so well that no one in the country knew what they really intended to do. As a matter of fact they had never entertained a moment's doubt as to their plain and obvious duty. Every member of the Indian Council in London, excepting Lord Roberts, agreed with them in believing that the retention of Chitral would be disastrous to the Indian exchequer, and detrimental to the success of a sound frontier policy. If instead of keeping their secret they had proclaimed it abroad in an informal fashion, familiarising the country with the arguments upon which their decision rested, and also with the overwhelming consensus of opinion in favour of withdrawal, Lord Salisbury would never have been exposed to the temptation to which he has fallen a victim. As it is, he felt that their decision was one that could be over-ridden, and he over-rode it accordingly. So we read in the newspapers

the British garrison will consist of two native regiments with two mountain guns and two Maxims, and these will hold the country from Chitral to Kila-Darosh, where the headquarters will be established. From Kila-Darosh to Dir the country will be under Chitral levies, the Khan of Dir providing them as far as Chakdarra. The brigade on the Malakand Pass, with a regiment at Chakdarra, will complete the line of communication. The Panjkora route will be opened for postal supply and relief purposes.

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