some sort, are beginning to think. Idol-worshipping is growing obsolescent. Carlyle's Hero as Prophet and Priest and King is a little out of date. "I said the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame." But "the rest of men" count for more in these days, and can flame with their own internal heat; they stand less in want of Prometheus, the bringer of fire from Heaven-or elsewhere.

In that acute (and now, I think, almost forgotten) book of the early 'nineties, National Life and Character, by the late Professor Charles H. Pearson, the author vaticinates gloomily on the "Decay of Character," presently to be brought about by state socialism, religious scepticism, scientific progress, democracy, journalism, the emancipation of women, and other perilous modern developments. The future, he anticipates, will give smaller scope than the past to individual eminence. When we are all properly educated we shall stand less in awe of the learned man. When most of us have a reasoned acquaintance with the art of politics we shall be disinclined to go down on our knees to the "statesman." When we are all fairly comfortable and fairly contented we shall not strive so feverishly for power or fame or money; and consequently ambition, "that last infirmity of noble mind," will be curbed. The noble mind will have less incentive to excel, and even the Greatest of Great Men will hardly be gratified by such successes as his predecessors achieved. A Cæsar, a Napoleon, a Richelieu, a Chatham will be denied his opportunities; he will not be allowed to make or unmake kingdoms, to wage wars on his own account, to impose his will upon millions, to fill the center of the world-stage.

"Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed" will be employed in drawing up agenda for a Joint Board or writing out memoranda for an Advisory Committee. Instead of the Conqueror we shall get the Chairman; the dominating, egotistic Will-toPower will be replaced by the trained, experienced, conciliatory Intelligence. Organized co-operative effort will be substituted for the brilliant stroke of genius. Even in science and scholarship the field open to individual achievement is narrowing: the space is so vast and subdivision so minute. It takes a dozen careful professors now to write a History of England; each has his "special subject"; he would hardly dare, as Hume and Lingare did, to run the whole off his own pen. The great modern inventions are not now thought out and completed by a single man, an Arkwright, a Watt, a Stephenson. The telephone, the aeroplane, the motor-car, the turbine, the radiotelegraph, were the results of a whole series of experiments and essays by separate investigators. The time may come when it will need six highly specialized literary gentlemen to compose a novel or a play. Indeed, we seem to have reached that stage already with the musical comedy and the revue.

Professor Pearson watched the beginning of the process with desponding eyes. He thought it promised a somewhat prosaic world, in which even the most imposing events would be transacted in a dull fashion, unilluminated by the flash and sparkle of coruscating personalities. Perhaps he was right. The Great Man-even the Eminent Person-touches an element of the picturesque, the dramatic, which we do not spare without a certain regret. Average competence is less attractive. Take the war, this most tremendous of all wars.

find it dull;

Some people, I am told,

which is as amazing to

me as that one person-even if that person is only a tired paradox-monger like Mr. Bernard Shaw-should find it funny. But one can see that the tragedy of bloodshed and intolerable weariness would be sensibly relieved if we could concentrate on an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Turenne, a Marlborough, or some other fascinating figure from the minor conflicts of the past. But now the great captain can no more make a campaign out of his own head than a great engineer unaided can make a battleship. Modern warfare, like modern science, is an affair of co-operation and co-ordination, of large ordered plans shaped in concert by many minds, rather than the expression of any one supreme, imperious Will. It is like a novel without a hero, or a history of institutions; works which are seldom popular. Character is easier to follow than ideas, and people, especially semi-educated, half-uncivilized people, would sooner talk of persons than of tendencies and forces. That is why a good part of the most interesting history looks like a sort of glorified gossip.

There will be a waning charm in Fortnightly Review.

this indolent indulgence when society is organized into groups of men and women, working together for great, impersonal objects. Perhaps the depressed prophets are justified in thinking that the world will be less romantic then, so far as romance depended on the clash and play of human idiosyncrasy. There will be individuality enough; but the outstanding "sport" may be of infrequent occurrence. There may be more all-round talent, less genius; fewer fools and weaklings, if also fewer conquerors and saints. This will be against the Superman, but it will make for the coming of the Superrace. For the rise of any species in the scale is not due to the crushing out of the inferior elements by the favored exceptions, but to the enlargement of the powers and capacities of the general body. Human evolution is a more pacific and a more democratic process than the Mendelian extremists and the German political Darwinians admit. War is not, as Bernhardi says, "a fundamental law of development"; nor is it true that "this great verity has been convincingly demonstrated by Charles Darwin."* Sidney Low.

In the trenches one evening a battalion of the Leinster Regiment held a "kailee" (ceilidh), or Irish sing-song, at which there was a spirited rendering of the humorous old ballad, "Bryan O'Lynn," sung to an infectiously rollicking tune. The opening verse runs: Bryan O'Lynn had no breeches to wear, So he bought a sheep-skin to make him a pair,

With the woolly side out, and the skinny side in,

"Faix, 'tis pleasant and cool," says Bryan O'Lynn.

The swing of the tune took the fancy

of the Germans in their trenches, less than fifty yards away. With a "rumty-tum-tumty-tum-tumty-tum-tum," they loudly hummed the air of the end of each verse, all unknowing that the Leinsters, singing at the top of their voices, gave the words a topical application:

With the woolly side out and the skinny side in,

"Sure, we'll wallop the Gerrys," said Bryan O'Lynn.

*See Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's excellent little volume, Evolution and the War, chap. iv.

Hearty bursts of laughter and cheers arose from both trenches at the conclusion of the song. It seemed as if the combatants gladly availed themselves of this chance opportunity of becoming united again in the common brotherhood of man, even for but a fleeting moment, by the spirit of good humor and hilarity.

A young English officer of a different battalion of the same Leinster Regiment tells of a more curious incident still, which likewise led to a brief cessation of hostilities. Two privates in his company had a quarrel in the trenches, and nothing would do them but to fight it out on No Man's Land. The Germans were most appreciative and accommodating. Not only did they not molest the pugilists, but they cheered them, and actually fired the contents of their rifles in the air by way of a salute. The European War was, in fact, suspended in this particular section of the lines while two Irishmen settled their own little differences by a contest of fists.

"Who will now say that the Germans are not sportsmen?" was the comment of the young English officer. There is, however, another, and perhaps a shrewder view of the episode. It was taken by a sergeant of the company. "Yerra, come down out of that, ye pair of born fools," he called out to the fighters. "If ye had only a glimmer of sense, ye'd see, so ye would, that 'tis playing the Gerrys' game ye are. Sure, there's nothing they'd like better than to see us all knocking blazes out of each other." But as regards the moral pointed by the officer, there must be, of course, many "sportsmen" among the millions of German soldiers; though the opinion widely prevailing in the British Army is that they are often treacherous fighters. Indeed, to their practices is mainly to be ascribed the bitter personal animosity that occasionally marks the relations

between the combatants, when the fighting becomes most bloody and desperate, and-as happens at times in all wars-no quarter is given to those who allow none.

In the wars of old between England and France, both sides were animated by a very fine sense of chivalry. Barère, one of the chief popular orators during the worst excesses of the French Revolution, induced the Convention to declare that no quarter was to be given to the English. "Soldiers of Liberty," he cried, "when victory places Englishmen at your mercy, strike!" But the French troops absolutely refused to act upon the savage decree. The principle upon which both French and English acted during the Peninsular War was that of doing as little harm to one another consistently with the winning of victory. Between the rank-and-file friendly feelings may be said, without any incongruity, to have existed. They were able, of their own accord, to come to certain understandings that tended to mitigate, to some extent, the hardships and even the dangers to which they were both alike exposed. One was that sentries at the outposts must not be fired on or surprised. Often no more than a space of twenty yards separated them, and when the order to advance was given to either Army, the sentries of the other were warned to retire. Once a French sentry helped a British sentry to replace his knapsack, so that he might more quickly fall back before the firing commenced. A remarkable instance of signaling between the opposing forces is mentioned by General Sir Charles Napier in his "History of the Peninsular War." Wellington sent a detachment of riflemen to drive away some French troops occupying the top of a hill near Bayonne, and, as they approached the enemy, he ordered them to fire. "But," says Napier, "with a

loud voice one of those soldiers replied 'No firing!' and, holding up the butt of his rifle, tapped it in a peculiar way." This was a signal to the French, and was understood by them—probably as a result of a mutual arrangementto mean "We must have the hill for a short time." "The French, who, though they could not maintain would not relinquish the post without a fight if they had been fired upon, quietly retired," Napier writes; "and this signal would never have been made if the post had been one capable of a permanent defense, so well do veterans understand war and its proprieties."

Throughout that long campaign, the British and French recognized each other as worthy foemen, and they were both solicitous to maintain unstained the honor and dignity of arms. As the opposing forces lay resting before Lisbon for months, the advanced posts got so closely into touch that much friendly intercourse took place between them. French officers frequently asked for such little luxuries as cigars, coffee, and stationery to be brought to them from Lisbon, which was held by the British, and their requests were readily complied with. At the Battle of Talavera on July 28th, 1809, the possession of a hill was fiercely contested all day. The weather was so intensely hot that the combatants were parched with thirst. At noon there was an almost entire cessation of artillery and rifle fire, as if an informal truce had been suddenly come to by a flash of intuition, and with one accord French and British rushed down to the rivulet at the foot of the hill to moisten their burning throats. "The men crowded on each side of the water's edge," says Napier. "They threw aside their caps and muskets, and chatted to each other in broken French and still more fragmentary English across the stream.

Flasks were exchanged; hands shaken. Then the bugle and the rolling drum called the men back to their Colors, and the fight awoke once more."

Such amenities between combatants are very ancient: the Greeks and Trojans used to exchange presents and courtesies in the intervals of fighting, and the early stages of this war seemed to afford a promise that they would be revived. The fraternizing of the British and Germans at their first Christmas under arms, in 1914, will, perhaps, always be accounted as the most curious episode of the war. The influence of the great Christian festival led to a suspension of hostilities along the lines, and the men on each side seized the opportunity to satisfy their natural curiosity to see something more of each other than through the smoke of battle with deadly weapons in their hands and hatred in their eyes. Each side had taken prisoners; but prisoners are "out of it," and therefore reduced to the level of non-combatants. The foeman in being appears in a very different light. He has the power to strike. You may have to kill him, or you may be killed by him. So the British and the Germans, impelled in the main by a common feeling of inquisitiveness, met together between the lines in No Man's Land. was some amicable conversation where they could make themselves understood to each other, which happened when a German was found who could speak a little English. Cigarettes and tunic buttons were freely exchanged. But, for the most part, British and Germans stood with arms folded across their breasts and stared at each other with a kind of dread fascination.

There

It never happened again. How could it possibly be repeated? The introduction into the conflict by the Germans in high command of the

barbaric elements of "frightfulness," hitherto confined to savage tribes at war; their belief only in brute strength; and, as regards the common German soldiers, the native lowness of morality shown by so many of them; their apparent insensitiveness to ordinary humane instincts, inevitably tended to harden and embitter their adversaries against them. Even so, British feeling is extraordinarily devoid of the vindictiveness that springs from a deep sense of personal injury, and evokes, in turn, a desire for revenge, which, were it shown, would, however lamentable, be not unnatural in the circumstances. The Germans, in the mass, are regarded as having been dehumanized and transformed into a process of ruthless destruction. In any case, they are the enemy. As such, there is a satisfaction-nay, a positive delight-in sweeping them out of existence. That is war. But against the German soldier individually it may be said that, on the whole, there is no rancor. In fact, British soldiers have a curiously detached and generous way of regarding their country's enemies. When the German soldier is taken prisoner, or picked up wounded, the British soldier is disposed, as a hundred thousand instances show, to treat him as a "pal" to divide his food and share his cigarettes with him as he passes to the base.

It was very noticeable how all the war correspondents, in their accounts of the taking of the village of Ginchy on the Somme by the 16th (Irish) Division, dwelt on the chivalrous way in which the Irish treated their vanquished foes. Once the spirit of combativeness is aroused in the Irish soldiers, they hate the enemy like the black death to which they strive to consign them. But when the fury of battle has died down in victory, there are none so soft and kindly to the beaten enemy. Surrender should

always of course disarm hostility. No true soldier would decline to lower his bayonet when a foeman acknowledges defeat and places his life in his keeping. That is, after a fair and gallant fight on the part of the foeman. It was because the Germans at Ginchy were vindictive in combat, and despicable when overthrown, that the Irish acted with rare magnanimity in accepting their submission and sparing their lives.

In that engagement the Irish made a characteristically headlong dash for the enemy positions. Rifle and machine-gun fire was poured into them by the Germans up to the very last moment, until, in fact, they had reached the trenches; and then, as they were about to jump in and bayonet and club their blood-thirsty foemen, they found them on their knees with hands uplifted. The Irish were enraged at the sight. To think that men who had been so merciless should beg for mercy when their opponents were on top of them! Were their comrades slain only a moment since to go unavenged? These thoughts passed rapidly through the minds of the Irish. As swiftly came the decision, worthy of high-souled men. An enemy on his knees is to them inviolable, not to be hurt or injured, however mean and low he may have proved himself to be. So the Irish bayonets, at the very breasts of the Germans, were turned aside.

In the gladiatorial fights for the entertainment of the people in ancient Rome, the defeated combatant was expected to expose his throat to the sword of the victor, and any shrinking on his part caused the arena to ring with the angry shouts of the thousands of spectators, "Receive the steel!" By all accounts, the Germans have a dislike of the bayonet. They might well be paralyzed, indeed, at the affrighting spectacle of that thin line