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WARRIORS IN UNDRESS THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON Engraved by H T, Ry all from the painting y Sir Thomas Lawrenct To A POLISHED FEMALE FRIEND who always Imghs in the right place PREFACE I REMEMBER many years ago seeing a military melodrama in which the hero, a gallant young sol dier, was, owing to the machinations of the villain, falsely charged with some grave military misdemeanour, some thing like selling to a foreign diplomatist with beard a secret plan of the defences of Primrose Hill, and stood in imminent danger of having all his buttons forcibly re moved a la Dreyfus. The villain I am afraid he was a Major had, so like the sad, bad, mad Majors of the past, strictly dishonourable intentions regarding the heroine in a white frock. Indeed, the play might have been called, to borrow a phrase from the logicians, Illicit Process of the Major. 37 But the heroine, who, whenever she was on the stage, was pursued not only by the infamous Majors designs, but also by the strains of The Girl I Left Behind Me, breaking, in the last Act and in pink, I do not know how many sections of the Manual of Military Law, and turning up her dear little nose at the Rules of Procedure, rushed in before the assembled Court Martial and addressing them, but looking straight at the gallery, exclaimed in ringing tones, A Court Martial may be able to control an army of soldiers, but it can NOT control the beatings of a womans heart. The effect was magical. The President of the Court PREFACE Martial said practically, though of course in legal phrase ology, Thats done it, and shook the prisoner warmly by the hand 3 the Prosecutor quite openly wiped away a tear the prisoners gyves were instantly and with much clicking ofheels removed from his wrists by those be tween whom he stood everybody saluted each other very smartly and very stiffly a lady in the gallery in her emo tion dropped a half-sucked orange which nearly hit me on the head, and, shouting down a few graceful words of apology, requested the return of the fruit the orchestra positively blared a comic but exceedingly faithful Pri vate, casting aside the shackles of discipline, shook his fist in the villains face, exclaiming You Dirty Dog and I have never seen a Major look so mean and ornery as Huckleberry Finn would say. As a matter of fact what the heroine said is perfectly true Heart, Female, Beating of, has no place in the index to the Manual mentioned above. And yet, as we have seen, even a court martial can be human. What is also perfectly true, though sometimes we do not realize it, is that the sternest looking old warrior who ever on canvas in the National Portrait Gallery or elsewhere pointed a glittering sabre to a very trim and orderly battle proceeding one really cannot say raging of anything so tidy in the background, was at heart a human being. The Colonels lady And Judy OGrady Are sisters under their skins. I would not go so far as to say that General Sir Bingo Bangs whose name occurs once or twice hereafter in PREFACE IX these pages and Private Thomas Atkins are brothers. The rules of the Service are imperative. x Discipline, I will not in these democratic days say Decency, forbids. But though they may not be brothers, they are both human beings, and Sir Bingo is much more so when he lays aside his stiff and starchy uniform and appears in undress. But there is not as a rule much said about this human side in the serious officiallives to which almost all distinguished commanders come, sooner or later. I think one gets a better idea of what any hero of the past was really like from casual remarks made by his fellows. You might as well believe what Dr. Johnson calls a lapidary inscription as a formal biography, a kind of book which generally is, as Sheridan expressed it, curst hard reading. In the following sketches I have tried to give some idea of what some national soldier-heroes looked like to their contemporaries...