Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1888-11-29
wEI.LlheToN.s IDEAS.
Tho Iron Duke Dissected and Analized b.
General WolseIey.

Tho Iron Duke Dissected and Analized by
General woiseIey.
As the word 'Generali is usually in.
ierpreted, a great strategist may be
fairly given that title, but he is not at
all necessarily a great commander. a
great leader of armies. The personal
magnetism which such great men
possess so largely, and can without
effort impart to others, was, think,
wanting in our Iron Duke" What is
m ore, he never seems to have valued it
as desirable quality in an English
leader, although he fully realized its
force and power when exercised by
Napoleon. This may partly be ac-
counted for by the way in which he
looked upon his army. Although,
when it broke up in 1874,
after an education of five years of
victory under his command, he pro-
nounced it to be able to go anywhere
and do any thing, still he seems always
to have regarded it more as a splen-
didly-constituted machine in the high
est possible working order than as a
living, animate being, sensible to and
affected by all the subtle emotions by
which man is influenced. The mar
Vicious magnetic power of the great
generous leader over his men was GER
tainly undervalued by Wellington.
He used to say that Waterloo was won
in the Fairgrounds OF Elton and Har-
row, and no man has ever set a higher
value upon good breeding and blue
blood in officers that he did. He
seems in his mind to have divided his
army into gentlemen and common
men, placing great unbridged gull
between the two classes. With one or
two exceptions, he apparently had the
very poorest opinion of the military
capacity OF his Generals OF division,
while he believed with all his cold
heart in the dash, courage, endurance,
loyalty and patriotism of his regi.
mental officers, the sons of English
Squires and younger sons of what was
then called our aristocracy. He be-
lieved they would always do their
duty; he depended upon their breed
ing in that respect just as he depended
upon The strength end courage of his
thoroughbred charger to carry hin
for a long days hard. riding over any
battlefield. He had seemingly no faitl
in the half-bred man, no more thar
in the badly-bred hound that always
required the lash of the hunts
man. He seldom, if ever, spoke in APP
preciative terms of those brave sol
diers who carried him in triumph from
Lisbon to Toulouse, and if he had an,
affection for them he never showed it
He believed that when restrained b,
the most rigorously-enforced discipline
and led by English gentlemen, the
were, under him, invincible But h,
never hesitated to describe them as
collection of rufiians, the blackguard
of every British parish. the scum o
every English town. Feeling thu
toward them, he never thought it WORT
his while to appeal to sentiments HI
did not believe them to possess, an,
it never seems to have occurre,
to him that he could raise thei
tone or create in them those feelings 0
honor and of patriotism which hav,
formed at other epochs and in othe
countries the handspring of those ar
mics whose great achievements arr
best known to the world. In fact
he was a thorough aristocrat at hear
with all the best sentiment, but still
with all the prejudices, of that class
There was no genial sympathy betwee
him and his soldiers; they respecte
him and, during his later campaigns
they had the most unbounded conf
dcnce in his military genius, but be
You'd his own immediate military house
hold, with whom he lived on terms Q
intimacy, no one loved him. Gencrc
Fiscoaat lVoIsety. IN F'ortnishHy RI
,seD.
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