Again, with regard to Lord Wolseley's request to be appointed Governor-General of the Sudan, she wrote to Mr. Gladstone protesting that he did not follow Lord Wolseley's advice, and adding that she must solemnly record her warning that "this indecision and delay may produce the most disastrous consequences." Finally in despair she wrote to both Lady and Lord Wolseley letters which she clearly realized were definitely unconstitutional. It is not the function of the monarch to write private letters encouraging a general to threaten the Cabinet if his wish for promotion is not gratified.

On March 3 the Queen wrote to Lady Wolseley

[Copy.]

WINDSOR CASTLE, 3rd March, 1885. DEAR LADY WOLSELEY,-I hope it is not true that Lord Wolseley is suffering from his eyes?

In strict confidence I must tell you I think the Government are more incorrigible than ever, and I do think that your husband should hold strong language to them, and even THREATEN to resign if he does not receive strong support and liberty of action.

I have written very strongly to the Prime Minister and others, and I tell you this; but it must never appear, or Lord Wolseley ever let out the hint I give you. But I really think they must be frightened.

General Brackenbury's retreat sounds discouraging, but I am sure is right. Pray either destroy this, or lock it up, but I cannot rest without asking you to tell Lord Wolseley.-Yours affectionately, VICTORIA R. & I.

On March 7 Mr. Gladstone wrote to the Queen enclosing a memorandum setting forth ten reasons why Lord Wolseley should not be constituted Governor-General. The appointment was not a military but a civil and political one. It was, Mr. Gladstone explained, not indolence nor indifference nor indecision

-as the Queen implied-which decided the Cabinet to refuse Lord Wolseley's proposal. The Queen replied next day by asking "if the last telegrams from Lord Wolseley and Sir E. Baring had induced Mr. Gladstone to alter his views." Mr. Gladstone explained that they had not.

Questions, expostulations and threats followed one upon another. Lord Wolseley and Sir E. Baring demanded that they should be given a free hand, the Government refused and made enquiries about the possibility of withdrawal. One enquiry was sent without the Queen's knowledge, and Lord Hartington and Mr. Gladstone both found it necessary to explain and discuss this fact in a whole series of letters to the Queen. On March 22,

Lord Wolseley wrote a long letter to the Queen thanking her for her sympathetic letter, complaining bitterly of the Cabinet's lack of support to generals and common soldiers, though "if the Queen is satisfied with the conduct of her troops, I don't think our men care very much what Mr. Gladstone may think of them : they certainly don't think much of him." He went on to explain that he regarded it as "now absolutely essential we should destroy the Mahdi's power. . . . Our honour renders this imperative". . . though he admitted, curiously conceding the Cabinet's whole case, the sooner we sever our connection with the Sudan the better." The trouble, he added, was that the people of England lacked the public spirit to support an adequate army and navy, and that when professional soldiers and sailors warn the people on these serious subjects, professional politicians " jump up and pooh-pooh all their warnings. The foolish public prefer believing the tradesman who has become a politician to the gentleman who wears your Majesty's uniform."

This letter was loyal to the Crown, if not to the Cabinet, and it was warmly welcomed by the Queen who replied in a letter headed "very confidential." Its intention was simply to urge an English general to resist and thwart the policy of his superiors to the best of his ability.

[Very Confidential.]

ROYAL YACHT-P. ALBERT, CHERBOURG, 31st Mar., 1885.-The Queen entrusts these lines to a very welcome messenger, and who has already repeated and will repeat to him her great anxieties. Whatever happens, the Queen hopes and trusts Lord Wolseley will resist and strongly oppose all idea of retreat! His words on that subject, both in one of his telegrams when asked whether he could do so, and also in his despatch of the 1st of March, have plainly spoken out on this point. But she fears some of the Government are very unpatriotic, and do not feel what is a necessity. This and the absolute necessity of having a good Government at Khartoum the Queen trusts Lord Wolseley will insist on. But then comes the health of the troops. Those at Suakin (whom she fears have been pretty harassed) as well as those at Dongola must if possible have change and be moved, for it would be too dreadful to lose many by sickness! Altogether the Queen's heart is sorely troubled for her brave soldiers. . . . Our soldiers fight and have on every single occasion in this exceptionally trying campaign fought like heroes individually, and she hopes he will tell them so from the highest to the lowest from her.

The Queen would ask Lord Wolseley to destroy this letter as it is so very confidential, though it contains nothing which she has not said

up

to her Ministers and over and over again, or perhaps he would lock it and destroy it later, but if he fears it might get into wrong hands, pray destroy it at once. We have had a fine passage and start by rail for Aix at II p.m. to-night.

III

It would be a mistake to expect any such violent incidents in the life of King Edward. Sir Sidney Lee's Biography, now completed, offers nothing unexpected. King Edward, unlike his mother, was always constitutional. But his biography is in many ways a significant epilogue to the critical years in which the Queen and Mr. Gladstone struggled together. The Queen had carried off all the honours. It was her "imperium," not Gladstone's "libertas" which dominated British policy for the next generation. King Edward indeed reigned in a period when Imperialism was taken for granted by the ruling classes. He accepted conventional views on all occasions and his attitude to the Empire, though less violent than the Queen's, was equally instinctive and equally unphilosophic. Oddly enough, he numbered amongst his friends the two Ministers whom the Queen in 1884 regarded as "weak" and dangerous-Sir Charles Dilke and Joseph Chamberlain. To-day they are remembered as the champions of an Imperialism no less aggressive if colder and more deliberate than the Queen's.

The difficulty about the Imperialism which England had, in part at least, learnt from Germany, was that other countries were capable of adopting it. When Disraeli employed the Roman motto Imperium et Libertas," he forgot that Rome had no competitors in the Imperial field. But in the modern world the triumph of the conception of Imperial Britain coincided with the triumph of the conception of an Imperial Germany. In 1884 the Crown Princess of Germany, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who had inherited many things from the Queen, including her literary style, methods of indicating emphasis, and natural vehemence of temper, wrote to her mother: "How I wish, dear Mama, you would read that admirable little book, The Expansion of England, by Prof. Seeley. It is wonderful and so statesmanlike, so farsighted, clear and fair. . . .

The Queen, as we have seen, had instinctively anticipated Professor Seeley's thesis that the growth of the British Empire

was the clue to the past and the consummation of the historical process. The Crown Princess was apparently no less sure. But her son, later to be known as William II, Emperor of Germany, saw the matter in a different light. Professor Seeley's view, that progress lay in the growth of the State and the achievement of Empire, was a familiar thesis to the Kaiser in the works of the historians of his own country. It was natural however that the Queen's grandson, as Kaiser, should assume that the German Empire was the chosen one of God, and this led him to differ profoundly from his grandmother, mother and uncle-a difference of opinion which was reflected in the minds of many thousands of less distinguished people in both countries. When the future historian, unhampered by a nationalistic outlook, comes to discuss the growth of imperialism during the generation before the war of 1914 he may see much significance in the struggle between Mr. Gladstone and the Queen in the 'eighties. He may perhaps argue that Mr. Gladstone's fears about the new conception of Imperium were, after all, justified in the event, though no doubt he will also admit that the triumph of Imperialism was assured by the inadequacy of Libertas, as interpreted by Mr. Gladstone.

KINGSLEY MARTIN

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THE daughter of one of the original Queensland settlers has written in this book a moving account of the difficulties and dangers faced by these first white inhabitants of a country at that time far from railways or even proper roads. Robert Christison was of the strong Border breed. Starting with hardly any capital but his own energy, succeeded in establishing an immense cattle and sheep station. Just as he was thoroughly established he had to face the immense strain of the terrible drought years at the beginning of the new century, and from this strain he never recovered. His settlement he called “Lammermoor" from the likeness to his Border home. It became notable for his generous treatment of the aboriginal blacks—a treatment very different, as his daughter shows, from the cruel harshness employed by many settlers and (to its discredit) even by the Australian Government up to recent years. Christison's struggles are admirably described, with restraint and yet with vivid pen-pictures of the settler's life. The book is a valuable contribution to the history of Australian development.