fleet, with which Magendie must of necessity have been better acquainted than any observer on the British side, but as scarcely any evidence at all for the formation of the British fleet-certainly no such evidence as could be set in the balance against evidence derived either from the narratives, official or other, of British eye-witnesses, or from the logs of the ships under their command. Nothing is more difficult, even to a practised naval eye, than to determine the exact formation in which a fleet is disposed at a distance of several miles. It is true that this argument cuts both ways, but it has to be considered that Nelson's tactical discernment was altogether exceptional, and that the allied fleet was in a normal formation, while the British fleet was in a very unusual one. If, then, I rate the tactical discernment of Magendie, and of other French eyewitnesses who have been quoted, as much lower than that of Nelson, corroborated as he is by a cloud of other witnesses, I am only making legitimate allowance for the difference between the observers and between the things observed. "It is not easy," as Admiral Bridge has said, "to decide the order or formation even of a fleet at anchor without prolonged observation or frequent changes of the observer's position"; and, a fortiori, it must be much more difficult to decide the order or formation of a fleet in motion, viewed from a great distance and in a changing perspective-especially when, as at Trafalgar, the formation of the British divisions was, by common consent, a very irregular one. I can corroborate this proposition from a somewhat exceptional personal experience. I do not profess to view things afloat with the practised eye of a seaman; but, as a landsman, I have probably seen more fleets in motion. and evolution than any other civilian, and certainly more fleets in action during manoeuvres than the majority of naval officers. If, immediately after the event, I had been cross-examined by an expert as

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In

to the evolutions executed and the formations adopted by the opposing fleet on any of these occasions, I should certainly have cut a very sorry figure indeed. It is well known that, when tactical exercises are being practised by modern fleets, no conclusions are formulated concerning their character and effects until the course and speed of each ship engaged and its bearings from at least two other ships, recorded at short intervals by trained observers told off for the purpose, have been collated with similar observations concerning all the other ships, and accurately plotted down on a diagram. Admirals themselves have told me that, when this has been done, they have often found not only that the effect of what they did themselves was quite other than what they had intended, but that they had attributed movements and dispositions to their opponents which the opponents themselves were shown never to have executed. the action off the Azores, during the manœuvres of 1903, the X Fleet at a certain period of its advance seemed to every observer on the deck of the Majestic to be disposed in a huddled mass, in which no definite formation could be discerned and no determinate evolution detected. I am quite sure that no officer on board the Majestic could explain or understand what the X Fleet was doing at that moment; and in the detailed official narrative of the manoeuvres there is not a single word to account for the appearance it presented. Such an experience, which is no isolated one, certainly makes me, at least, exceedingly sceptical as to the evidence derived from French sources concerning the British dispositions at Trafalgar. What they may attest is the dispositions of the allied fleet, and in that order of evidence I have found nothing to disallow, or even appreciably weaken, the conclusions I have reached in the course of this inquiry.

Lastly, I must repeat that almost the only evidence that ought to convince any one to whom Nelson's

reputation and honour are dear would be the proof of a direct avowal on Nelson's part that he had changed his plan at the last moment. No such proof is forthcoming. The evidence is all the other way. It is all very well for Captain Mahan to say, as he does, "Thus, as Ivanhoe at the instant of the encounter in the lists shifted his lance from the shield to the casque of the Templar, so Nelson, at the moment of engaging, changed the details of his plan," and then, by diagram and description, to attribute dispositions to Nelson which point to no mere modification of detail, but to a fundamental change of principle. That is a very pretty gloss to put on a very ugly situation. Ivanhoe was fighting in single combat. He had no one to consider but himself. Nelson had in his keeping the fate of his country, the confidence, the loyalty, the devoted affection of officers who knew his plans and were ready to die in executing them. How could he be said not to have betrayed that trust, if he jeopardized his country's fate by deceiving those who had so trusted him, and impaired even their tried efficiency by expecting them, without a word of notice or warning, to execute a plan of which they had never even heard? We have no right to judge by results in this case. If this is a true account of the battle, it was indeed a pell-mell battle with a vengeance-a mere gambler's throw, which success might condone but could never justify. Few admirals have ever taken their officers so fully into their confidence as Nelson did. He gave them what he could of his own strength, and in return gathered all theirs into himself. Others have kept their own counsel and taught their officers, when in action, merely to look for their signals and obey them. Each method has its merits, but there can be no compromise between the two. To abandon a plan of action carefully explained beforehand, and well understood by every one concerned, and to substitute for it another which has never been explained at all, is to combine

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the disadvantages of both methods in the most disastrous fashion, and virtually to proclaim that tactics are of no account at all, that one way of fighting a battle is just as good as another way, especially if those who are to fight it do not know in the least how it is going to be fought. Surely the moral evidence against a Nelson doing this is far more overwhelming than the most cogent of circumstantial evidence to the contrary ever could be. Those who hold this belief must reconcile it, if they can, with his last noble signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty"—with his last dying words, "Thank God, I have done my duty." For myself, I cannot.

THE LIFE OF NELSON

NIVERSAL acclaim on this side of the Atlantic

U has declared The Life of Nelson to be a

masterpiece eminently worthy of the author of The Influence of Sea Power on History. The task undertaken by a modern biographer of Nelson must needs be a supremely difficult one. He has to sustain comparison with a great writer who was never more happily inspired than when he expanded an article originally contributed to The Quarterly Review into a classic. He has to do what Southey never attempted -to justify to a generation which has happily never known naval war on a grand scale, the conviction of his contemporaries that Nelson was the greatest seaman that ever lived. He has to grapple with manifold difficulties which are inherent in all forms of biography, and never more baffling than when the canvas on which he paints presents a great historic crisis in the affairs of men largely determined in its issues by the character and achievements of his subject. Moreover, Captain Mahan in particular is confronted with a rivalry which few but himself could sustain. In the far more difficult field of biography he has to maintain a reputation already achieved in another field, in which, by common consent, he stands pre-eminent. It is a mere truism nowadays to say that Captain Mahan has taught all serious students of naval warfare in two worlds how to think rightly on the problems it presents. The phrase "sea power," as applied, though not invented, by him, is one of those happy inspirations of genius 1 Quarterly Review, January 1898.