Military Studies. By FREDERIC LOUIS HUIDEKOPER.

[The Inter

national Military Series, No. 8.] (Kansas City, Mo.: HudsonKimberly Publishing Company. 1904. Pp. 227.)

ONE of our best military critics was the late John Codman Ropes, with whose Waterloo studies every one is familiar. From choice he would have been a professional soldier; he possessed a great Napoleonic library, to which, twenty years ago, the reviewer was much indebted; and above all things he enjoyed the society of men who were trained to, or had seen war. A Harvard man, he was fond of the intelligent Harvard student, and it would seem as if our author had gleaned his first aspirations toward military criticism from the friendly converse of Ropes, who not only corrected his first essay, but for whom he later worked in several of the European archives.

This book consists of studies, some of which have already appeared in service magazines, each standing on its own merits, and pretending to no sequence; yet there runs through all a certain affinity. An Oxford as well as a Harvard graduate, Mr. Huidekoper pursues the plans of delving into archives for such stray facts as have not yet been unearthed, and weaving these into the abundant detail already in existence. It is curious to see a civilian with so keen a flair for things military; but the author has not only dug into archives, he has studied the authorities; and with a retentive memory and an aptness at seeing likenesses in various campaigns or battles, he has managed to spread before the reader much that is interesting. The author quotes largely from other critics, with numerous foot-notes, and, the essays having been written at different times, a quotation is occasionally repeated. He exhibits singular ingenuity in dovetailing the maxims of the great masters of war into his recital. One cannot always agree with his opinions or conclusions-no two military critics ever do, and in the first paragraph of the first essay one is tempted to take issue with him-but no one can fail to find him suggestive, if occasionally overpositive.

Some students of Napoleon's wonderful career are apt to forget Frederick. Not so Mr. Huidekoper, who points him out as the great tactician, while Napoleon was the great strategist; and as of the two strategy is the greater art, so also was its exponent the greater manalthough the king often touches a sympathetic chord the emperor does not. Most of us forget that war as a science is not much over a hundred years old, and that those rules for conducting war of which we all now talk so glibly were quite unknown until Frederick and Lloyd and Jomini and Napoleon had put their thoughts into printed pages. Like most inventions, the first attempt is crude; and it is not by subsequent inventions, so much as by subsequent improvements, that an art or a device becomes useful. Thomas Saint patented a sewing-machine in 1792. Without knowing this, Elias Howe invented one in 1845. The first was a useless machine, the second a crude one, and Howe would have gazed open-eyed at an operator running several machines, each

at a speed of thousands of stitches a minute, and doing good work; and this result was brought about not so much by subsequent invention as by improvement. So with war. Now that its principles are public property, it can be improved, and all soldiers can be trained in them; but until within three generations its conduct depended on the personal inspiration of the general. Yet great minds in war were led to similar conclusions. Speaking of the oblique order, "If Frederick invented this manœuvre, he invented war, which, unfortunately, is as old as the world," said Napoleon; but the first historical examples which we have of the crisp oblique order were in the victories (“ the twin-daughters") of Epaminondas; and as crisp a sample of this order was not again given until Leuthen. Mr. Huidekoper leaves out (p. 101) the name of Epaminondas in his list of those who used the oblique order; yet it does not seem that, in any of the great battles he mentions, this order was employed in the same manner or with the same intent as were shown at Leuctra and Leuthen.

It is natural that Mr. Huidekoper should devote most of his studies to Napoleon, only one of his five essays excluding this great soldier; and in the article on "Napoleonic Strategy" he points out (p. 106) five important characteristics: (1) the initiative; (2) a single line of operation; (3) the unity of forces; (4) rapidity of movement on decisive points; (5) concentration before battle. To these five-unless "decisive points" be construed to include it-might be added, "threatening the enemy's communications while conserving one's own"; for this appears in nearly all Napoleon's great operations, and to this he often owed the safety of his boldness. 'The secret of war lies in the secret of communications. Keep your own and attack your enemy's in such a way that a lost battle may not harm you, a battle won may ruin your adversary. Seize your enemy's communications and then march to battle." The single line of operation is more suited to small armies than to the enormous ones of to-day. Napoleon himself advanced down the Danube while Eugene marched up from Italy in 1809; and in 1812 there were three columns moving into Russia, as there were three great roads leading into the Russian frontier. Nevertheless, with the modifications demanded by the conditions, Napoleon always did advance on one line. But he often had a second line of retreat open.

The five essays in this book relate to: Grouchy's part at Waterloo; a comparison of Kolin, Rossbach, Gravelotte, and Leuthen; a comparison of Jena, Mars la Tour, and Vionville; Napoleonic strategy; Eckmühl; and to illustrate the topography of which the author treats there are sixteen folding maps, which suffice, though not over-well drawn. The type is good and easy to read. The manufacture of the book is fair, and except that Mr. Huidekoper suffers, as we all do, from an occasional slip in proof-reading, there is little to criticize.

Although each essay possesses its own interest, the volume lacks homogeneity, as every book of studies must; but it has throughout the same flavor, and fairly bristles with maxims and apt quotations. The

reviewer happens to know that the author has long been engaged on another work, to which he has already devoted several years, and for which abundant success is predicted; and as he has many years of work before him, he is cordially welcomed into the ranks of those who have striven to make military studies interesting to the general public. He may yet accomplish more than most of us.

THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE.

Life of Canning. By H. W. V. TEMPERLEY. (London: James Finch and Company. 1905. Pp. 293.)

MUCH attention has recently been directed in England to a study of Canning's statesmanship, and at least two brief biographies have appeared since 1903. Mr. Temperley is however wholly right in asserting that no thorough or satisfactory biography has ever been produced, and the field was certainly open to him in the attempt to supply this want. He claims to have done so, and if his book were accepted at the value asserted in the introductory chapter, the present volume would unquestionably take rank as a first-class biography. Mr. Temperley states that he has searched records, unearthing a mass of new and striking material, and that by the use of this material he has, he thinks, settled forever certain controverted points. His note of almost arrogant overconfidence is unfortunate in an introduction, and becomes fatal to a ready belief in the author's deductions, when continued throughout the work. It is in truth a distinct flaw, and the chief one in Mr. Temperley's manner of presentation.

The new sources utilized are "the drafts of Canning's official despatches in the Record Office, . . . Castlereagh's despatches-from 1818 onwards of which the secret and supplementary despatches to Stewart are of immense value and importance as exhibiting the real tendencies of his mind and policy. . . . about twenty original letters of Canning which throw light on some obscure points of his life and especially on his work at the Board of Control ", and "the papers and correspondence of Sir Robert Wilson who was acquainted with the chief Liberal leaders of the English Opposition and was also a friend and confidant of Canning". A long list is given also of the printed works used by the author. It will be noted at once that these new sources bear very little on Canning's earlier career, and in fact the author gives not a single reference to other than printed works for any incident earlier than 1807. His own work is then distinctly a study of Canning's later years, and in particular of Canning as a minister.

Without furnishing detailed proof, it may be stated that Mr. Temperley has so far succeeded in his purpose as to have produced the best biography of Canning that has yet been written; the best, that is, in the matter of new material presented in orderly fashion, and in the just deductions drawn from that material. It will be difficult to deny the justice of the defense here offered for Canning's Danish expedition (though in this the author does not agree with Mr. J. H. Rose), or to

overthrow the weight of proof brought to show that Canning's succession to Castlereagh marked an epoch in English diplomatic history. It is also emphatically asserted, and apparently proved, that Canning in the affairs of the Spanish colonies and of Greece was animated by a desire to improve world conditions as well as by his conception of what was demanded by purely English interests. The more recent belief in regard to Canning's foreign policy has been that it was wholly insular, but it will need strong evidence to controvert the proof offered by Mr. Temperley. But in other respects this biography is sadly lacking. The author has centred his study so much upon those episodes with which his new material deals that other activities of his hero (and the work is distinctly a bit of hero-worship) are too briefly and often erroneously treated. He tells us that Canning's attitude toward the United States was at all times one of "honorable conciliation", and that had Canning been steadily in power there would have been no difficulty with that nation. This is not an intentional denial of what Mr. Henry Adams has written, for there is no evidence that the author has any knowledge of that writer's History. The example cited illustrates a fault pervading the entire volume, and one to which those who have found a mine of "new material" are peculiarly liable-the neglect of older printed works that in their time were based on careful studies of the material then available. The sense then in which it may be conceded that this is the best biography of Canning yet published is that it is at least a beginning in the right direction, and that in certain aspects of Canning's career the author's judgment is sound and his proofs are sufficient. But it must be repeated that the argumentative form of expression employed is unfortunate, for it necessarily lessens one's confidence in the author's impartiality, and may easily, by its irritating effect, blind the reader to the real merits of the work actually accomplished. E. D. ADAMS.

BOOKS OF AMERICAN HISTORY

A History of the United States, By EDWARD CHANNING. Vol. I. The Planting of a Nation in the New World, 1000-1660. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Company. 1905. Pp. xi, 550.)

It is now seventy-one years since George Bancroft published the first volume of his History of the United States. Since that time Richard Hildreth is the only historian who has undertaken and carried through to a fair degree of completion the project of a detailed narrative history. of our country from its beginnings based on first-hand study of the sources. George Tucker's History of the United States is omitted because his treatment of the colonial period was a mere outline sketch. This formidable task is now again attempted by a scholar of high attainments and established reputation. A comparison of the work of

these two New England historians just two generations apart, each representing the best historical knowledge of his day, will henceforth offer an interesting opportunity to measure the progress of our knowledge and in some degree the changes in opinion during these years of great advance in historical study and momentous political experience. Such a comparison will be particularly instructive as Professor Channing approaches the Revolution, a period to which he has long devoted study and also the part of his field which called forth Bancroft's best powers as an investigator and writer. Such a comparison so far as the first volumes of these two works is concerned will show a strikingly similar allotment of space to the respective topics, and many will be surprised at the comparatively slight divergence so far as the broad general facts are concerned. The most striking case that I noticed is afforded by the two accounts of Cabeza de Vaca. Bancroft's description of his wanderings in his first edition was strangely different from the views accepted to-day. Bancroft, again, describes De Soto's expedition with critical care, but omits even the mention of Coronado's exploration, which Professor Channing treats in greater detail than he does De Soto's expedition.

Professor Channing has before him the task of covering the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century in addition to what Bancroft originally planned to embrace in his history. It is then with some misgiving that one finds Professor Channing giving as much space to the history down to 1660 as Bancroft gave in his first edition. Or to take another comparison: to the English colonies from 1607 to 1660 he has devoted half again as much space as is allotted to the same subject in The American Nation. In other words, to that period Professor Hart assigned about one-twenty-fourth of his total space and Professor Channing about one-ninth. Obviously this ratio will have to be reversed in the later periods if Professor Channing completes his work in eight volumes. On the other hand, his allotment of space to this first period does not greatly differ from the proportion assigned in his Students' History, and may very possibly come nearer meeting the existing public interest in the various portions of our history than the scale which steadily expands in detail.

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The most distinctive utterance in Professor Channing's preface is his announcement that he has considered the colonies as parts of the English empire, as having sprung from that political fabric, and as having simply pursued a course of institutional evolution unlike that of the branch of the English race which remained behind in the old homeland across the Atlantic." That he has successfully carried out this purpose will, I think, not be seriously questioned, and the reader cannot help being impressed with the range of the author's knowledge of English history and life in the seventeenth century. Indeed, sometimes this wealth of knowledge leads him into digressions, always interesting and instructive, but which a stricter regard for proportions

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XI.-26.