man's house being in it at all-longing for a return of the days when their ballast was old wine, and ladies were bound to hob and nob with any gentleman who asked them.

And when all is said, these hours, 'the good old Cambridge hours of breakfast at eight and dinner at five,' as even Kingsley calls them, were good ones. They were not uncommon in some of the great provincial centres, such as the Ancient City of Norwich, as lately as forty years ago, though a glass of sherry and a biscuit were usually taken at half-past eleven. Your dinner may have been protracted, but

if you did not drink too much, what a pleasant time was evening! Dr. Johnson could not have drunk four-andtwenty cups of tea at a sitting, if tea had been at four and dinner at eight. He would have talked with one eye wryly on the clock, and felt his host's impatience to get through that bit of work before dinner.

Work done, dinner at five, and the evening before you: no wonder the art of conversation flourished. And then, supper at nine or ten, how truly sociable a meal! What does Charles Lamb say, that genius of hospitality on small means when oysters were cheap, who always dined at home on week-days at half-past four? 'Door open at five, shells forced about nine. Every gentleman smokes or not, as he pleases:' And the Lambs ran to more substantial dishes; cold meats, roasted potatoes, jugs of porter-such was the fare on gala nights; bread and cheese, or welsh rabbit, pigs' ears or trotters their memory is embalmed in scores of notes and notelets. Noctes Ambrosianæ in truth; and half the charm was the informal meal. George the Fourth's whiskey glass was carried by Scott as a relic till he sat on his tailpocket and broke it. Where are the glasses from which Lamb drank his

gin and water? Did no friend seize on one, as Hawkins upon Dr. Johnson's teapot, to have and hold as a relic?

It is but a year or two since Miss Constance Hill showed us part of a wax-and-plaster group by Nollekens

the Club in Ivy Lane, no less, with Dr. Johnson, his gouty leg bound up, his stout stick in his hand, in the president's chair, perched on a table, with Burke and Reynolds talking to him in the blessed déshabillé of wiglessness. There they are, Goldsmith and all, their hats on the pegs, their scores on the wall, a page of Boswell come to life; and on the table Lilliputian glasses and decanters made to fi the tiny hands of those twelve-inch giants of the past. Frontiniac may oust canary, sack succeed to hippocras, but Boswell's friends are never out of fashion, and the Doctor's glass would carry suffrages from us, from Lamb, from Walter Scott himself.

And when Dr. Johnson was at Oxford, did he happen to dine at All Souls when one of the eighteen bottles of That Port was on the table? The Saturday Review

MORALE IN WAR
BY 'Z'

NAPOLEON stated as a result of his experience of war, that the moral is to the physical as three is to one. Character, spirit, confidence, determination, and discipline are the ingredients necessary to produce the quality of morale. It was thought by some before the great war that Napoleon's maxim, in view of the power of modern weapons and the conditions of modern warfare, had rather exaggerated the importance of morale; but this is by no means the case; on the contrary, the value of high morale has become of more importance under modern conditions and the ratio might be much increased.

In former wars only a small proportion of the population of a nation was actually engaged in fighting, while the strain thrown on the remainder of the people was not very great. Moreover, the average war was of comparatively short duration, and the excitement of battle often acted as a tonic to exhaustion and the nervous strain. In these days of national effort in a prolonged period of war, not only does the soldier require superior 'sticking power' for the increased monotony; hardship, and dangers which he has to undergo, but the whole nation requires to be imbued into a high morale in order to produce the necessary sustained effort and desired effect.

This is where the people of the British Empire have scored during the recent war. Our staying power and determination to succeed whether on the battlefield, in the factory, or in the domestic life at home are unsurpassed. The greater the crisis, the worse the reverse, the higher does our morale rise to meet the occasion. Internal strife disappears, and the sense of danger unites us in a common effort. This spirit is in the blood of the people, and it is only when the crisis is past and the danger averted that reaction sets in and restlessness and dissatisfaction assert themselves. Our men have been unsurpassed in this war, and their spirit and morale have exceeded the highest expectations. This is largely due to the excellence of our leadership, for it has been evident that the spirit of the commander permeates his men. The good divisional commander very soon makes his personal influence felt throughout his command; not only does he show an example to all those below him, but he will not tolerate bad leadership in the subordinate commands. This is a true and accepted fact in war, a fundamental requirement in order to obtain success and victory.

Critics have not infrequently pointed out the advantages of defense over offense, on the ground that the side which fights behind wire entanglements and modern defenses must have the better chance. Once before I pointed out the fallacy of such an argument and the advantages of the offensive. It is necessary even to undertake offensive operations for the purpose of maintaining morale at its proper pitch; nothing is so detrimental in this connection as passivity or the adoption of a defensive policy. The uncertainty as to where and in what strength the enemy is going to attack creates doubts and a nervous tension, whereas, the certainty of action and feeling of superiority in the attack has a bracing effect on the nerves. Passivity creates stagnation and breeds inefficiency. Disci- ; pline, too, as a moral factor is a necessity of the first degree, and it should be noted that attempts to interfere with the discipline of troops are always destructive of efficiency. It is generally the ignorant and inexperienced who by their misdirected efforts and misguided ideas try to interfere with the moral power of the army. It was evident that after the failure of the Germans in their spring offensive of 1918 their discipline, at one time the strength and backbone of their army, had been seriously relaxed; their men had lost their smartness, their lines were dirty, and their dead left unburied. Smartness and cleanliness are the first essentials of good discipline, which itself is the mainstay of morale.

The quality of high morale must, to be of real value, permeate the whole army, and if it is of a patchy nature it is of little use. In our offensive operations of the autumn of 1918, we frequently attacked positions which were stubbornly and resolutely defended by the enemy, but it availed them little, for their flanks were rapidly turned

on fronts where their morale had sunk to a low standard. Mutual confidence 'must be inculcated among the rank and file, between officers and men, and between bodies of troops, for no man and no body of troops will hold their ground when heavily attacked unless they feel confident in their neighbors doing likewise.

When once a high morale or a low morale is established in an army, it shows itself very rapidly in individual actions and incidents. A typical example of this took place in the summer of 1918 opposite Amiens, when one of our stretcher-bearers went out beyond our lines to search for wounded. He had not gone far when a dozen or more Germans tried to approach him with a view of surrendering, but, not realizing their intention, he naturally felt unequal to the task of fighting so many single-handed, and tried to avoid them and get back to his lines. They were, however, not to be defeated in their object, and chased him, with the result that unconsciously the solitary stretcher-bearer unwillingly brought in a considerable number of prisoners. Many similar occurrences took place which testified to the drooping morale of the enemy. It was this lowering of morale, due to the long and strenuous period of the wearing-out battles of 1916 and 1917, that enabled our troops to achieve the decisive victories of 1918. The great offensive battles of

August, September, and October of the latter year show a spirit and morale possessed by the British troops which have perhaps never been equaled in history. This will, I understand, be fully described in a book which is shortly to be published giving an account of the battles of the Fourth Army during that period.

In war the collective power of a well-trained and disciplined force with a high morale such as ours possessed is a force of so remarkable a nature that it will sweep aside all obstacles, however great, and lead to ultimate victory. But the value of morale is not confined to war alone; it is applicable even in as great a measure to peace, and is more necessary than ever during the critical period of transition from war to peace. During this period there must necessarily be reaction, a restlessness, a lack of mutual confidence, and an absence of good leadership to which the men had been accustomed in war. This is particularly the moment when we require the high morale, the willingness to work, the sense of law and order, when we require good, not bad, leadership, when, in fact, the whole nation, both men and women, should be imbued with the high morale which is necessary to carry us through the economic, industrial, and financial defiles into the fruitful plain of peace and prosperity.

The Outlook

IN the Australian bush the main roads follow the rivers. This is inevitable in so dry a country. The nature of the traffic demands water at suitable intervals water for the huge overlanding mobs of cattle and sheep, water for the teamsters' horses and bullocks, water for the horsemen and footmen who traverse the giant plains under a scorching and pitiless sun. It is true that there are certain roads leading into the waterless wastes along which at certain points have been excavated huge tanks or dams for the convenience of the traveling public, but the greater part of the moving population keeps to the rivers, following faithfully every bend and curve as though afraid to trust itself more than a few hundred yards from the sluggish brown water that spells life and hope in the desperate days of drought. That the river itself is often dry for a mile or two at a time only adds to the irony of the situation; but the traffic follows on from pool to pool, adjusting its day's stage and its night's camp to the exigencies of the moment and the vagaries of the dwindling

stream.

Upon these winding river roads we find much of the romance and much of the tragedy of Australian outpost life.

The river road! If you have conjured up in fancy a long white-metaled highway trailing like a ribbon beside a sparkling stream, you may dismiss the thought at once. Picture instead a dark line of gum trees traced across the level plain as though by some giant's careless hand. Along this line, hidden

between its deep gray-colored banks, moves slowly the tardy current of the ditch dignified by the name of river. In times of drought and that is to say at most times it trickles slowly over muddy shallows and round the stems of fallen trees, half-choked with eucalyptus leaves, and trimmed with the bleaching carcasses of dead sheep and cattle, the haunt of repulsive catfish, the drinking place of slimy snakes and scuttling iguanas; in times of flood it comes roaring, bank high, round the bends, a tawny-maned and angry tide, carrying down great uprooted trees and the spoil and wreckage of the river towns, swirling out among the gray stems of the gums and spreading in a shield of silver across the sunlit plains, driving the traffic of the river road back to the high ground of the sandhills.

The road itself is no macadamized highway flanked with heaps of broken metal destined for its upkeep and repair, but a mere collection of deep ruts, crossing and re-crossing, carved deep in flood-time mire and crumbled into drought-time dust. Here, all day, you may listen to the crack of the whips and drone of the wheels as the teams come trampling down in the heavy table-top wagons with the six-inch tires; ten to sixteen horses with their jingling chains; twelve to eighteen bullocks leaning on their burning bows with lowered heads and slavering mouths. And here you may see the great mobs of traveling sheep spread for a wide half-mile across the flats, nibbling hurriedly at the short dry

grass, incessantly turning in before the busy dogs, only to turn out again the moment that they have passed; and the mobs of slowly-moving cattle, stalking majestically forward with big horned heads alternately lifted and lowered, and eyes ever searching for a tuft of brown barley grass that some previous mob has missed. Feed is generally scarce upon the river roads, and the traveling mobs are mostly hungry; but a long experience of limited rations has given them a sort of resigned languor, as if they would say, 'It does not really matter; we shall find it further on! Why worry?'

And there, a lone pathetic figure on the river road, is the swagman, the sundowner thus picturesquely named because of his habit of arriving at a homestead exactly as the sun goes down, and so insuring that he will be offered rations and a place to camp should he desire it. There he stumbles in the crossing wheel-tracks, Australia's tramp and wanderer, with an individuality of his own which marks him out from all the wayfarers of the world. The gray dust of the plains is on his bronzed and bearded face, on his simple dress of Crimean shirt and moleskin trousers, on his rough unblackened boots, on his blanket-bundle strapped across his shoulders, on his swinging billy-can and dangling rationbags. He carries no staff or stick, but instead a light switch, broken from a wilga tree or buddah bush, with which to brush away the myriad persistent flies which follow him in a dancing cloud. At his heels is a dog which may be the veriest mongrel, or may be a champion sheep dog of purest pedigree and worth anything up to £50. His day's march may be two miles or twenty, according to the goal which he has set himself to reach as the sun goes down. Sometimes he will camp for a day or a week or a month in a

bend of the river. Time is of no account to the sundowner on the river road.

Here, too, is the traveling shearer on his way out to the early sheds. A typical bushman this, sitting with long, easy seat his ambling waler, and leading a pack-horse on which are strapped his tent, his blankets, and all the simple necessaries of his six-month trip. Sometimes the shearer travels alone, but more often he is one of a company of six or eight or more, who enliven the solitudes with song and jest, and make merry at night round a common camp fire.

On the far-out river roads there are few signs of human habitation other than the ever-moving tents of the travelers. At long intervals bush townships may be found, perched on some red sandhill on the river bank, with a due regard to safety from flood on the one side and from drought on the other. Before them is the neverto-be-trusted river; behind them the ever-to-be-feared, grim, mysterious, forbidding, yet beckoning bush. Dust whirls in the sandy, unpaved streets; goats browse on the stunted saltbush that lays a gray mantle on the very doorsteps; withered sunflowers stand like weary sentinels in gardens ravaged by the drought; blown umbrella grass whirls along the boarded verandas and piles in golden banks against the fences, and galvanized iron roofs flash and shimmer in the sun.

Here and there between the scattered townships a lonely sheep station has planted its headquarters by the river, fencing off from the hungry traveling mobs and teamsters' horses and bullocks, a square of horse paddock waving with girth-deep golden grass. Here again are boarded buildings, glittering iron roofs, huge water tanks, a windmill, and a Chinaman's garden flourishing in the arid waste like an