Page:The battle of Dorking; (IA battleofdorking00chesrich).pdf/11



warnings and prophecies addressed to one generation must prove very ineffective if they are equally applicable to the next. But in the eloquent appeal published forty-three years ago, by General Chesney, with its vivid description and harrowing pathos, few readers will not recognize parallel features to those of our own situation in September, 1914.

True the handicaps of the invasion of August, 1871, are heavily piled upon the losing combatant. Not only the eternal Anglo-Irish trouble (so easily mistaken by the foreigner for such a difference as might be found separating two other countries) but complications with America, as well as the common form seduction of the British fleet to the Dardanelles, a general unreadiness of all administrative departments, and a deep distrust of the "volunteer" movement, involve the whole drama in an atmosphere of profound pessimism.

But there are scores of other details, counsels, and reflections (of which we will not spoil the reader's enjoyment by anticipation) which, as the common saying is of history when it repeats itself, "might have been written yesterday." The