and saw myself advertised in large posters as a statistician of national reputation; and the people were urged to "Turn out and hear the great statistician!" Statistics give me the nightmare; and I should have thought that this kind of advertisement would have been enough to keep everybody from going to the hall. But after supper a large band came up to the door of the hotel, and I was invited to follow it. There were perhaps forty persons in the band, and the procession behind it seemed rather small for such a cortege, since it consisted of three persons only, the eminent statistician in the middle, flanked by the county committeeman on one side and the district committeeman on the other. In solemn state we marched around the public square and entered the hall, which I was surprised to find comfortably filled. The people of that town evidently had no horror of statistics.

Still more surprising, however, was the attitude of the inhabitants of a prosperous manufacturing town in the State of Maine. At this place I spoke with a United States Senator, and I was astonished to notice the intense interest which the audience gave to the figures by means of which he deduced the national and local prosperity resulting from the tariff. There was a convincing power in his $567,698,473.69, particularly in the cents, which no other form of argument or rhetoric could have supplied. I followed the Senator with some remarks upon other subjects which I thought ought to be interesting, but I observed that my hearers became restless and that some of them left the hall. Seeing how well the Senator had done with his statistics, I tried a few figures myself, and was surprised to notice that so long as they held out the patience of my audience held out too, but that when my figures failed me the endurance of my audience gave way at the same time.

A new convert is very valuable as a campaign speaker, but the excellence of his argument is quite a secondary matter when compared with his value for exhibition purposes as a recruit. He is specially in demand if it can be said of him that his father, his brothers, or, better still, every member of his family belongs, and has for generations belonged, to the opposite party, as showing through what tremendous obstacles of blood and environment he has worked his way up from darkness into light. I have sometimes been surprised to find myself posted as one who had thus forsaken the pathway of error, the attraction on this account being perhaps even greater than the putative judgeship, senatorship, or colonelcy with which my name was also connected. In one district I visited, the

managers had secured a gem of peculiar lustre, a young fellow whose father was then engaged in campaigning for the other side, and who was sent to follow his progenitor around the State and answer him at the same places a night or two afterward, telling to enthusiastic audiences how the old man had beguiled him four years before, but could never do it again.

The blandishments offered by the political manager to the spellbinder must not be too severely censured, for the poor committeeman is between the devil and the deep sea. On the one hand, there is the army of spellbinders each insisting upon the best appointments in the country-men to whom the Chicago Auditorium or the Metropolitan Opera House in New York seems the fittest place for the display of their abilities—and, on the other hand, there is an infinite number of local communities each demanding the best speaker that the country affords. Every village wants to hear Bryan, Roosevelt, Cockran, or Depew. What then is left for the poor manager to do except to exalt Smith and Jones to a national rank, to proclaim that he is something" equally as good" as Beveridge or Dolliver or Hill, and, on the other hand, to exalt each crossroads neighborhood to a place of vital importance in the campaign, almost as essential to party success as Chicago or New York, and to promise vast audiences from the surrounding country. Of course, there is disappointment on both sides. The spellbinder foams at the mouth when he realizes that the man who flattered him is a deceiver, while the people at the crossroads denounce the central committee for sending them a gasbag in place of an orator. But what else can they do? One of the most thankless places in a campaign is a place on the executive committee, especially at the head of the speakers' bureau.

We spellbinders are by nature a conceited tribe; and sometimes in our intercourse with each other many of us realize that celebrated definition of a bore, "A man who insists upon talking about himself when you want to talk about yourself." I have found many spellbinders of this kind. They relate their forensic triumphs in terms that defy all competition. Some of them are even mathematical in describing their powers of persuasion. Who, for instance, could hope to excel the magnetic power of the orator who exultantly announced in the rooms of the National Committee that at Brownstown he had had "eleven applauses and three 'go ons?'"'

Conscious as he always is of his own excellence, the spellbinder is sure to meet many trials and disappointments. Perhaps his meet

ing has not been properly announced, and he finds only a few straggling guests to partake of his teeming banquet of eloquence. That is hard enough; but even worse is it when there is a large gathering and another man speaks first and talks at great length, leaving the other nothing but the remnants both of the time and the audience. How tedious and dull was the speech of that first fellow who thus deprives an unconscious multitude of something so much more valuable and attractive! Perhaps the hardest trial to the spellbinder is to find, after he has been sent to a large city in which he supposes he is to be the central and sole attraction, that he is only one of a cargo of eloquence shipped at the same time, to the same place, for the same purpose. But, in spite of these drawbacks, I think most of us still consider that campaigning is good fun; and however welcome the home circle and a little rest may be after a month or two spent upon a stumping tour, I am sure that nearly all of us will be ready to try it again after four years.

The concluding incident of the spellbinder's duty remains to be written. After the campaign is over and the votes are cast he still must "ratify." If he is at headquarters when the news of victory comes, this is a simple matter-one more speech with louder interruptions and greater enthusiasm than ever, and his work is over. If he belongs to the defeated party the thing is still simpler. He has only to crawl into his hole. But quite different is it with the spellbinder on the victorious side if his confidence has been so great as to stifle his curiosity and he has presumed to go to bed before ascertaining the result. A distant but constantly increasing noise of horns and drums and cheers breaks in upon his slumbers. Next, word is brought that a crowd is seen coming up the drive. With shrieks and yells under his window they demand a speech. Then he goes forth upon the balcony, clad perchance in a huge overcoat, which supplies the lack of more appropriate apparel, and there, still half asleep, he talks incoherently and waves his hands.

But, whatever he says, it is enough. The pounding on the tin pans, the hurrahs, and the waving of the dead rooster from the pole fill every hiatus, until the crowd departs, and he again tumbles into bed, where the fairies touch his silver tongue, and he dreams of postmasterships, collectorships, and other fair forms of increasing prosperity such as are wont to follow the footsteps of successful eloquence. And before any grim awakening shall mar his visions, here let us leave him. WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE.

FOUR LEGS AND TWO LEGS.

THE article by Mr. A. Maurice Low, entitled "Four Legs Instead of Two," which appeared in THE FORUM for November, 1900, while containing some matters of great interest to both lay and military readers, presents nothing new to the latter class. In fact, the sweeping generalization, based upon a consideration of special conditions, is to a certain extent amusing. The conditions cited were taken from the Boer war in South Africa, where most of the operations were conducted on treeless plains, a terrain which is ideal for the use of mounted troops.

The experience of centuries of warfare, with all the improvements which have been made in death-dealing weapons and in methods of transportation and supply, has clearly demonstrated that decisive results are in general best obtained by a proper proportion, coördination, and coöperation of the three arms, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and that these proportions are never fixed and absolute, but must vary according to conditions. In the case cited, the terrain, the character of the foe, and other conditions pointed to the fact that the proportion of mounted troops should have been very much greater than the normal, but they did not indicate that foot soldiers should cease to exist. The object of all offensive military movements in the field is to force the enemy to stand and fight a decisive action, or so to out-manoeuvre him as eventually to get him into a position where he will have to fight against odds, or, accepting the alternative, surrender. When he stands, the infantry, with its fire action, comes into play, not always arriving on the field out of breath and unnerved by fatigue, but deliberately taking its position for attack, not by any means always frontal.

The most successful wolf-killer the writer has ever known used two dogs, a greyhound and a bulldog. The greyhound possessed mobility, but could not kill a wolf alone. He could circle about the animal and hold him at bay until his slower ally, the bulldog, arrived upon the scene and promptly despatched the foe. The bull

dog was the infantry of that combination. It might be argued that one dog possessing the speed of the hound, and at the same time the killing power of the bulldog, might have been used to accomplish the result. True, but that kind of dog was not available; and in the matter of troops I am of the opinion that it is hardly possible to make a force of mounted infantry that can do the work as well, as economically, and as decisively as a combined force of foot and mounted troops. The great number of horses required, the vastly increased expense, counting first cost, subsequent remounts, forage, saddlery, shoeing, etc., the extra transportation for forage, field forges, etc. - these are all arguments against the excessive use of this force. The additional stomach incident to mounting the erstwhile foot soldier is a capacious one, requiring each day about eight times the weight and many times the bulk of food supplied his rider. This adds very materially to the amount to be transported in the trains. That an army travels on its stomach is equally true of horse and man, and the odds are in favor of the man for endurance under conditions of shortage for both, as has been demonstrated in some of the plains work of our own army.

It is not true that "works cannot be carried by storm as they used to be." The writer has helped to carry positions by assault within two years, and that, too, when such positions had not been previously shaken by artillery fire. It is liable to be costly in casualties; but, "one cannot have omelets without breaking eggs," and a frontal attack is sometimes necessary. No one would make it where flanking, or a combination of both, is feasible; but this is not always the case. The enemy's flanks are not always "in the air." The example of combined frontal and flank attack cited is just as feasible and more economical with infantry holding the position in front while the flanking is done by the more mobile troops.

Mr. Low apparently loses sight of the fact that there is other work to be done in the theatre of war besides that of flying columns. For instance, in Lord Roberts's advance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria 15,000 men were guarding and holding his line of communication back to the Orange River. This work can be best done by foot troops with only a very small proportion of mounted men and a still smaller proportion of artillery to assist in holding the most important points. The Boer was fighting a losing, defensive fight all along; harassing the advancing foe; delaying his advance, and putting off the inevitable as long as possible. In fact, it was hardly more