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The Tilbury Docks are much larger than the Victoria and Albert Basins, but by no means as busy.

docks that one seems to feel the pulse of the British Empire beat most vigorously. Out from them lead the roads to India, South Africa, Australia, to Hongkong, to Jamaica, to all the scattered coasts and colonies where Englishmen are dominant. This is quite wonderful to think about, especially if it is sailing day for the P. and O., the Union Castle, the Shaw Savill, or the British India steamers. The Lascar seamen, turbaned, brown, and nimble, help to give the scene the proper color. Army men are going out to join their commands in blazing, dusty garrisons and cantonments. Younger sons are faring forth to seek fortune at the pioneering outposts of civilization. Gentlemanly remittance men whom nobody wants at home are nonchalantly sailing into the unknown to reappear under new names on the beaches of the South Seas and the Bund of Shanghai. Sweethearts are trustfully voyaging afar to marry their heroes who have earned the passage money in rupees by sweating in the Civil Service. Wistful mothers who have come home to place the children in school are returning to share their husbands' exile.

The passage across the Atlantic in a swift liner has become a ferry trip, almost commonplace. The departure is like that

of a limited express train, not an event to thrill the observer and cause him to weave romantic fancies. It is something very different from this to watch the working force of empire scatter by divergent routes to pick up its appointed tasks. Not even the sight of a squadron of the grim, gray dreadnoughts of the Home Fleet, cruising in the Channel or anchored in the lee of Dover breakwater conveys a more moving impression of the power and influence of this sea-girt island of England than do these docks with their steamers and their people.

The Tilbury Docks, twenty-five miles below London, are much larger than the Victoria and Albert Basins, but by no means as busy. They spread over the Essex marshes in the midst of a most unlovely region of factories, waste spaces and dumping grounds in a kind of vast and empty isolation. Several of the best-known British shipping companies despatch their liners from Tilbury, but, for the most part, the steamers, scattered here and there, are like so many prisoners in solitary confinement. There are miles of tracks and hoisting cranes and capacious warehouses, but none of that animated confusion of scenes and sounds which one expects to find in the business of a mighty seaport. Further up the river there

is nothing to indicate that London is losing her grip of the ocean commerce, but at Tilbury one begins to ponder and ask questions. Is England decadent, as many of her intelligent people profess to believe and as they will admit with a shrug and a sigh? Has the shipping of London River been largely diverted to other ports and other flags? It is true that the Tilbury Docks were far too large for the time of their building, which was soon after the opening of the Suez Canal, but the fact remains that while Antwerp, Hamburg, and New York cannot find sufficient room to harbor their swelling commerce, there are scores of vacant berths in London's greatest and most modern area of dockage.

It is a more cheerful pilgrimage to steer across the river to Gravesend, which some one else has compactly described as "all tea and shrimps, oilskins, sea-boots, and bloaters." This is really the seaward boundary of the port. Beyond it the Thames begins to widen into an estuary between low shores receding monotonously behind stretches of marsh and mud bank, a landscape of smoky distances. Off Gravesend the red mooring buoys sheer and twist in the strong tide and every vessel passing to and fro must slow down or round to for visits from the customs and health officers. The causeway has an idling maritime population of pilots, fisher

men, men-of-war's men and merchant sailors ready with expert criticism of the manoeuvres of the tugs, steamers, and sailing ships which throng the channel, and all the talk is, not of commerce, but of things saltily nautical. These and other signs indicate that the river is nearing the sea.

Dreary and inconspicuous as is the shore line faintly pencilled toward the mouth of the Thames, there are suggestions here and there to recall some of the most high-hearted pages of English history. The anchored training ships of the navy, obsolete three deckers with painted ports, bring to mind the exploits of Rodney, Blake, and Cloudesley Shovel. At the navy yards of Chatham Reach rides a line of modern battleships and cruisers, but on the lawn stands an old wooden figure-head of Nelson overlooking the bit of sloping shore from which the Victory was launched. The red lightship which warns mariners off the Noresands marks a stretch of water reminiscent of mutinies, of sea-fights, of fleets keeping watch and ward.

At the Nore the ships of London River cease to trail in column and turn to go their several ways, the little coastwise craft through the channel to the northward, the deep-sea ships steering east and south on through the Downs, then vanishing, hull down and under, to choose the solitary paths that lead them to all the havens of the chartered oceans.

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GENERAL LEE AND THE CONFEDERATE

GOVERNMENT

By Thomas Nelson Page

HE student of the Civil War will be likely to reach the conclusion that for at least the last two years of the struggle General Robert E. Lee carried the fortunes of the Confederacy on his shoulders.

It will possibly always be a question how far Lee's military operations were affected by his relation to the Confederate Government, and to what extent he was interfered with by the Richmond authorities. That he was much hampered by them seems quite certain, both from the nature of his subordinate relation to Mr. Davis and from the interference which is continually disclosed in the correspondence that took place between them.

The great Generals of History have almost invariably had a free hand in their campaigns and have been able to call to their aid all the powers of their government. Alexander, Cæsar, Hannibal, Cromwell, Frederick, Napoleon, were supreme wherever the interests of their armies were concerned. Turenne, Eugene, and Wellington had the fullest and most absolute backing of their governments. Moreover, they lived under different conditions from those of our time and subsisted their armies on the countries in which they operated. Until Grant received command the Union generals were continually interfered with by the Washington Government, and it was only when Grant stipulated that he should be commander in fact as well as in title that success, after long delay, rewarded the Northern arms.

On the Southern side, though the interference was never so flagrant, and though Lee appears to have always had the confidence of President Davis, and, from the time when he assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, to have had that of the Confederate Government; yet it is a question whether the interference, or, what was equally disastrous, the lack of VOL. L.-54

prompt, practical, and efficient support on the part of the government, was not in the end as fruitful of misfortune. Colonel Henderson, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," declares that "a true estimate of Lee's genius is impossible, for it can never be known to what extent his designs were thwarted by the Confederate Government."

It may, indeed, be said briefly that a confederated government based frankly on the supreme power of the civil government over the military is not one under which a revolution can be fought out with best results. In the constitution of things the Confederate Government of the Southern States was inefficient to carry on such a war as that between the States. Each State was of equal dignity and authority with the others. Each one was of more importance in its own eyes than any of her sisters. Most of them were at times seriously, if not equally, threatened, and it was quite natural, when States' Rights was the cornerstone of the confederation, that each one should feel that her own interests were to her paramount to those of her sister States. Certainly, this was the case, and at times, particularly toward the close of the struggle, more than one of the South Atlantic States was in a ferment of opposition to the Richmond authorities bordering on secession.

The Confederate Government, indeed, was founded on certain principles of civil equality, which, however sound in themselves and making for liberty, yet furnished but a cumbrous machine with which to carry on a war. Theory, approaching dogma, controlled the minds of its legislators and of its officials. A few instances will illustrate the situation.

The war on the Southern side was conducted on the dogma of constitutional rights, and thus was limited during its earliest and most propitious stages to repelling invasion. No victory-not even one as complete as Bull Run-was consid

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