Author Description

Some apology or explanation may be deemed requisite, for delaying thepublication of this "Story of the Zulu War" for more than a year after its conclusion.The little book itself was written very shortly after the capture of the king, Cetywayo,and the tardiness of its appearance has been, to a certain extent, intentional on mypart.Although it may seem ungracious and, perhaps, ungrateful to cavil at the warcriticisms and descriptions which, by every post and telegram, adorn the pages ofcontemporaneous journalism, I would submit that the practice of writing excathedr on war topics the day after an engagement, is too early to allow us toexamine motives as well as facts, so that we may form conclusions to which wecan only justly arrive, when "Time, the corrector, where our judgments err," hassoftened prejudice and exposed partisan feeling. The worst and most valuelesscriticisms on Waterloo were given to the world immediately after the fight of MontSt. Jean. The most unreliable, and indeed erroneous, opinions in regard to thesplendid errors of Inkerman and Balaklava, appeared before the Crimean war wasended, and many a hero, elevated by the verdict of contemporaneous eulogy to atemporary pedestal in the Temple of Fame, has since been dethroned by thecalmer and more honest judgment of a later generation. When the EmperorNapoleon called us a "nation of shopkeepers," he, perhaps, intentionally, paid us acompliment; for peace, commerce, and prosperity, have, as a rule, I venture tohold, been more regarded in our islands than projects of violence, warfare, orconquest; and this with us has ever been an honourable characteristic of the Spiritof our present Age.But as Sir Bartle Frere, one of England's greatest, wisest, and most humaneadministrators, was well aware, the great and time-honoured law of self-defencesometimes compels a State, like an individual, to resort to arms, and the Appeal ofBattle, when all peaceful modes of arrangement have been vainly tried, becomesoccasiona