stood, through pedantic interpretations, the fundamental principle of Napoleonic tactics. At the commencement of a campaign, according to the Corsican, thought should be expended as to whether an advance should be inade or not, but when once the offensive has been assumed it should be maintained to the last extremity. But Joffre is too French in the southern sense to be able to give the tactical problem the requisite consideration. He must be up and at the foe because he understands the French to be warriors by nature and by instinct. They will rush on the foe in the fury of a fray when all sound tactics command a retreat, and in his propensity to yield to a like impulse Joffre is himself a true child of the south of France, ardent, impulsive, dashing, unconquerable.

There flows in the veins of Joffre Gallic blood from such diverse streams that, as the Matin remarks, he is altogether French in the versatility of his moods. From a grandmother he gets Gascon qualities-the fire in his eye, the swiftness of his gesture, the stamp of his foot. A great-grandfather was from Picardy, where the handsomest men in France are reared. As no one was ever more French than Joffre, no native of France could exemplify her characteristics in such variety.

One must not imagine a restless, energetic Joffre, pacing hurriedly to and fro in his headquarters. He suggests repose to the correspondent of the London Mail who saw him in Paris not long before the outbreak of hostilities. Joffre, we read, has a full, healthy face, a fresh, vigorous voice, the teeth showing slightly when he talks, the mustache moving up and down, the chin quivering. There is no suggestion of self-importance. Subordinates come and go with little ceremony. How the calm, slow manner flashes into energy as Joffre refuses a suggestion! "He seems literally to wipe it out of existence with one movement of the hand." Yet the face lights up with a delighted, almost infantile smile when an idea finds welcome in the quick brain. There is an eager handshake, a slap on the back and a word of praise for him who can suggest the right thing at the right moment. Noticeable, too, is the facility with which Joffre can handle a dozen subordinates in as many minutes, listening to each affably, grasp ing the question in a trice, meeting the situation with a quiet word. There is no hint of hurry. Here, obviously, is a general to whom supreme command is a matter of transacting business and not a thing of etiquet and

ceremony.

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Until the peace of Europe came to its swift end, General Joffre dwelt in a large airy house on a beautiful street near the Parisian suburbs, his household comprising the wife and daughters who are now at work in the hospitals. The private life of Joffre differed little from that of the average stout, heavily built Parisian with a social position to maintain in the world's gayest capital. Like the soldier born, he rose early, as the Matin notes with satisfaction, being served at breakfast by an orderly while he read the morning's despatches. Off he went then through the Bois on horseback, sometimes as early as six o'clock in the morning. On one day of each week he walked ten miles to keep in condition. Joffre prided himself upon such things as the cleaning of his own. sword and the saddling of his own horse, nor would he touch, while with the troops on maneuvers, any food except the army ration served in the field. It is related of him, too, that he can not sleep comfortably in a feather bed, so rigidly has he adhered to the rude conditions prescribed for the French soldier on active duty. His one source of misery is the size of his figure, which he deems altogether too burly for a man who moves about. Much good-humored banter has been indulged in at the General's expense on this account, for he remains a heavy man indeed for one who leads so active an existence.

Much controversy has filled the press of Paris on the subject of Joffre's genius. What France needs in her supreme commander, argues a writer in the Gaulois, is genius, inspiration, a heavenly capacity to improvise the right stroke at the destined hour. Has Joffre this mysterious and divine endowment? His gift for strategy has never been tested really. There are critics who hold him responsibe for a spectacular dash upon the lost provinces at the very outset of the struggle when a steady "containing" of the foe was the one thing needful. His champions in the press of Paris insist that his mind is that of the strategist-he can choose by instinct the true line of operations that determines the destiny of a campaign. His foes deem him a mere tactician, a man who can handle other men on a battlefield and fight fiercely without, however, any capacity to think out the greater problem of his campaign as a whole. In Joffre, according to a German critic writing in the Kreuz-Zeitung, France has a sort of Ney, brave, generous, prone to attack rashly if irresistibly at times, but without the imagination, the grasp of principle which makes the supreme soldier. "A good head for a watchdog," to quote one judgment in the London Mail finally, "calm, but ever ready to bite."

P

ERSONAL magnetism, an Italian intellect and a spirit of self-effacement masking an undaunted tenacity of purpose these are the characteristics upon which European dailies dwell in their studies of Benedict XV. Unknown, even obscure, as the new Pope is made to appear in the light of British comment upon his elevation to the throne, there is scarcely a leading daily in Spain, in Italy and in France to whom the career and the personality of Monsignor Giacomo Della Chiesa has not been familiar from a time even prior to his appearance in Bologna as archbishop of that austere and arcaded seat of learning.

The intimate association of the new pontiff with the late Cardinal Rampolla, one of the ablest ecclesiastical statesmen of his time-the man who formed the purpose and inspired the policy of him who until so recently seemed an exile from the Vatican to Bologna--filled the anticlerical press of the Latin nations with suspicion of Monsignor Della Chiesa. He was in those great days of Leo XIII., according to the somewhat unfriendly Indépendance Belge (Brussels), speaking at a time when the Perugian yet lived, a pale, mute, mysterious instrument of Vatican policy, writing despatches at the dictation of the all-powerful pontifical secretary of state and imbibing the diplomacy and the outlook upon life of the cardinal who was to miss the pontifical sovereignty itself by a very narrow margin.

There is much in the history as well as in the traits of the new Pope, if we may follow our contemporary on this point, to suggest the great churchman who trained him. Both spring from that ancient Italian aristocracy which has made history since the republics of the Middle Ages came into being. Each passed through the severe discipline of the Capranica College, at which the scholastic philosophy impresses itself indelibly upon the mind of the divinity student. Both passed on to that Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics which gives princes and diplomatists to the Church. Each served brilliantly in the nunciature at Madrid, altho not in the same capacities, and both held posts in the secretariate of state, one as the official head or supreme moderator of the whole office, the other as a member of the staff in one of the sections. The difference in their ages as well as in their rank made Rampolla the preceptor, while Della Chiesa, completely under the spell of his brilliant chief, absorbed the teachings of his senior eagerly.

THE NEW POPE

century, Monsignor Della Chiesa came in for denunciation by such dailies as the ministerial Rome Tribuna. He belonged to the old aristocracy for one thing. His family had identified itself with the opposition to the Roman municipal policy that followed the loss of the temporal power. The Della Chiesa house, originally from Genoa, had sustained severe financial losses like many another patrician clan when the Porta Pia was breached. Their fidelity to the Church made matters worse for them. The rise to distinction in the diplomacy of the Vatican of so conspicuous a figure socially as Monsignor Giacomo Della Chiesa did not commend him, either, to such monarchical sheets as the Paris Gaulois, devoted tho it professed to be to the holy see. The Monsignor had rallied with the great Rampolla to the republic at Paris. One of the very first despatches put into official phraseology by Monsignor Della Chiesa at the bidding of his illustrious preceptor pointed out that the restitution of Rome to the sovereign pontiff was the condition of the recognition of United Italy by the Papacy. That put the aristocratic ecclesiastic on the black list of the Tribuna at once and he was accused of lacking the strongly Italian sentiments which characterized Pius IX. He was likewise accused on one occasion of going very far in opposition to German aspirations in the East at the time of Emperor William's visit to Palestine. In brief, the prelate who has just

HIS HOLINESS

The new Pope does not look his age in his

those spacious Leonine days of the last

what less familiar than the one showing him in his robes.

ascended the throne of Peter has long been associated by certain continental European dailies with those Vatican influences opposing Teutonic aspirations in favor of Latin ones. Benedict XV. is thus no such unknown and unfamiliar figure as this western world has been led of late to infer.

The somewhat unexpected elevation of Monsignor Della Chiesa to the see of Bologna seven years ago—he was vegetating still in the Vatican chancellery where he exploited a very pure and elegant Latin style-seems to have been due to the suggestion of the late Cardinal Rampolla. Rampolla did not forfeit all his tremendous influence when Leo XIII. passed from the scene. Pius X. consulted the Sicilian from time to time, but a suspicion that Della Chiesa had been sent to them at the instigation of Rampolla alienated the patriotic Bolognese at first, affirms a writer in the Italian organ already named. The new archbishop, despite a marked reserve of manner, triumphed over the opposition. His personal magnetism proved irresistible. He has suffered all his life, our contemporary adds, from what is known familiarly as stage-fright. The mere prospect of addressing an audience fills him with terror, a detail that accounts, it is hinted, for the failure to advance him when he was forty-the prelatical age. In one respect only did he commend himself particularly to the late Pope, who regarded the diplomatic service of the Vatican with slight favor-he was assiduous in saying mass, in hearing confessions, in visiting the hospitals, in organizing sodalities among the faithful and in the general routine of mere parish work. Pius X., to whom Rome was but a large parish in a neglected state, attached the utmost importance to the religious work of a humble priest, and he made bishops of priests rather than of redactors of elegant compositions in the Latin tongue or even of negotiators of concordats with great powers. The stagefright of the Monsignor was disposed of by a reflection put into the mouth of the late Rampolla himself by the Tribuna - those who are afraid to preach deliver the best sermons.

It was easy to foresee, observed the Giornale d'Italia not so long before the last conclave, that Archbishop Della Chiesa would win all hearts at Bologna, altho the aristocracy of Genoa, to which he belongs, has never been famous for its urbanity. The Genoese are bluff, plain-spoken, suggesting the English type of country gentleman. The father of the new Pope wanted his sons to be sailors. Benedict XV. owes his personality and his temperament to his mother. She we read. a Marchesa Giovanna

was.

Migliorati, who had dreamed of seeing one of her sons a great figure at the bar. Her portraits are affirmed to reveal in her a striking likeness to the mother of the great Napoleon. The Marchesa, at any rate, transmitted her exceptional magnetism to her son and her romantic temperament as well. He nearly lost his life when he caught malaria after a visit to the Campagna in the Leonine pontificate and he is said to suffer from inadequate nourishment. During the first year of his archiepiscopal period at Bologna he was an invalid, according to the Italian daily, but his health has improved of late. He has, it seems, a tendency to biliousness, which enforces great abstemiousness in diet.

The youthful Giacomo had every educational advantage in his native Genoa, we read, too, entering the law school there when he was twenty-one only to discover, somewhat to the discomfiture of his parents, that he had what is known in Italian families as a vocation. Now it was, according to our contemporary, that he had to display the firmness for which the Genoese are so highly esteemed, for the ecclesiastical authorities themselves do not seem to have taken the youth's vocation seriously. At last he was entered at the Almo Collegio Capranica on probation as an ecclesiastical student, altho he had begun the study of the law but a short time previously. His father, a Marchese whose fortune had been lost through the turmoil of revolution in Italy, thought the boy was throwing himself away, seeing that the temporal power had fallen only a few years before and Pius IX. was pro- testing vainly to the world. There was a wealthy uncle on the maternal side who was so hopelessly alienated by the young man's entrance into holy orders that he cut off Giacomo in his will. This is said to be one reason why the new Pope is a comparatively poor man, the money of the Migliorati, except a sum coming to him from his mother, having all gone to other members of the family. The Della Chiesa family suffered severely through the financial operations of the politician. Nasi, according to Roman gossip, and its members would appear to be living modestly, notwithstanding their splendid state under the pontificate of Pius IX. before the temporal power was lost. Pope Benedict, at least before he became a Cardinal, seems to Italian observers of his personality to be of the Migliorati rather than a Della Chiesa.

cautious, executive, yet full of imagination, thrifty and on the whole a southern Italian aristocrat rather than a northerner. The difference is intellectual mainly, Monsignor Della Chiesa has the mentality of the Italian at its finest, fecund in ideas, in magnificent projects a trait most character

istic, too, we read, of his famed preceptor Rampolla. In their grandeur the designs of the late Rampolla were most Italian, and in terming the intellect of the new Pope Italian, the European dailies hint at the character of the coming pontificate should Pope Benedict be spared. He will remain practical, well bred, correct, an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers, and yet spiritual-another trait of the late Rampolla's. No peasant in Italy could profess a faith simpler or more sincere than Rampolla's, and his pupil on the pontifical throne resembles him in that as in everything else.

At the age of fifty-three, with hair turning gray, Monsignor Della Chiesa entered the melancholy and arcaded city of Bologna as its archbishop. The students of what is doubtless the oldest university in the dominions of the house of Savoy were alienated, says the Tribuna, by hints that his Grace, not yet a cardinal, was an enemy of unified Italy. "Bononia docet" is the motto of the town, filled with profesas well as students and famed for its gloom and its silence except at rare intervals when the boisterous collegians demonstrate. The gloom and the silence of the Archbishop, asserts our contemporary, fitted the atmosphere of the place perfectly. He took up his abode near the cathedral in

sors

241

the Via dell' Independenza, plunging at once into the purely administrative work of the archdiocese. He was by no means a familiar figure to the crowds in the Piazza del Nettune altho, accompanied by a member of his suite, he took long walks in the arcaded ways for which Bologna is so noted, returning the salutations of the townsfolk with the grace of gesture habitual to him. It became gradually an understood thing that the Archbishop was timid, eager to win the affection of his people and in somewhat delicate health.

Gradually, yet without divesting himself of a characteristic shyness, Monsignor Della Chiesa made the acquaintance of the people of Bologna. The student body succumbed frankly to his magnetic personality. It is a pensive personality, our journalistic authority opines, a compound of timidity with benevolence and a certain eagerness to propitiate. The Archbishop was thought affected at first because of his exquisite accent and the somewhat aristocratic forms of his speech. Italians of our time are prone to a slang whether very racy of the local soil Genoa, Venice, Rome or Naples. Monsignor Della Chiesa employed an idiom of faultless purity, as if rebuking the laxness that came in with the house of Savoy. His pulpit manner seemed a trifle cold. His gesture has the dignity

of the Italian aristocrat. His reserve is accentuated by frequent pauses in delivery that seem deliberate, as if he were measuring the effect of his words upon his hearers.

Benedict XV. has burst so suddenly upon our western world that impressions of his personal aspect disseminated in European dailies scarcely fit the portraits with which we are now familiar. His hair has not thinned perhaps since he went to Bologna, but it is not so dark, according to the Italian ministerial newspaper from which we borrow these notes. The trim figure is no longer so erect while the face, at any rate last May, when the Archbishop of Bologna entered the sacred college, was deeply lined in places. The Pope, to be sure, will soon be sixty, and the journalists who saw him in Bologna this spring agree that he looks his age, notwithstanding the comparative youth of the face looking out at us from the photographs of the month. His voice had not sufficient vigor to fill the great Church of St. Petronio when he preached there last year on the day consecrated to the patron saint of Bologna, but he was a gracious figure in the long procession headed by acolytes bearing tapers that swept up through the aisles to the main altar through a throng that little suspected, presumably, that he was to be the next pontiff. The Archbishop had then, seemingly, a careworn, not to say debilitated appearance. He is much disconcerted by the Italian habit of moving about in church.

No change was made by Monsignor Della Chiesa in the days of his splendor at Bologna, notes the Giornale

d'Italia, in the simplicity of the life he led as an obscure secretary at the Vatican. Altho not a member of a religious order pledged to the ascetic life, he who is now Benedict XV. was for years content to go without breakfast, resembling in this his master Rampolla, whose first meal was taken as a rule at noon. The new Pope resembles aristocrats generally in having a personal attendant who shaves him and helps him to dress, attentions with which the late Pius X. dispensed entirely. Benedict XV. has the very white Italian hand and the rather round and prominent Italian eye, and the clever correspondent of London Truth, writing of him before he entered the sacred college, thought his physiognomical characteristics Roman rather than Genoan. The Romans differ from the Genoese by being grave in facial expression and reserved in manner, somewhat too conscious, perhaps, of belonging to the most ancient aristocracy in the world. Their courtesy is highly finished, suggesting that the politeness springs from good breeding rather than from the heart. But the new Pope, while Roman in his gravity, is truly Genoese in his ability to soften every attitude, to unbend, to reveal himself magnetically, with almost the simplicity of a child. Yet he talks very little.

As a member of the diplomatic body of the Church, Benedict XV. early learned the French language, but like the late Leo XIII., he retains a decided Italian accent, we read, pronouncing "u" like "ou." Among all the, anecdotes retailed about him in Italian

dailies, not one reveals him as a man with the gift of repartee, altho he was victimized in his old Vatican days by a swindler who pretended to be an envoy from the pontifical chancellery and who, in that pretended capacity, defrauded many foreign priests in Rome. Monsignor Della Chiesa insisted upon making good the losses sustained by the impostor, a bit of generosity which his private fortune enabled him to do. The new Pope is not a rich man, like his preceptor Rampolla, but his private income, derived from real estate investments made originally by his grandfather on the mother's side, is said to be quite large for an Italian aristocrat. The Socialist Avanti even denounced him as a "plutocrat" when he entered the sacred college, but those who are best informed on the subject doubt if he can be worth a quarter of a million dollars in American money. Should real estate in the Campagna appreciate within the next ten years, the Pope, like some of his relatives, might be much richer. One or two of these relatives have held posts under the Italian government, but for the most part they have been clerically inclined. A nephew of Benedict XV. has entered the engineering profession in Rome where the Pope's brother, a retired naval officer, lives likewise. One of the Pope's cousins fell in love years ago with a princess of the royal house of Spain, who had to be locked up in a dungeon, according to the Avanti, lest she elope with the charming scion of the house of Della Chiesa, who, by the way, had a wife and family.

V

IEWED dynastically, the great war in Europe proves anew to more than one foreign commentator the proverbial luck of the royal family of Coburg. Four of the thrones of Europe, we are reminded by Julian Peacock, writing in the London Standard, are held by the house of Coburg-Great Britain, Belgium, Bulgaria and Coburg-until lately Portugal had a Coburg monarch. A hundred years ago the family was a minor German ducal house. Its rise dates back from a lucky marriage and its progress since is chiefly a history of lucky marriages-assisted by a good deal of forethought and shrewd arrangement. During the whole hundred years of their advancement the Coburgers have never broken up. They have always held together as one family, and it has always been a preoccupation with them to advance the family interest. So we find the British King making war for the Belgian King.

DYNASTIC CRISIS

In 1816 Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, as the family title ran at that time, celebrated the marriage of his second brother, Ferdinand George, with the Princess Antonia of Kohary, the only daughter and heiress of a great Hungarian magnate. This marriage, This marriage, which secured vast wealth to the youth, may be held to be the first of those fortunate turns of the wheel of fate which have won for the princes of the House the nickname of "the lucky Coburgers." Of course it was not all plain sailing, for certain things had to be arranged before the wedding could take place. To begin with, the Koharys did not form part of that charmed circle of reigning and mediatised princes who are held to be of equal birth one with another, by German Court custom. In the ordinary course of things, therefore, the marriage would have been morganatic. But the Emperor of Austria was approached on the delicate subject, and he professed himself will

ing to remove this obstacle by raising the Count of Kohary, the father of the bride, to princely rank. But he exacted his price. The Emperor was unwilling that the large estates of the Count of Kohary should pass into the hands of Protestants. The young Coburger, of course, was a Protestant, so the Emperor demanded in return for his services that all the children of the marriage should be brought up in the Catholic religion. To this the Coburg family cheerfully acceded. Tho the bridegroom's rank was the more exalted, the lady's wealth was worth a sacrifice. This broad-mindedness in religious matters has ever stood the Coburgers in good stead in their upward march, for they have almost invariably acted on the principle of Henry of Navarre, "Un royaume vaut une messe"a kingdom is worth a Mass. It will be remembered, as Mr. Julian Peacock tells us further, that some years ago the "conversion" to the Orthodox Church

of the infant Prince Boris (a greatgrandson of Ferdinand George and Antonia of Kohary) did much to strengthen the position of his father, Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

This first fortunate match was soon followed by another, which could scarcely fail to fulfill the highest ambition of the Duke of Coburg. His youngest brother, Leopold, married Princess Charlotte of Wales, the heiress presumptive of the throne of Great Britain. This seemed to put the British Crown within the grasp of a Coburger, but unfortunately the Princess died after a short period of married life, leaving no child, and all hopes of founding a Coburg dynasty in England were apparently frustrated. Still Leopold's position at the English Court was one of great influence. Through it he was able to obtain the hand of the Duke of Kent, son of George III., for his sister, the Princess Victoria of Coburg, who was a widow.

At this time the question of an heir to the British Throne had become critical. The end of the dynasty seemed quite imminent. The Duke of Kent and three other sons of George III., all middle-aged men, married within a few months of the death of Princess Charlotte in order to ensure the succession. As all the world knows, it was Leopold's sister who bore a daughter to the Duke of Kent, and this daughter ultimately became Queen Victoria of Great Britain, and established the Coburg dynasty there.

Prince Leopold himself, who had won golden opinions at the English Court, was in its opinion the best man to fill the newly created throne of Belgium after the Revolution of 1830, when the kingdom of the Netherlands was divided. This appointment was made in reality by the Governments of England and France acting in concert. The marriage of Leopold to Princess Louise, daughter of King Louis Philippe, was the French part of the bargain. Leopold-a very astute man-did not fail to avail himself of his influence in England and France, and exerted himself to the full on behalf of his Coburg relations. Supported by these two Powers, he obtained for Ferdinand (the eldest son of his brother Ferdinand George and Antonia of Kohary) the hand of the widowed and childless Queen Maria da Gloria of Portugal, who thus became the founder of the late reigning Portuguese house of Coburg-Braganza.

This second generation of Coburgers carried on all the traditions of good luck and good management, for an even more fortunate marriage was to fall to the lot of another of Leopold's nephews, Albert, the second son of his eldest brother, Duke Ernest of SaxeCoburg-Gotha. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune for the Coburg

family, William IV. of England died just at the time when his niece and heiress Victoria had reached marriageable age. Her mother the Duchess of Kent, and her uncle the King of the Belgians had long selected a Coburg husband for her-their nephew Albert. But it is highly improbable that William IV. would have permitted the marriage. There was no reason why he should have allowed his heiress to carry the Crown of Great Britain away from the House of Hanover, which had now held it for nearly a century and a half. She had two cousins on her father's side, and either of them, Prince George of Cumberland (afterwards George V. of Hanover) or Prince George of Cambridge (the late Duke), would from the English King's point of view have been a more suitable consort for the future Queen. By the King's death this obstacle to King Leopold's plans was removed. He and the Duchess of Kent, now the mother of the Queen of England, had the matter in their own hands, and could carry out the further aggrandizement of their own family. Albert of Saxe-Coburg was thrown in the way of his cousin Victoria, who was at a susceptible age and as a princess had been quite unaccustomed to the society of young men. Naturally the girl Queen fell in love with the handsome young Coburger, and Leopold had the supreme consolation of seeing a nephew the consort of the Queen of Great Britain, the posi

SWEETEST OF COBURGS

243

King Albert of Belgium ranks among his kinsmen as the kindest, the noblest, the most charming and the most gifted from an artistic standpoint.

tion which a generation before he had hoped to occupy himself.

The last throne to be gained by the Coburg family was that of Bulgaria. But in that case family interest was probably quite a secondary factor. Ferdinand, the youngest grandson of the original Kohary marriage, owed his election to the throne at Sofia to Austrian influence coupled with Kohary wealth. Still, it should be noted that his eldest brother, Philip of Saxe-Coburg, who is the ex-husband of the Princess Louise of Belgium, was for many years on terms of the greatest intimacy with his English relations. In the official painting of the 1887 Jubilee Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey he is placed in a prominent position as a near and honored relative of the Queer

If we take into account female alliances, the ramifications of the Coburg family interest are still more remarkable. The Crown Princess of Sweden, the Queen of Norway, the Crown Princess of Greece, the Crown Princess of Roumania, and the Queen of Spain are all of the clan, so that in the natural course of things the throne of each of those countries will be occupied by a Coburger on the mother's side.