which Elizabeth Montagu described as " trollops." He had been elected a member of Johnson's Club in 1773, where he was supposed to represent "Irish Antiquities," though the Doctor considered Burke's recommendation of him as "a man of gentle manners "a quite sufficient qualification.

When, after his death, it was found that his will provided handsomely for one of the "trollops," but left very little for his widow, the Blues were loud in their protestations at his "vile neglect." But Mrs. Vesey's devotion survived even this shock, though it dealt a final blow to her spirits and vitality. The following may probably be dated in the first few months of her widowhood:

I have had such incessant Tears of late, I believe the mind has been warn'd the best thing I can do is to give it as little trouble as I can ; I have refused all the pleasant invitations of Mrs Garrick and Mr Walpool, and yet I am not the better for it. Heaven help me, if I do not recover when I see you; I am advised to quietness, and London is every day more silent. .

My Dr friend tho I am almost blind I cannot help writing to thank you for your charming delightful Letter; my dull Pen has now added melancholy; . . . for by some misunderstanding of Setlement there is no income comes to me-it certainly was not want of kindnes for we never had any cros purposes but lived in Peace and friendship, and the last Hours of his life he look'd at me with an affection, and drew my Hands to his Heart with such a look when He was deprived of Speech that I cannot yet remember it without Tears-yet in the Will there is no income for me, tho everything else that is kind—which, as we were Relations by birth, and stil more united by affection which was never broke into by any disagreement-I must impute it to chance unknown, for I am sure it cou'd not originate in his Heart. . .

Mrs. Vesey's illness increased steadily from 1786 onwards. Horace Walpole writes in 1787 to Hannah More: "Her faculties decay rapidly. My pity now feels most for Mrs. Hancock, whose patience is inexhaustible, though not insensible." Mrs. Hancock, who was dubbed "Body" to Mrs. Vesey's " Mind," was the Sylph's sister-in-law by her first marriage, and had been her devoted companion for more than twenty years. In 1788, Walpole records: "Our poor friend grows dreadfully worse, that is, violent and untractable"; but this seems only to have been a temporary phase, leading to complete imbecility. In August, 1790, Horace Walpole again writes: "Poor dear Mrs. Vesey is

exactly in the same state of childhood she was, and certainly will never be less so. One can only wish now that she was restored to happiness through the only door by which she can pass to it, and which her blameless benevolent life makes us presume she will enjoy." In the following spring that door was opened to her.

The apprehension of declining faculties seems to have been with Elizabeth Vesey for many years before symptoms were manifest to others. Mrs. Carter says that even as early as 1766 she was "haunted with the miserable apprehension of losing some of her senses."

Looking at such records of her life as we possess, we can trace to this nervous apprehensiveness about what the future held for her, much of the Sylph's distinctive character. Her insatiable appetite for social distraction, her marked intolerance of all order and formality, which Horace Walpole called "the Vesey chaos," the unsteered volatile drift of her letters, the glimpses of deep depression, the clinging dependence of her friendship with the eminently sound and sane Mrs. Montagu; all these features seem to find part of their explanation in a mind obsessed with the dread of decay, fighting yet feeling the inevitable, and grasping desperately at distraction or clutching at strength in others for support.

The final exposure of her husband's infidelity and neglect may have given the decisive kick to the wavering balance, but the germs of decay had been long at work. Fanny Burney, writing in 1779, speaks of her as " an old woman," exceedingly well-bred and of agreeable manners, but " the most wrinkled, sallow, timebeaten face I ever saw," and her description of one of Mrs. Vesey's evening coteries in the winter of 1783, of the silver ear she wore that would drop off, of her "extreme perplexity" over Mr. Cambridge's talk, and of her remark to his son: "It's a very disagreeable thing when one has just made acquaintance with anybody, and likes them, to have them die," shows that the Sylph's eccentricities were becoming noticeable and provoking laughter. All her friends and all who knew her were her friends were amused or distressed by her flightiness. She scarcely ever (wrote Mrs. Montagu) enjoys any one subject from the apprehension that something better may possibly be found in another. It is really astonishing to see how this restless pursuit counteracts all the feelings of her amiable and affectionate heart."

She dwelt in "a perpetual forecast of disappointment," and in the fanciful forebodings which her imagination was continually calling up, her enjoyment, indeed her perception, of the moment and its opportunities was lost.

With really lively parts (wrote Madame D'Arblay) a fertile imagination, and a pleasant quickness of remark, she had the unguardedness of childhood, joined to an Hibernian bewilderment of ideas, that cast her incessantly into some burlesque situation, and incited even the most partial, and even the most sensitive of her own countrymen, to relate stories, speeches and anecdotes of her astonishing self perplexities, her confusion about times and circumstances, and her inconceivable jumble of recollections between what had happened or what might have happened, and what had befallen others that she imagined had befallen herself; that made her name, though it could never be pronounced without personal regard, be constantly coupled with something grotesque.. .. Her ardour to know whatever was going forward at her parties, and to see whoever was named, kept her curiosity constantly in a panic, and almost dangerously increased the singular wanderings of her imagination.

Her deafness, of course, enhanced this ardour and distraughtness, and kept her perpetually watching and dashing for the next possible centre of interest. But the "bewilderment of ideas was something more than " Hibernian," and the aggravations of circumstance deepened it at length into impenetrable fog.

It is a sad descent from Hannah More's triple crown of the Bas Bleu; but happily it is the sweet self-effacing tender-hearted Mrs. Vesey of the earlier years who has left her abiding impression on the memories of her contemporaries; and if it is sometimes as a laughable, it is always as a very lovable and delightful personality that the Sylph flits " ætherially " across the chronicles of a century in which her most endearing qualities were very far from common.

REGINALD BLUNT

AIR POWER AND POLICY

Air Power and War Rights. By J. M. SPAIGHT. Longmans, Green & Co. 1925.

THE

HE growth and organization of military air power are no exceptions to the rule that a new development occupies the position it makes for itself until the functions achieved counterbalance the tentacles meanwhile thrown out. The eleven years succeeding the Wright brothers' great adventure in 1903 saw the early development and firm establishment of flight as a tactical function of the army and navy: a revolutionary instrument employed on evolutionary lines.

Wings strengthened with the need, and shortly after the outbreak of war strategic employment in attacking objectives beyond the range of the older arms was initiated. This began with the German attack on Dover in December, 1914, and the subsequent raids on London and the Midlands, and by the British attacks on Cuxhaven and other strategic centres. In 1916 a squadron was formed for the specific purpose of bombing enemy munition centres from England, but the army in France secured its diversion, and a scheme for the co-operation of British and French units for a similar purpose also failed to mature. In October, 1917, a small striking force, under army control, was concentrated at Ochey with the industrial basin of Alsace-Lorraine as its target; but its development, too, was impeded by the force being called upon to assist in ground tactical needs.

Public opinion enforced a great step forward in June, 1918, when a group of squadrons, organized directly under the newly created Air Ministry, and independent of the army, made it possible to extend the range, regularity, power and effectiveness of the strategic air offensive from either England or France. And it was hoped that, had hostilities continued, all ground tactical employment with troops would gradually have been shed, and that the force would have developed into its full strategic use. As it was, the war would probably have been brought to an earlier close had a development, which would largely have offset

ground immobility, not been checked; but it at least gave practical evidence that warfare is revolutionised; that we shall have more and more to think in terms of air; and that the zone of future war will include every foot of the opponents' territory.

War of highly industrialised nations will be a struggle for existence as a whole; and eventually, both in the situation leading up to hostilities and to overcome a subsequent military offensive, the primary instrument will be predominant air strength. Already the first protection of this country is in the air and, while naval power to hold the empire routes, and mechanicalised land forces, will be necessary, air attack on a vast scale, including the use of chemically loaded projectiles as well as explosive aerial bombs, will eventually force peace.

These facts are being gradually borne in on the public mind, but the position of strategic air power in international law, with which Mr. Spaight deals in his latest book, is less well realised and affords an interesting study. According to this authority, international law governing warfare amounts to a prohibition of practices which involve a degree of suffering totally out of proportion to the military advantage they afford, and he envisages the disregard of the law, where a change of circumstance alters that balance. Meanwhile the present development of air forces carries with it an assurance of the use of military power in direct attack on the moral stamina of the non-military subjects of a hostile Power. Mr. Spaight himself, while reminding us that such a development remains opposed to international law, cites a mass of British and foreign opinion which leaves no doubt of its present acceptance and future employment.

Now, the end at which a higher command aims in time of war is not the infliction of casualties or destruction; these are but the means to overcome hindrances erected against the imposition of the hostile will. Hitherto, to that end, it has generally been necessary to break down the military defences behind which the non-combatant will has been sheltered and these defences have therefore been the object of attack. But flight has introduced a power to penetrate military defence and inflict material damage, not only on military objectives behind the enemy forces, but by direct attack on the morale of those civilian elements which compose the hostile national will.

And so by the air, strategically employed, has arisen the power,