WOLSELEY

(1857-1942, Grandson of Thomas Arnold and Nephew of Matthew Arnold, Editor of Murray's Magazine) thanking him for sending the latest number of your magazine - I have skimmed over... Roosevelt's article which deals with me. My article which he criticises was certainly written in no hostile feeling towards America or its people. I am very fond of both, & I tried to avoid all points upon which I knew that small minded men from the other side of the Atlantic are thin skinned about. We have all our national peculiarities, & when ours are laughed at by outsiders, we don't fly off into coarse, vulgar abuse... as Mr Roosevelt's article seems to abound in. I never heard of him before but I presume he is a literary man & knows his trade. I am not a literary man & I shall not venture to criticise his knowledge of it. What a pity that he did not assume... that I know my trade also! He is evidently a very strong party politician, & it is but natural therefore that as a Northerner, he should hate an outsider to write or speak of General Lee as I have done. It is very galling to men of his stamp that the great huge masses of men collected from the four winds of heaven by the Northern states, & supplied with everything which money could purchase to make them into soldiers, should have been kept at bay for years, & defeated over and over again by small Southern Armies. I admit all this & I know from long residence in American how impossible it is for the ordinary Northerners like Mr Roosevelt to write dispassionately, I might say with common fairness, upon matters connected with General Lee or the great Confederate war. I was in American when Mr Lincoln & his Cabinet trembled for the safety of Washington. I saw northern & Southern troops & know what both were like and the value I attached... I have carefully avoided giving expressions to those feelings, to those opinions because I should hate to hurt the susceptibilities of a people that I am very fond of, of a nation sprung from the same roots as my own, that speaks our language, uses our laws & above all things, whose minds are educated by the same literature. I cannot help thinking that your friend does not represent what is best or most refined in the American nation. The Americans whom I know are as patient of others views, opinions as they expect others to be of theirs and do not scold when argument fails them. You ask me to write you something that you should publish in answer to Mr Roosevelt's attack upon me. I regret I cannot do so. I have written the foregoing for your own amusement, thinking it might interest you, but I have long since made it a rule never to answer any such attacks. It is quite fair that Mr Roosevelt should express himself as having no opinion of me as a soldier, & should criticise all I have ever done in the field or scribbled in magazines. I presume he is a professional writer & I should therefore be sorry to enter upon a war of styles with him. In such a war I should be easily - very easily defeated. However on military subjects, it is possible I might hold my own with him, although he does lay down the law upon them as if he was a recognised authority. I have not the time nor the inclination to embark on a war of words..., 7 sides 8vo., Fir Grove House, Farnham, 29th August 1888. The second letter says that he was flattered by his letter but that he is sorry to say that I could not at present rush into print on Army matters. I am not supposed to give any public expression to my views which are far in advance of those who are my superiors, & therefore not palatable always to them. Were it otherwise, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to comply with your flattering request..., 3 sides 8vo., Oakdene Guildford, no date