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and nine mothers who moan aloud." Here, doubtless, we have a gloomy allusion to the Celtic custom of human sacrifice. At Porz Keinan (the " Gate of Lamentations ") tradition asserts that infants were actually sacrificed in pre-Christian times to some grim old Celtic goddess.

“The Seigneur and the Korrigan" is a famous Breton folksong, and the Nine Korrigan, who dance round the fountain with garlanded hair, are without doubt the virgins, sacred to the Moon, of Celtic mythology.

The wild sow with the nine little pigs refers to the bardic symbolism according to which the order of bards or druids was represented as wild boars (which includes wild sows), and the bardic pupils the white children as little pigs. The Druid teachers often referred to themselves as wild boars, creatures symbolic of the untamed wilderness. To these Druid boars the apple-tree was sacred, and in this connection it may be mentioned that a Celtic nobleman of the Roman imperial period, desiring to Romanize himself, changed his name, which referred to pigs, to Marcus Grunius Porcellus. At the same time he caused a medal to be struck on which was engraven an apple-tree with pigs under its shelter, thus perhaps indicating to the initiated that he remained a Druid.

The long verse we have been discussing seems so to have puzzled the original composer of "The Twelve Apostles" that the old fellow contented himself by saying

Nine, nine-the triple Trine,

a cryptic astrological term covering a whole wealth of ignorance. More poetically, the Mischna version makes "nine" stand for the nine months of a woman's gestation.

We come to "Ten "-terse, and of historical import :

Ten hostile ships have been seen coming from Nantes: woe to you, woe to you, men of Vannes.

The English folk-song now deserts the Druid. He tells of the great sea-fight in Quiberon Bay, hard by the mystic stones of Carnac and Locquemariaker. In this decisive battle the Veneti were defeated by Julius Cæsar's fleet (B.C.56), and there followed a massacre of the Druidic senate. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are at war; the day of the Breton Celt is over.

To verses 10-12 the Isle of Wight folk-song gives the conventional Christian turn, as do its English variants. Eleven in the German version is, as before noted, the eleven thousand virgins of the Cologne legend, and the Jews speak of “the eleven stars of the Dream of Joseph." In a thirteenth verse they refer sublimely to the virtues and attributes of the Most High. Other continentals have even added further verses. The modern Bretons, according to Luzel, preserve the song as the Vespers of the Frogs (Rannel), creatures in hiding in wild places like the boars; but the song has, indeed, ranged far. It is known to the Slavs and in Tyrol and Suabia, and has been carried to the New World by the French Canadians, who accompany it with a curious contre-danse of the Breton type. No dance can be traced in England, but there remain the ritual ceremony with which it was often sung and the queer hesitation of the singers when it was demanded. Charlie Nippard, for instance, used always to let himself be pressed to "oblige," and would remark repeatedly : "No, I shan't zing that zong to-night!" A bold singer, he was not like the Victorian young ladies who had to be asked several times before consenting to warble: he was obeying some forgotten formula.

The Druid doctrine was delivered in triplets, or tercets, such as are imitated by Tennyson in his " Merlin and Vivien." "Ar Rannou," as known to Hersart, is in rhyming tercets, made up of seven-syllable trochaic lines. It is a Druidic song on the face of it. Indeed, it would seem to represent in a popular form a Druidic initiation ceremony, for it recapitulates the headings of Druid knowledge as to the Divinity, metaphysics, physics, metempsychosis, and systems terrestrial and celestial.

The ancient song very probably travelled to us from Gaul, and from Cornwall spread over Saxon England. It points to the very origins of things among the ancestors of the Celts. And the "Twelve Apostles," now best known to us as a song sung by the choirs of the League of Arts, points back to "Ar Rannou," for it is certainly more pagan than its continental parallels.

VICTOR G. PLARR

THE SERVICES AND A COMMON DOCTRINE

I.

2.

OF WAR

The Study of War for Statesmen and Citizens: lectures delivered in the
University of London during the years 1925-1926. Edited by MAJOR-
GENERAL SIR GEORGE ASTON, K.C.B. Longmans, Green & Co. 1927.
Basic Principles of Air Warfare. By "SQUADRON LEADER." Gale and

Polden. 1927.

3. The Great Delusion: A Study of Aircraft in Peace and War. By "NEON," with a preface by ARTHUR HUNGERFORD POLLEN. Ernest Benn. 1927.

THE

'HE publication of a book under a title so novel as "The Study of War for Statesmen and Citizens," edited by the lecturer on military history at the University of London, is itself significant of one aspect of the change which has come over this country since August, 1914. Then war was something for only soldiers and sailors to study; now, as Lord Grey tells us in his all too brief introduction, it concerns every citizen and especially those selected civilians called statesmen who govern this country and guide its destinies in war no less than in peace.

In his preface, Sir George Aston claims that, incomplete though they necessarily are as studies of a vast and complex subject, the lectures reprinted in this volume do "convey to statesmen and citizens' the views of leaders of thought in the three fighting services about the functions which those respective services should be prepared to perform in the interests of the nation and Empire which they serve." There can be no doubt as to the authority in their own services of the three lecturers who deal with the subjects of war at sea, on land and in the air, since each has been responsible for the moulding of thought on war in his own service. Vice-Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, not only a distinguished naval historian, is a former President of the Royal Naval College; while Major-General Sir Edmond Ironside and Air Vice-Marshal Brooke-Popham are the two last Commandants of the Staff Colleges of the Army and of the Royal Air Force respectively. From the pronouncements of these eminent authorities it should be easy for statesmen and citizens to ascertain what each of the three fighting services thinks about war, and whether those thoughts derive from a body of teaching held in common, or whether they conflict in any essential matter.

VOL. 245. NO. 500.

Y

The re-organization of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1924 has increased-if it were possible to do so-the importance of the fighting services thinking alike about war, since the lynch pin of our present higher organization for war is now what is known as the Sub-Committee of the Chiefs of the Staff. Upon this sub-committee, composed of the Chief of the Naval Staff, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the Chief of the Air Staff now rests full responsibility for advising the Government on all major questions of war and preparation for war, including, of course, projected operations or war plans. However much they may agree to differ in certain matters of detail, it is essential that in their broad outlook on war these three high officers should think alike, that they should, in fact, be imbued with a common doctrine of war, otherwise they will not be able to preserve the Empire from those perils of amateur strategy from which it suffered in the late war. It is improbable that the spokesmen for the three services will be able to present to the would-be amateur strategists of the future that united front which defies penetration and subsequent division, unless the services for which they speak are themselves bound together by a doctrine of war held in common-one based upon acceptance of the same principles as governing the use of force at sea, on land and in the air.

It is a matter of common knowledge among students of war in this country that the outbreak of hostilities with the Central Powers in 1914 found our two great fighting services (at that time there were but two, the navy and the army) not only without any doctrine of war held in common, but each suffering within itself from a certain measure of intellectual chaos, due to lack of a naval or military doctrine of war held within the service itself. During the war, a new service was called into being-the Royal Air Force. This new service started on its independent career unhampered by the traditions of the older services. Master of new means for transporting weapons of war, aircraft, and operating in a new element, it was free to take stock of the experiences gained by the fighting men of the past on sea and land, to select what it pleased from the lessons of military history, including the freshest and most recent lessons, and to form therefrom its own doctrine, if it came to the conclusion that a doctrine of war in the air was a desirable thing.

In emphasising the fact that the Air Force was " unhampered by the traditions of the older services, it is intended to imply only that the newer service was preserved from an over conservative outlook, comprising aversion from any intellectual speculation which postulates that all is not for the best, in the best of possible worlds. This conservative outlook is a characteristic of venerable corporations of men, whether they are clothed in uniforms or wear the plain clothes of everyday life. The greater the tradition of a corporate body, the older and deeper-rooted its "crowd instincts," the more averse is it to changing its manner of thought. It is far easier to introduce technical improvements into an army or a navy-though even new weapons, such as tanks, are not always received with the welcome they deserve-than to change its manner of thought.

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And in trying to change the intellectual outlook of navy or army on the subject of the necessity for a doctrine of war, the would-be reformer was "up against " a deep prejudice due to the association of the word "doctrine "-a word not often used in private life by the English-speaking peoples-with the word "doctrinaire," which is in common use as a term of polite abuse when one is referring to a person with whom one disagrees. The Oxford Dictionary defines a doctrinaire" as a pedantic theorist," a person who applies principle without allowance for circumstances." Obviously the profound commonsense of the English people was doing navy and army a good turn in warning them off" doctrinaires." But, if we read on a few lines, till we reach the word " doctrine," we find that the dictionary gives us a definition which is not alarming. A doctrine is "what is taught or "body of instruction." So those disregarded and contemned students who preached the need for "a doctrine of war were not necessarily trying to breed "doctrinaires "; they were not advocating that soldiers and sailors should become persons who apply principles without allowance for circumstances. All they were trying to achieve was to induce the acceptance of such a common body of thought as would derive naturally from " what is taught," provided that "what is taught " is a logical whole, based on the lessons of history, the potentiality of armament and the conditions of operations as modified by scientific discovery.

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After four and a-half years of fighting in three continents, and at the price of three million casualties, the British army

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