OCR Text |
Show THE SOCALLED FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES Allow me to suggest that rather too much regard is shown Creasy and his so-called fifteen decisive battles In ihe first place, not more than about half the battles he enumerates were decisive in the sense of having any permanent influence on world history Moreover, his statements are often very misleading Look for Instance, at Waterloo, with which he should have been reasonably reason-ably familiar, for he wrote Qearl forty year after the battle It is quite universally conceded that Waterloo was not a decisive factor in work! history Had Napoleon won decisively decisive-ly there he would have been defeated soon after by the huge armies hurrying hurry-ing forward from Russia and Austrla. and In fact trom every portion of Europe both men and money to endure a prolonged pro-longed war The Russian campaign destroyed Napoleon. The battle of Lelpsic might fittingly be regarded as ihe beginning of the end of his power. Creasy's story of Waterloo is wretchedly dull and shamelully misleading mis-leading He specifically denies th.it the Prussians had aught to do wj the result of the battle, yet at the time he wrote It was well known that the Prussians began to participate in the battle before 5 o'clock, and l!ai by 7 In the evening more than 40,000 Prussians were engaged at Waterloo. The French army of some 70 Oimj had to fight at one time or another during dur-ing the afternoon allied armies aggYe gatinc 130, ) The Prussian losses in killed and wounded at Waterloo wore consider ably greater than the losses of the Army of the Potomac on the third day at Gettsburg So much for Creasj as a truth seeker. seek-er. H. J Jackson in New York Sun History shows that no great genius ever had red hair. Alone among the poets of the world was Swinburne whose hair was distinctly reddish, and among th great reformers only .John Bunyan s hair was really red. The Simon Pure carroty head, however, appears nowhere linked to world f;i m The flnxon haired blond or the man whose hair when an adult is a f rue-yellow rue-yellow also remains marked apart as being unlikely to possess Renins Should one such be. Ins only compani on will be Thackerav. whoso hair is described as yellow Charles Kassel has reviewed the blonntphi'-s of most of the eminent people of the world s histories and tabulated his results so far as Ihe color of the hair is COH cerned. Dark brown to black is the prevail ing hue on the heads of great men A list of fifty names has been com piled in which the color of the han is given by biographers, and 90 per cent are dark brown or black. There is not. strange to say. a r.lngle mention of premature grayness. nor a sincie case of that ashen brown hair known as "singed" or "mouse color " The structure of the hair- whether straight or curly is given in twenty-six twenty-six of Ka88el'8 Met of geniuses, and of these all but four possessed curly or wavy hair. It Is extremely notable that of the remaining four Napoleon and Andrew Jackson were the two remarkable re-markable for "wiry hair," and thai lam.- Russell Low. II n, ,; rieg were those having lank siraight hair The poet's "ringlets " and the mus: clan's shock of hair are by this list seen not to be mere accidents, but in some strange way are co-ordinm their powers, and the general popular instinct is not at fault The color of beards also arouses many points of intf-rest All th.i ancient tapestries show cain and Ju das Iscarlot with yellow or red beardp . and Pontius Pilate In ancient an always al-ways was given a heard (Being a Roman of good family, he prohubls had no beard; but those d.-iuils did not trouble the old masters ) a red dish beard, nowevei does not can the significance that oeB wltn rej hair, for a large number of eminent m-n with dark-brown hail have hail reddish beards. Somt-tinu-s u,.. eyelashes eye-lashes have been nnM,. Savonarola, who had almost black hair having startllnglv red eyebrows and eyelash 68 But. as fl general rule hen- aim- a silky brown beard, when ,,,, panied bv fine, curling dark brown hair is the most usual characterise shown in the biographies 0r those men whose naros have been handed down to fame.-Idon Tit Bits |