THE IRON DUKE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 38, 8 October 1912, Page 5

THE IRON DUKE.

■AN INTERESTING DIARY. The “Diary of Frances Lady Shelley,” edited by her grandson, and published by John Murray, includes some personal letters from the Duke of Wellington, in the course of which he says: “I hope to God that I have fought my last battle. It is a bad thing to be always lighting. While in the thick of it I aim too much occupied to feel anything; but it is wretched just after. It is quite impossible to think of glory. Both mind and feelings are exhausted. I am wretched even at the moment of victory, and I always say that next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.” That Wellington, like “The Man of Destiny,” felt himself in the hand of God, this attests: “Nothing new can happen to me, and I always feel confident that I shall succeed. The troops feel the same confidence in me. For that reason I firmly believe that if anything had happened to me at Waterloo the battle was lost.” Just before Waterloo he made a similar statement to Lord Uxbridge, who was almost immediately afterwards struck by a bullet. And said the Duke: “It must have passed

over me, or my horse. But the finger of God was upon me!”