Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL HISTORY ±33
that they might have loyal men and true around them.
Some families built no castles, as well perhaps for other
reasons as for this, that the money and labour spent on
building might be better spent on men
A castle of bones
Before a castle of stones
and doubtless pointed the moral with reference to the
assassination of the great Hugo de Lacy, slain while
contemplating with pride the erection of his fine castle
at Durmagh.
You, too, then, will make small account of all dead and
material things, offering no more incense than is necessary
even to the dread god Apis, and spend your all upon men,
and you will not surround yourself with easeful and
luxurious appliances, or incur the least breath of censure
that way, remembering that these, so to speak, are war
times, needing on your part war manners. Gordon
starved with his men at Khartoum — " his beautiful
black troops." Skobeloff ate soldiers' black bread con-
quering Khokand. All great captains and all soldiers'
heroes do the same in hard times, and unless at a pinch
they can do it, never attach the worshipping loyalty of
their men. Stonewall Jackson was the best beloved of the
American generals of the great Civil War. On one occasion
he sent some regiments on what seemed to them some
fool's errand, and without tents. They camped in their
cloaks, and the snow fell and covered them while they
slept. Cold and miserable some troopers awoke in the
gray morning, with imprecations on their general who,
somewhere snugly housed himself, had made his soldiers
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