A Greater than Napoleon by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

Publius Cornelius Scipio was born at Rome in the 517th year from the city's foundation-235 B. C. Though a member of one of the most illustrious and ancient families, the Cornelii, of his early years and education no record, not even an anecdote, has come down to us. Indeed, not until he is chosen, through a combination of circumstances and his own initiative, to command the army in Spain at the age of twenty-four, does history give us more than an occasional fleeting glimpse of his progress. Yet bare and brief as these are, each is significant. The first is at the battle of the Ticinus, Hannibal's initial encounter with the Roman arms on Italian soil, after his famous passage of the Alps. Here the youthful Scipio, a lad of seventeen, accompanied his father, the Roman commander. If his first experience of battle was on the losing side, he at least emerged with enviable distinction. Let the story be told in Polybius's words: "His father had placed him in command of a picked troop of horse" (in reserve on a small hill) "in order to ensure his safety; but when he caught sight of his father in the battle, surrounded by the enemy and escorted only by two or three horsemen and dangerously wounded, he at first endeavoured to urge those with him to go to the rescue, but when they hung back for a time owing to the large numbers of the enemy round them, he is said with reckless daring to have charged the encircling force alone. Upon the rest being now forced to attack, the enemy were terror-struck and broke up, and Publius Scipio, thus unexpectedly rescued, was the first to salute his son as his deliverer. " It is said that the consul ordered a civic crown, the Roman V. C., to be presented to his son, who refused it, saying that "the action was one that rewarded itself. " The exploit does credit to the young Scipio's gallantry, but the outcome, as emphasised by Polybius, does still more credit to his psychological insight. "Having by this service won a universally acknowledged reputation for bravery, he in subsequent times refrained from exposing his person without sufficient reason when his country reposed her hopes of success on him-conduct characteristic not of a commander who relies on luck, but on one gifted with intelligence."

To the present generation, with personal experience of war, the point may have greater force than to the closeted historians. To the former, the higher commander who aspires to be a platoon leader, thrusting himself into the fight at the expense of his proper duty of direction, is not the heroic or inspired figure that he appears to the civilian. To some too, not natural lovers of danger for its own sake-and these are rare in any army,-the point will touch a chord of memory, reminding them of how by the moral hold on their men given by one such exploit they were thereafter enabled to take the personal precautions which better befit the officer entrusted with the lives of others. The civilian at home poured scorn on the German officer "leading" his men from behind; not so the fighting soldier, for he knew that when the occasion called, his officer enemy did not hesitate to risk, nay throw away his life, as an example. The story still lives of the German officer who led a forlorn hope mounted on a white horse.