Like many other active-minded men before and since, having absolutely nothing to do he determined to write a book. He had before him the example of Lord Vere and his brother-in-arms, Hexham, the literary quartermaster of his old Low Country regiment, and most worthily he followed in their steps. The book is full of vigorous and pithy aphorisms which flash on us the condensed opinions of a man who spoke little and thought much. We can hear, as we read it, the few well-digested words, rugged, blunt, and direct, with which he compelled the attention of councils of war and won the respect and admiration of his men. Its subdued enthusiasm tells us of a genuine soldier reverently devoted to his profession, and looking mournfully from the place apart, where his almost aggressive patriotism had placed him, at the distractions with which his beloved country was torn. It gives us as clearly as though we saw him face to face the key of the character that has been as much misunderstood and abused as any in history. He was an English citizen first, a soldier next, and a politician not at all. Of the real meaning of the strife he was incapable of grasping any conception. For him it was all a mere question of the interior, and in his eyes no question of the interior, not even religion itself, was worth a civil war, or the sacrifice of England's military renown. He called his work _Observations upon Military and Political Affairs_. The military part is admirable, and shows us the consummate soldier he was. It strikes one of the first notes of modern military science, and takes for its dominant theme the comparatively small part which actual fighting plays in the duties of a general and the success of a campaign. The political observations are more crude but equally characteristic. With the exception of some sagacious remarks on governing a conquered country, they are confined to the methods of preventing civil war. After recommending a strong centralised government, technical education, and uniformity of religion, if it can be obtained without danger, he enunciates those principles which caused him to take the final step at the great crisis of his life. Still under the influence of his Devonshire training he strongly insists on State colonisation as a means whereby sources of weakness may be turned into strength. "But the principal and able remedy," he says, "against civil war is to entertain a foreign war. This chaseth away idleness, setteth all on work, and particularly this giveth satisfaction to ambitious and stirring spirits; it banisheth luxury, maketh your people warlike, and maintaineth you in such reputation amongst your neighbours, that you are the arbitrators of their differences." And it is from this point of view that he expresses his only opinion on the great question that was coming. "A sovereign prince," he lays down, "is more capable to make great and ready conquests than a commonwealth, and especially if he goeth in person into the field."