Part 9 (2/2)
Also they are healthily impervious to the wiles of flattery or the snare of favouritisenius about French To read his dispatches is to find praise lavishly given to subordinates but no mention of self For he looks after his assistants and leaves his own record to fate He has, indeed, reat Hence the excellence which always : THE SOLDIERS' IDOL]
Such qualities must inevitably endear a General to his officers, to the men who have to bear the brunt of their Chief's personality But do they appeal to the private? Both Napoleon and Wellington indubitably took immense pains to surround themselves with a shroud of mystery Under their dark mantles, the ranks must feel, lay buried the talisht of Wellington's long nose on a frostyworth another ten thousand men” to them Sir John French has cultivated neither a nose, nor a frown, nor even a chin How does he e to be the idol of hishimself Without any of the er, he has impressed his personality on the troops in a ely due to the iives You feel you are safe with French Nothing, you knoill ever upset the cool sanity of his reasoning, the balanced decision of his judgthened by the distinctly ure, like General Grant's, suggests that fatigue is unknown to him This is indeed the case The story has often been told of how the General and his staff once decided, after an exhausting day, to spend the night in a lonely farm in South Africa The house only boasted one bed, which was of course, reserved for the General But French insisted on a tiredthe solitary , went contentedly to sleep on the floor
His mind is as tireless as his body The operations round Colesberg could only have been undertaken in their complicated entirety by a General who did not knohat ue meant This physical and mental fitness French has most carefully studied to preserve At one tio, he feared a tendency to avoirdupois, and instantly undertook a stern but successful bulk-reducing regiimen there is a story Just before the present war, a bulky package was one day delivered to hi to discover the inevitable knick-knack of doubtful utility But this was not the usual gift It was a package of weight-reducing preparations
[Page Heading: AN INDEPENDENT THINKER]
French's inal as well as tireless Just there lies the unique quality of his gifts The art of war is necessarily one of the hly systematised and therefore the most hide-bound in the world Nohis mind swathed in red tape and numbed by discipline than the soldier In modern times the tendency to employ masses has not lessened the tendency to stereotype habits of thought The danger of the mechanical soldier is stressed by no one more forcibly than by General von Bernhardi He holds that a self-reliant personality is as essential as a profound knowledge of generalshi+p to the h profoundly versed in all the doctrines of the schoolmen, he is never afraid to jump over the traces where they would lead to a precipice He has never been hae he has always used as a means to an end, which is its proper vocation To this independence ofelse, may be attributed his phenomenal success amid the abnormal conditions of Boer warfare Where the books end, French's active ins to construct its oay out” of the corner
The Boers were indeed the first to adlish officers, if not to thees of the war how long he expected to avoid capture He replied, with a smile, that it all depended on which General was dispatched to run him down When a certain name was mentioned, the reply was ”Till eternity” General B---- was next mentioned ”About two years,” was the verdict ”And General French?” ”Teeks,”
admitted De Wet
French has, of course, never accepted social life in this country on its face value The young officer as studying when his friends were at polo or tennis, was under no illusions as to the havoc which an over-accentuation of the sporting and social side of life was playing with the officers' work Nowadays, like Kitchener, he is bent on producing the professional and weeding out the ”drawing-room”
soldier No wonder that his favourite authors are those acutest critics of English social life and English foibles, dickens and Thackeray The former's ”Bleak House” and the latter's ”Book of Snobs” are the two books he places first in his affections
[Page Heading: A GREAT REPORTER]
He is himself a writer of parts We are, ourselves, so close to the event he describes, that we are perhaps unable to appreciate the literary excellence of the despatches which French has sent us on the operations in France A Chicago paper hails hireat reporter” ”No one can read his reports,” the writer rehty lucidity, his calm mastery of the important facts, the total absence of any atteestive bits of pertinent description”
Undoubtedly, the Aht--provided that these dispatches were actually penned by the General himself
His speeches may be obvious and even trite; his letters may lack any flavour of personality; but these dispatches are literature Like his hero Napoleon, like Caesar and Wellington, Sir John French has forged a literary style for hi amateurish or journalistic about his communications from the front The dispatch from Mons, for instance, is a ht well be printed in our school-histories, not lish prose
Not that Sir John French's style is an accident Like most of the other successes of his career, it is the result of design The man who laboriously ”cra The y and war bear traces of the most careful preparation
Apart from his dispatches, however, French has written solish in his prefaces to several books on cavalry and onis that which he wrote for Captain Frederick von Herbert's _The Defence of Plevna_ He prefaces it with a dra the last year of the South African War, while directing the operations in Cape Colony, I found myself, late one afternoon in February, 1902, at the north end of the railway bridge over the Orange River at Bethulie, strangely attracted by the appearance of a well-constructed and cleverly hidden covered field work, which for somewhat pressed for tio down into the fort, look round it, and then catch ent request to return and inspect it myself I did so, and was very much struck, not only with the construction of the work and its excellent siting, but also with all the defence arrangements at that point of the river
Whilst I was in the fort the officer in charge arrived and reported hi approval of all I had seen, I reht back to my reat care and assiduity--a book called _The Defence of Plevna_, by a certain Lieutenant von Herbert, whoret, I had never met 'I am von Herbert, and I wrote the book you speak of,' was the reply of the officer to who: OSMAN PASHA]
Osman Pasha was a soldier after French's own heart Indeed, his tenacity was probably equal to that of his critic Hence this fine tribute: ”The great soldier who defended Plevna refused to acknowledge such a word as defeat When things were at their worst his outward demeanour was cal for supports or reinforceh treacherous jealousy he was betrayed and left to his own resources In spite of this no thought of capitulation or retreat ever entered the mind of Ose!
One wonders whether the school-boy who sent French the following letter on his return fro
”MY DEAR FRENCH,--You are a great British General I want your autograph, but, whatever you do, don't let your secretary write it”
I have said that Sir John French is the average Englishard war? If the plain truth be told, we are not at heart a martial nation We have made e have been compelled to it by the threat of an Armada or the menace of a Napoleon But we have not cultivated war, at least since our wode days, as a pastilishoverned by the blood lust Mrs Despard has said that in reality he regards war as a hideous outrage He has no delusions as to the glory of war By no chance could he be ranked a the romanticist of the battlefield That, perhaps, is why he never is, never has been, ruthless or re: FRENCH AND THE SUFFOLKS]
If ever French had cause for anger, it was over the unlucky incident of the Suffolks, the one failure unwarrantably attributed to his ever victorious arms Yet he was the one officer who softened the bitterness of that reverse to the ht months after the disaster His speech to the troops, as reported in at least one paper, is orthy of preservation After referring to his pleasure inis still fresh in my recollectionbut what I wish especially to recall is the sad event of the night of January 5th and 6th, and to express allant leader, Colonel Watson, who on that night showed splendid qualities as a noble and able officer Now, it has coe that there has been spread about an idea that that event cast discredit of soiht froht operation of extreht, and did all in your power to et into your s honour to your regi list of honours it has won in the past I want you all to bear in ht operations, that they can never be a certain success, and because they so discredit on those who attempted to carry them out