BOOKS OF THE WEEK
A Real Man
THERE are born at times great warriors, and it is fortunate when a good cause has one on its -side. Lord Keyes was a great warrior, and it was fortunate for our cause in two wars. His memoirs and this biography let us see the man he was.
The union of qualities which makes such a warrior is rare. Single- mindedness is its foundation. He is free from care for his own life. One may be so care-free and inert: but the warrior is eager for attack, and strenuous and persistent in aggression. He cares for and feels with his men, but has no weakness in requiring them to run dangers which he shares. He is daring and belittles difficulties. He has no motives but duty, and glory. Such spirits burn with bright light, and there is no light without shade. Eager singlemindedness may lead to a narrowness of outlook which obscures the meaning of passing events, and to an indifference to other qualified opinions, which brings with it an undue reluctance to accept the judgement of superiors in command. Great daring is too apt to look upon all prudence as pusillanimity. Such men are tempted to put the objects of their worship in the wrong order, and to say " glory is my duty," not " duty is my glory."
The life of Lord Keyes is a study in these lights and shades. Three times his light shone undimmed. There was first his initiative and daring as a junior officer in the Boxer rising, when he boarded and took four Chinese. destroyers in the Peiho river, and, stretching an order to breaking point, surprised and took the Hsicheng fort with 30 men. He got into hot water with the Commander-in-Chief for being too fond of playing a lone hand, but was forgiven and promoted. The second was perhaps his best service to the Navy, in work which gave full scope to his special powers while they were at their best. This was his development of the use and training of two types of craft the capabilities of which had not yet been grasped by less eager minds, destroyers and submarines. For both he did pioneer work which no other man could have done as well or as fast. He taught destroyers to keep at sea and attack in all weathers. He nursed in submarines that spirit of daring and devo- tion which enabled them to flout the strange perils of their task, and has made them a byword for courage in cold blood. The third achievement was Zeebrugge. There Fate gave to the warrior his great opportunity, which he greatly seized. At the Dardanelles, he was in a position in which his temperament was unable to endure the strain put upon it by events, with no good results. It was a consequence of that temperament that in staff work he sought ever to enlarge his duties into an active com- mand, and as Chief of the Staff he was, or should have been, confined to an advisory capacity. After the first failure to force the Straits, the Navy's part was to stand by. His Chiefs decision and that of all other authority was not to try again until the military landings succeeded in clearing the peninsula. Keyes in his thirst for action resisted the decision so strenuously as to seek aid against his Chief's judgement from other quarters, and even to aslcand to receive, leave to address his Chiefs Rear-Admirals in opposition to it. History must decide whether a second attempt had a chance of success, and whether anything would have been gained if it had succeeded. But few will doubt that Keyes's interpretation of the duties of a Chief of Staff was an error of judgement. In later life the warrior came to batter himself against the wires of what was to him the cage of politics, restless without action, and unhappy without the power to make his dauntless will prevail. His lot was not that of his idols, Wolfe, Nelson, and Nicholson—to fall in the hour of victory. Time and Fate, after Zeebrugge, denied him opportunities in which his light could shine undimmed.
The most interesting pages of this biography are those which tell clearly and with spirit the story of the battles in which Keyes took an active part. Its method is uncritical ; the reader must look between the lines to find the real man, and he was a real man
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