LORD ROBERTS.

THE much-loved leader whom the Empire mourns began and ended his career among Indian troops. It was as though a piece of living India had been translated bodily to Europe in order that the man who was reverenced in a different manner from, yet as greatly as, Nicholson should pass from the world amid the sights and sounds of his youth and of his early fame. Perhaps—who knows ?—with that notorious faculty of the aged sick for letting their minds revolve about the incidents of youth, he imagined at the last that he was again among the men he had led from Kabul and Kandahar. The image of the Indian troops would have been one of the last impressions on the busy brain before it declined into darkness. The great soldier was surrounded by all the circumstances of battle when the quick transition came from keen alertness and usefulness to the profoundest peace any Than may know. He would not have bad it otherwise. Theta was no long stumbling along an obscure and painful down- ward path. It was a splendid end to a splendid life. Heroically he finished a life heroic :— "Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt."

To say that Lord Roberts learnt his soldiering in India is to explain—so far as an explanation that is not personal to a man himself is of any value—his strategical method and his wonderful mingling of carefulness and rapid daring. In Indian fighting the white troops nearly always took the field against long odds. Under such conditions an officer naturally learned to believe in the efficacy of offence, offence, and always offence, because without a belief in his ability to conquer the odds progress would have been impossible. But this kind of fighting needed the most heart-searching preparation. Failure against turbulent tribes- men or the Afghans over the frontier meant more than failure—it meant catastrophe. For those enemies did not send out doctors to pick up and heal their wounded enemies; they sent out parties to mutilate and massacre. Roberts's way was to work laboriously at his plan of campaign and in organizing his transport till he believed that he had stopped every gap through which the dread goddess of defeat might visit him. He was never in a state of fret and fume to start a day earlier than some other general might have started, or to start as soon as some theoretical onlookers expected. But when Ile did start he moved like a whirlwind. He never suffered defeat. In another respect his Indian experience shaped his life. His character was moulded in the form of that astonishing galaxy of brave and great-hearted generals who made the period of the Mutiny noble as well as famous. He knew Nicholson well, and acquired and rode the horse that Nicholson himself had ridden. He had before him the example of Outram and Havelock, as well as of the Lawrences and of Edwardes. The Mutiny was a time of spiritual testing. The war was a war of rescue, and the supreme officers who conducted it had to resist the clamour of people who demanded reprisals. The people who had little excuse for their panic or folly had to be refuted by the soldiers who had every excuse—if ever men had—for drastic and terrifying measures. Roberts came out of that vortex of horror and violence a gentle, considerate, and sympathetic man, possessing all those qualities which, to the eternal credit of the human kind, one is able to associate with great personal bravery.

Roberts was never afraid to make tremendous demands upon his men, and his men never failed to respond. Why ? Because his thoughtfulness for their well-being was so notorious that they one and all knew that he was asking

no more than was necessary. He was never in the least danger of being mistaken for one of those terrible fellows who repair their own laxity or stupidity by the exactions they make on human flesh and blood. His troops in the famous marches to Kabul and Kandahar went with a light step and buoyant hearts. He had a touch of wizardry in keeping up men's spirits, smoothing their toil, and calling forth their confidence and their affection. His nickname ."Bobs " was a great invention, whoever may have made it.

He introduced clubs and recreations into the Army in India, and the figures of drunkenness went down as fast as the musketry returns improved. It was his strong belief, and the glorious record of the British Expeditionary Force in France has justified him, that good shooting brought every other military advantage in its train. A man who can shoot well knows that he can look after himself ; he is as steady as the crack shot when the lion charges along a lonely jungle path.

With good musketry very open formations, in which the old sense of personal solidarity and support is quite lost, are possible. Otherwise they are not possible. Roberta was himself a gunner, and he was never satisfied at being told that artillery had a " great moral effect." That was not enough —it must be actually destructive—and he preached the need

of taking masses of artillery into the field, and guns as large as a mobile army could conveniently march with, while slower minds were waiting for a much later awakening.

Those who were in South Africa when Roberta arrived to take over the command will never forget the extraordinary change of feeling—of the whole atmosphere, as it were—when his firm and experienced hand began to be felt. No one ever looked back from that moment. Theorists may say that he should have made good the districts he had traversed before occupy- ing the capitals ; but he acted on his experience, and on the instinct served by his experience, and he knew better. He had the main army of the enemy on the run, and he kept it running. He gave the enemy no time to destroy the Rand or to fortify Pretoria. It is emphatically not true that Roberts occupied the capitals for the sake of occupying them —for what Napoleon called the "empty honour." Had the mere " bagging " of towns been his object, he would have started sooner than he did. But he had steadily let the clamour for the relief of Kimberley go on while he amassed animals and reorganized the whole system of transport. The results when he did start were immediate, and the rounding up of Cronje

—which feat indirectly saved Ladysmith—produced such a relief of tension as had not been experienced at home since the same master hand had dispersed the dismay of Maiwand

by swooping on Kandahar.

After the South African War Roberts became Commander- in-Chief—the last to hold that title—and he did not trouble

himself because the office had already been docked of some of its authority. His enormous personal prestige repaired the loss. Even when he had retired from the Service, with every right to spend his old age in honoured quiet, he did not spare himself. He became President of the National Service League, and under his happy touch the number of members rose from a handful

to ninety thousand. We need not argue here how right he was in his warnings. If his advice had been accepted, the manhood of the country would have been trained to arms; volunteers for foreign service would have been men ready for the work, not men, however patriotic and willing, who have now to be trained. The effects would have been vast. Very likely German troops would not now be in France, or even in Belgium. We can say this on behalf of Roberts, but Roberts himself did not say it. Directly the present war had begun he eschewed all recrimination. The obvious "score" was not uttered by his lips. He looked around to see how he could most usefully expend all the strength that was left to him. He collected thousands of field glasses and saddles for the Expeditionary Force. Finally, be went to cheer by his

presence the troops who burned to salute him, and thus died as he would have died, a true soldier in the field. Britain honours herself in honouring such a man. If we keep in his tradition and live in his spirit, we shall not fail or wander astray. He had the simplicity of greatness, and a greatness of simplicity. He was simple in his conduct and in his faith. He was courteous and modest and steadfast, and his temperateness of life kept him young in mind and body. We may say of him as Prince Harry said of Percy :— "I do not think a braver gentleman,

More active-valiant or more valiant-young, More daring or more bold, is now alive To grace this latter age with noble deeds."

Or we might apply to him, with perfect truth, Tennyson's words on Wellington :— " Foremost captain of his time, Rich in saving common-sense, And, as the greatest only are,

In his simplicity sublime.

0 good grey head which all men knew."