BOOKS.

FROM PRIVATE TO FIELD-MARSHAL.* Six WriaLaar Ronearrson's book is necessarily unlike any other which has been written, because it describes a career to which

• grow Private to Field-Marshal. By Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, Bart., Q.C.B., K.C.11,0., D.S.O. London: Constable. [21s, net.]

there is no exact parallel. It is written in a plain, straight- forward manner, as direct and as devoid of " frills " as the man

himself. It is neither sparkling nor vivid, and yet it is never dull ; we have, indeed, read every page of it with intense interest, because the facts are all interesting in themselves. Never before in the British Army has a man begun as a private soldier and ended as a Field-Marshal. Napoleon said that every private soldier had a Marshal's baton in his knapsack, but he

said that of his own army, and he was a man who could make out of private soldiers not only Marshals but Dukes and Kings.

Sir William Robertson is able to describe the life of the British Army and to criticize it out of personal experience from every point of view. This alone would give his book importance.

He remembers what it was to be a poverty-stricken automaton in the bad old days ; and when he preaches the doctrine of

humane relations between officers and men as the only true basis of military success, he is speaking not in the abstract, but out of knowledge. The reading of this book would have convinced us if we had ever doubted it that Sir William Robertson won his position out of pure merit and not at any single point by good luck. He slogged away conscientiously and with set determination, and he came through. His was a triumph of character. Dr. Smiles or the author of From Log Cabin to White House would have " starred " such a career. It was the result of the old-fashioned virtues of application, of faithful- ness, and of thrift ; and though we have said that there is

nothing clever in the writing of the book, it would be the greatest possible mistake not to add that real largeness of mind informs it from beginning to end. The successful leader of men, the successful organizer, or the successful man of affairs invariably has the faculty of detaching the salient thing—the only thing which really matters—from a general confusion. When a complex problem has been thus simplified and the solution has been set forth in a few bare sentences, or even in a few words, the type of person who cannot recognize ability except when it coruscates is inclined to cry down the author of the solution. Nevertheless, every man who has done great things, and may therefore himself be called " great" in dealing with men and affairs, has this instinctive power of casting out the irrelevant and of concentrating all points in one point.

Sir William Robertson took the Queen's shilling when he was three months under the proper age. The recruiting sergeant Obligingly added five months to his age in order to put him well On the safe side of the line. A man who has climbed the military ladder from top to bottom must inevitably have strange memories of men whom he overtook and passed. He tells us that his first subaltern served in later years as his military secretary. The roughness and sordidness of the Army, as young Robertson found it, have happily passed away. He was at 5rst so disgusted and so uncomfortable that he had a passing thought of deserting. Fortunately for him somebody had

stolen his civilian clothes, and, of course, he could not bolt in aniform. For the slightest military offence, all offences being lescribed in military language as " crimes," a man was sent to the Guard Room. In the Cavalry Barracks at Aldershot the Guard Room, where Sir William Robertson was more than once nterned, was about 15 feet square, and had the most primitive arrangements for sanitation :- " No means of lighting it after dark were either provided or permitted.. Running along one of its sides was a sloping wooden stage, measuring about six feet from top to bottom, which served as a bed for all the occupants, sometimes a dozen or more hi number ; at the top was a wooden shelf, slightly raised above the Lintel of the stage, which acted as pillow ; and no blankets (except in very cold weather) or mattresses wore allowed, except for prisoners who had been interned for more than seven days. Until then their only covering, besides their ordinary clothes—which were never taken off—consisted of their cloaks, and they had to endure as best they could the sore hips and shoulders caused by lying on the hard boards."

Sir William Robertson was incarcerated in this terrible place for three weeks to atone for one particular ". crime." Every

one of his three crimes was the result of pure misunderstanding or of inexperience. ' It was an outrage that this boy in his teens

should have been thus punished. Step by step, however, he workrd his way up, and when he received his first stripe he was prouder than when high honours accumulated for him later in safe.

When it was first proposed to him that he should accept a Commission, he refused because he foresaw that he would not

be able to pay his way. On second thoughts, however, he took a commission, and, of course, never regretted it. He passed the general education test as a result of his private reading. He was his own teacher. Having become an officer he had no idea of being content with his laurels, but studied harder than ever. While he was still young he passed the tests in no less than five Eastern languages—Hindustani, Persian, Punjabi, Pushtu and Gurkhali—and to these he naturally added in course of time French and German. Again acting as his own teacher he studied for the Staff College and, as everybody knows, he not only added P.S.C. to his name, but became the Commandant of the College.

During the Boer War Sir William Robertson was consulted about the situation at the front when Buller seriously declared that Ladysmith would have to be abandoned. He pointed out that our troops were dispersed in small bodies and were acting upon no coherent plan. In his opinion the most pressing need was a change in the High Command, since it was impossible for Buller to direct operations on a front extending for some 600 miles from Natal to Kimberley, as well as to exercise personal command over the Ladysmith Relief Force. The remedy was either to direct Buller to hand over the Natal command to some- body else or to limit his sphere to Natal and place somebody over him in the supreme command. The Minister who had consulted Robertson appreciated this piece of simplification, and " started off to a Cabinet Meeting determined to see the South African business through at all costs." The Minister was Mr. Balfour. Lord Roberts was appointed Commander-in- Chief at the front, and in criticizing the subsequent operations, Sir William Robertson remarks that Lord Roberts had a habit of employing Lord Kitchener as a sort of Second-in-Command, rather than in his proper office as the Chief of the Staff. Lord Kitchener, for instance, was several times deputed to take command of operations at a distance instead of directing the staff work at Headquarters. After the South African War our new model of army was created, and looking back Sir William Robertson compares the new with the old :- " In my early days the soldier when off parade had the choice of three places in which to pass his time—the barrack-

room, the library (a fusty, ill-kept place without a book or a newspaper worth reading), and the canteen, where besides bread and cheese little could be bought except beer. Inside the barracks these were the only facilities afforded for his recreation and self-improvement ; outside the barracks, in , Aldershot, the ' Soldier's Home,' maintained by kind-hearted benefactors, was almost his only alternative to women and beer-shops, both of the lowest type ; and beyond an occasional cricket match he was not encouraged to play any outdoor game.. In not a few-regiments his officers saw little or nothing of him except when on parade or at stables ; they showed no interest,

in his personal concerns, and sometimes did not even know his name, although he might have been under their command

for weeks. It was realized by some inspecting officers that this state of affairs was not what it should be, from the pro- fessional standpoint alone, and I have heard the most absurd replies given when troop officers have been asked to tell them. a man's name, or what length of service he had. The great thing was to give an answer of some sort and give it quickly, whether it might be the right one or not. By 1907 all this had been changed. Officers were now expected to know all .

about their men, to look after their minds as well as their bodies, and generally to identify themselves in peace with those upon whom they would have to depend in war. To this new demand they readily responded—as British officers always will once they know what is required of them—and much keenness and rivalry were displayed by regiments in making physical exercises

more interesting, and in organizing cross-country races and other useful forms of sport such as football, hockey, and boxing.

By Smith-Dorrien's directions a number of first-class recreation grounds were later provided sufficient to meet all requirements. A vast improvement was also noticeable in regard to the men's food, though it varied a good deal in different units. Formerly the rations had not only been inadequate and, for want of proper supervision, often of inferior quality, but there had been much waste and some corruption in their disposal, while the cooks . were selected without reference to their culinary knowledge and were sometimes notoriously the dirtiest men in the regiment.

Better rations were now supplied, economical use was made

of them, and the cooks were taught their trade and made to understand that cleanliness is the first requisite of a good cook.

house. Again, in the old days the men dined in the same room where they lived and slept, and ate their meals off the same table on which they pipeclayed their accoutrements, the

table itself being rarely cleaned more than once a day, and then perhaps only with the broom used for sweeping the floor.. These objectionable customs had largely disappeared. Separate dining-rooms, wherever possible, were now allotted, the supply'

of crockery was improved, tablecloths were provided, and the meals were served up in a more palatable and decent form.

With the establishment of what are called regimental institutes the soldier also had at his disposal various rooms—corporals' room, concert-room, writing-room, coffee-room, all reasonably

furnished—where he could spend a comfortable hour when off duty, and with no temptation to get drunk."

It is a great pleasure to read this tribute. The author emulates the late Sir Evelyn Wood in his oonviction that the military boy of to-day is a very much better and finer man than his father.

Perhaps the best example we can extract from the book of Sir William Robertson's mental process of simplification is the manner in which he dealt with the Government when he was consulted about the Curragh incident and the proposed military coercion of Ulster. By asking a few simple questions—quite Socratically expressed and arranged—which admitted of no answer except what was impossible or ridiculous, Sir William Robertson helped to convince the Government that the Ulster plan had better be dropped and forgotten as soon as possible. He mentions, by the way, that " Joe " Maude, who afterwards became famous in Mesopotamia, was one of the officers who wished to resign owing to the scheme for forcing Ulster. Sir William Robertson dissuaded him, because he foresaw with admirable insight that within a few days there would be no need for anybody to resign.

We come finally to that part of the book which deals with the late War. Those who read the Bpe,ctator during the War will find nothing new in this, though they will find it all deeply interesting. The estimate which we formed as to what was happening between Sir William Robertson and Mr. Lloyd George at the time of the critical dispute over the creation of the Supreme War Council at Versiilles is here confirmed. Sir William Robertson was an uncompromising Westerner. Even during the bloody and seemingly discouraging battles of the Somme he felt sure that the German strength was being worn down, and he knew that whether that were so or not, Germany could be defeated ultimately only by meeting her where her strength was greatest. He abhorred all dissipation of our man-power in minor theatres of war. He ridiculed at the time, as he ridicules in his book, the heresy of finding " a way round " through Austria or elsewhere.

As regards the controversy over " unity of command," he describes the facts which we have often set forth. Lord Haig was required in the spring of 1917 to subordinate himself to General Nivelle, and consequently to postpone his own carefully elaborated campaign in Flanders. The Nivelle advance was a disaster. Immediately afterwards Mr. Lloyd George was so much out of love with the idea of appointing a generalissimo that he denounced it passionately in the House of Commons. Later he tried to bring about unity of command by setting up the Committee known as the Supreme War Council at Versailles Now a Committee is odious to almost every serious soldier, because it involves two cardinal defects in the direction of war— compromise and delay. Sir William Robertson resisted the whole plan. He pointed out that to put the strategic reserves under the control of the Committee at Versailles would be to create dual control. Mr. Lloyd George nevertheless persisted with his policy, and it was not until the alarming crisis of March, 1918, when the British and French armies were thrust back, that Mr. Lloyd George accepted the proposal that there should after all be a generalissimo. The proposal came not from him, but from Lord Milner, Lord Haig, M. Clemenceau and others. When the brilliant leadership of Marshal Foch had justified this form of Unity of Command, the friends of Mr. Lloyd George announced that he had at last got his way and attributed to him the credit. He became the Man who Won the War. With all these facts before us we need not look far for the reason why Sir William Robertson, in Lord Derby's phrase, could not " get on " with Mr. Lloyd George. They disagreed fundamentally, and whether there were in addition temperamental or personal reasons for their not hitting it off does not very much matter. On this latter point, however, Sir William Robertson throws an interesting light. He says that on one occasion during a dis- cussion among the Anglo-French experts at Versailles, Mr. Lloyd George objected to his expressing his dissent from the British Government in the presence of foreigners. At a similar meeting which shortly followed Sir William Robertson, profiting by the lesson, held his tongue. He had taken the rebuke as an instruc- tion. He surely had good reason to be surprised when shortly afterwards Mr. Lloyd George announced to the House of Com- mons that Sir Williams Robertson approved of the latest scheme. As a matter of fact Sir William Robertson heartily disapproved, but had kept silent for the reason we have stated.

Our concluding word shall be about Sir William Robertson's

opinion of Lord Kitchener. He considers that Lord Kitchener performed the greatest single act in the late War—the creation of the New Armies in face of much early opposition. It is also clear that he found, contrary to his expectations, that Lord Kitchener was easy to work with. When he was appointed Chief of the Staff he was afraid that Lord Kitchener, by over- centralization, would prevent him from doing his work properly. He mentioned his fears to Lord Kitchener, and Lord Kitchener offered to retire rather than impede him. Ultimately, in a very friendly discussion, a scheme for regulating their relations was drawn up and signed under which it was agreed that all orders were to be issued through the General Staff.