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 talisman of success. We know that his officers found "the sight of Wellington's long nose on a frosty morning worth another ten thousand men" to them. Sir John French has cultivated neither a nose, nor a frown, nor even a chin. How does he manage to be the idol of his men? it may be asked. Simply and solely by being himself. Without any of the meretricious arts of the personality-monger, he has impressed his personality on the troops in a most memorable way. This is largely due to the impression of quiet confidence which he always gives. You feel you are safe with French. Nothing, you know, will ever upset the cool sanity of his reasoning, the balanced decision of his judgments. This impression of certainly is strengthened by the distinctly masterful carriage of the man. His short, stocky figure, 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 tired member of his staff occupying the solitary mattress, and wrapping himself up in a rug, 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 know what mental fatigue meant. This physical and mental fitness French has most carefully studied to preserve. At one time, several years ago, he feared a tendency to avoirdupois, and instantly undertook a stern but successful bulk-reducing regimen. Apropos the regimen there is a story. Just before the present war, a bulky package was one day delivered to him at his club. French opened it negligently, expecting to discover the inevitable knick-knack of doubtful utility. But this was not the usual gift. It was a package of weight-reducing preparations.
AN INDEPENDENT THINKER
French's mind, however, is original as well as tireless. Just there lies the unique quality of his gifts. The art of war is necessarily one of the most highly systematised and therefore the most hide-bound in the world. No man is more perilously in danger of having his 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 generalship to the modern commander. French possesses both. Although 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 hampered, as so many soldiers are, by his studies. Knowledge he has always used as a means to an end, which is its proper vocation. To this independence of mind, as to nothing else, may be attributed his phenomenal success amid the abnormal conditions of Boer warfare. Where the books end, French's active mind begins to construct its own "way out" of the corner.
The Boers were indeed the first to admit his superiority to the other English officers, if not to themselves. De Wet was once asked in the early stages 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?" "Two weeks," admitted De Wet.
French has, of course, never accepted social life in this country on its face value. The young officer who was 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.
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 him, however, as "a great reporter." "No one can read his reports," the writer remarks, "without being struck with his weighty lucidity, his calm mastery of the important facts, the total absence of any attempt at 'effect,' and the remarkably suggestive bits of pertinent description."
Undoubtedly, the Americans are right—provided that these dispatches were actually penned by the General himself.