MEMORIAL
ERECTED TO THE
MEMORY OF
FALLEN HEROES
OF THE
ROYAL SCOTS GREYS
UNVEILING CEREMONY
PERFORMED BY
THE RT. HON.
EARL OF ROSEBERY,
K.G., K.T.,
EDINBURGH,
16th November, 1906.
Lord Rosebery, at the unveiling of the Memorial, spoke as follows:—
Colonel Coventry Williams, and Gentlemen of the Scots Greys,
You have done me a great honour in asking me to unveil this memorial, and, if I may say so, you have done a wise thing in erecting it. You have raised to the memory of your comrades a memorial in the Capital of Scotland, under the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, in the noblest street in the world. But, as things are, it must be a memorial not merely to the dead, to those who have fallen, but to that proud and illustrious regiment which you represent, and which, in the inscrutable dispensation of the higher powers, we are so soon to lose for ever from our midst. For the Scots Greys are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. They were raised, indeed, in these Lowlands of ours under circumstances which do not so much elicit our sympathy as the events of their later history, though they were raised by a Lothian man, Colonel Dalziel of Binns; as they were raised for the purpose of harrying the Covenanters, who represented the backbone of the character and the history of Scotland in the reign of the last two Stuarts. However, they were soon to be called to higher duties than those of civil war. They served gloriously under Marlborough in the Low Countries; they fought all through the wars of the eighteenth century; they captured a standard at Dettingen; and yet the time of their full glory had not come. It was at Waterloo that their chance came; it was in that tremendous charge when, with the Inniskillings and the Royals, they rode down masses of French infantry—in that tremendous charge where Sergeant-Major Ewart, one of your non-commissioned officers, wrested an eagle from the French, and cut down successively three gallant Frenchmen who stood to defend it. Later on that day they came to the assistance of a small body of the 92nd Highlanders, and they together, to the cry of "Scotland for Ever," annihilated a greatly superior column of the enemy which was opposed to them. And, again, as the shades of evening drew on, they joined in the unrelenting pursuit of the broken enemy until darkness put an end to the engagement. Surely no regiment ever had a prouder day than that. It need not be fiction, but may well be believed, that Napoleon himself recognised their achievement, and honoured their heroic courage. It is not, then, in vain, that to this day, and for all time to come, the Scots Greys bear with them the symbol of the Eagle and the name of Waterloo.
Then they were called to serve in the Crimea. We speak in the presence of a distinguished Russian officer; but the brave honour the brave, and he will allow me to recall, even in his presence, that charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, partially forgotten in the more startling achievement of the Light Brigade, but still splendid and memorable, when the Heavy Brigade, headed once more by the Scots Greys and the Inniskillings, rode through the dense masses of the enemy. It was at the close of that day that Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, rode up to the regiment and with bared head said to them: "Scots Greys, I am sixty-one, but were I a young man I would ask for nothing better than the honour of serving in your ranks." Then came the South African War. That was a very different campaign. It was war carried on in vast solitudes, against small bodies of men—against an enemy that was almost always invisible. No such heart-breaking or harassing work for a soldier can be conceived. It afforded no room for the splendid achievements of Waterloo and the Crimea. It required perseverance, patience, and vigilance, almost as much as courage; but is not cold courage—cold-blooded courage prolonged through long years—at least as meritorious as the hot, warm-blooded courage of the onset? The British Army in South Africa fought under harassing conditions. They fought a new warfare; they fought hardship and disease; and they fought under the discouragement of military operations carried on with patience through long years to a tardy but triumphant result.
Gentlemen, I was with the Scots Greys at their last dinner in this city; it was a cheerful dinner, but it was not glad or triumphant. We met under the shadow of a humiliating reverse; we knew that, humanly speaking, we could not expect that all who were then present would return to us again. We knew at any rate that all were about to face the unknown, and we then resolved and declared that evening that having put our hands to this thing we would see it through; that we would muddle through somehow, and somehow or other we did muddle through. Some of those who were there that night did not return, and it is to their memory that we erect this memorial to-day.
Honour to the unreturning brave, the brave who will return no more. We shall not see their faces again. In the service of their Sovereign and their country they have undergone the sharpness of death, and sleep their eternal sleep thousands of miles away in the green solitudes of South Africa. Their places, their comrades, their saddles will know them no more, for they will never return to us as we knew them. But in a nobler and a higher sense, have they not returned to us to-day? They return to us with a message of duty, of courage, of patriotism. They return to us with a memory of high duty faithfully performed. They return to us with the inspiration of their example. Peace, then, to their dust. Honour to their memory. Scotland for ever!
[A copy of the speech was presented to every Trooper of the Regiment, with Lord Rosebery's best wishes.]