A pretty little story was told about the same time. A mare arrived at a well-known depot with other requisitioned animals. Tied round her neck was a label, with a tiny sprig of heather fastened by a piece of blue silk ribbon. The label bore the brief but pathetic message: “Sorry Lady has to leave us. Hope she will return to us safe and sound. With much love.”
This appeal found its way to a soldier’s heart, and he wrote from Woolwich to the Daily Sketch:
“I should be obliged if you would inform Ivy Clayton that her little horse has arrived here safe and well, and that she can rest assured that ‘Lady’ will receive every attention during her brief stay with us. Sincerely hoping that she will soon recover her pet,
“Gunner R.H.A.”
But to return to Sir John French and his officers. This word “officer” is so familiar that I do not suppose anyone of you has ever stopped to think what it means.
The ideal officer is gallant, intelligent, and energetic. He is aware that influence over his men is not obtained by discipline alone, but by kindness, firmness, and good sense. He explains to a certain extent to the men under him the reasons for his orders. He does not require of them the blind obedience which is exacted by the German officer. In fact, I cannot do better than quote the description given by a certain corporal in an old comedy called The Poor Gentleman:
“A good officer, do you see, cannot help being a kind-hearted man. Ship an officer, we will say, with his company to a foreign climate; he lands and endures heat, cold, and fatigue, hunger, thirst, sickness; now marching over the burning plain, now up to his knees in wet in the trench; how could a man suffer such hardships with a parcel of honest fellows under his command, and not learn to feel for his fellow-creatures?”
It is because our officers are good officers that the men follow them to the death. It is because they are not only firm and just, but also kind, that they are loved, honoured, and obeyed. A soldier never fails his officer if he has confidence in him, and if he knows he will never be asked for undue exertion unless the good of the service requires it.
During the passage across the Channel of our Expeditionary Force many wonderful deeds of daring were done by our brave airmen. One such was considered so remarkable as to be told in the official news later despatched from the front, and it is, I think, difficult to beat for cool courage.
During one of the airship patrols it became necessary to change a propeller blade of one of the engines. The captain feared it would be necessary to descend for this purpose, but two of the crew immediately volunteered to carry out this difficult task in the air. Climbing out on to the bracket, carrying the propeller shafting, they completed the hazardous work of changing the blade 2000 feet above the sea.