HE WAS A MAN: FIELD-MARSHALL EARL ROBERTS, THE WORLD-FAMOUS SOLDIER, WHO DIED AT SIR JOHN FRENCH'S HEADQUARTERS.
Full of years and honours, Lord Roberts has met death upon the Field of Honour as surely as though he had died fighting at the head of the brave soldiers whom he loved so well. To enumerate his qualities: indomitable courage, keen intelligence, broad humanity, is to gild refined gold. At the call of duty he visited the Army and the Indian soldiers in France, despite his eighty-two years; there he caught a chill and passed peacefully away. The message to Lady Roberts by Field-Marshall Sir John French will find universal echo: "...Your grief is shared by us who mourn the loss of a much-loved chief ... It seems a fitter ending to the life of so great a soldier that he should have passed away in the midst of the troops he loved so well and within the sound of the guns."
6—THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, NOV. 18, 1914.
THE "NIGER'S" CAPTAIN, WHO STAYED ON THE BRIDGE TO THE LAST THOUGH BADLY WOUNDED: LIEUT.-COMMANDER A.P. MUIR.
When the "Niger" was torpedoed, Captain Muir was on the bridge and was severely injured by the explosion, but remained at his post till every officer and man had left the ship. He was taken ashore at Deal in a boat and had to be at once placed in hospital.—[Photo. by Russell.]
Most bitterly hated, but at the same time most formidable—as the Germans themselves now generally admit, and hence all those tears of rage—hinc illae lacrymae. Even when the Prussian Guards—not to speak of the vaunted
Brandenburgers and Bavarians—can make no impression on the British lines in Belgium, it should at last break in upon the German General Staff that they are somewhat out in their calculations. The word "contemptible" is never used now in relation to Sir John French's army, and it will be used still less when this army shall have been reinforced by the million of men apart altogether from the Territorials which are now under training to supplement it, while a further million has now, in turn, been asked for and will be cheerfully raised, with the help of the additional vote of credit for £250,000,000—which was just about the cost of the Boer War, and £25,000,000 more than the French indemnity of 1870—which will be willingly granted by Parliament for the conduct of a war that is said to be costing us about £7,000,000 a week. When a young man throws all his soul into his training and ardently wants to become a soldier, his progress will be at least three times as quick as that of the dull, driven conscript; and that is why Lord Kitchener has told us that the new million-man'd army which popularly bears his name, though it might just as well be called after the King—has already been making a wonderful advance towards field-efficiency.
