Cecil Chisholm

“ During the day a squadron of Hussars was sent forward to Maeder's Farm, some five miles on the line of march. There the men bivouacked under arms, and at midnight set out on a silent march to the west. Under the screen of darkness and perfect silence the advance was speedy. Even the regimental carts were dispensed with, lest the creaking of their wheels might betray the advance. Not until the column was near its objective, McCracken's Hill, did the Boers suspect its approach. An amazed shouting and some wild rifle-fire from the outposts—and McCracken's Hill was in French's hands. ”

“ French's luck consists solely in the fact that he happens to be a soldier. Men of Kitchener's organising genius may be many things; in nothing, not even in the arts, are they likely to seriously fail. But French is a soldier in the sense quite other than Kitchener. He is a man made for the endurance of hardship and for the facing of hard practical difficulties in the field. It is as natural for him to conduct a campaign as it was for Pope to "lisp in numbers, for the numbers came." ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is said that when news of the war in South Africa reached French, momentarily obeying a natural impulse, he waved his hand and cried, "Hurrah for South Africa." If anyone had any right to thank Heaven for that particular campaign, it was certainly French. But he would have "hurrahed" any campaign that gave opportunity for his powers. After all, the soldier's stage is the battlefield. Without wars he is without an active rôle, and must spend his years drudging in the rehearsal theatre of the Colonies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is nothing of the jealous and erratic genius about French. To read his dispatches is to find praise lavishly given to subordinates but no mention of self. For he looks after his assistants and leaves his own record to fate. He has, indeed, mastered the art of being great enough to allow others to be great. Hence the excellence which always marks his General Staff. ”

“ How, I ask, can the Cavalry perform its rôle in war until the enemy's Cavalry is defeated and paralysed? I challenge any Cavalry officer, British or foreign, to deny the principle that Cavalry, acting as such against its own Arm, can never attain complete success unless it is proficient in shock tactics. ”

“ It is very certain that French is not feared by his staff: he is worshipped by them. The reason for that is not far to seek. Although his temper is irascible, it is not enduring. Often it will flash out in wrathful words, but the storm is quickly over. Men of this choleric temper are always beloved, for good humour inevitably underlies the ebullitions of so light a rage. They never nurse hatreds nor brood over trifles. ”

“ I want you all to bear in mind about such night operations, that they can never be a certain success, and because they sometimes fail it does not, therefore, bring discredit on those who attempted to carry them out. You must remember that, if we always waited for an opportunity of certain success, we should do nothing at all, and that in war, fighting a brave enemy, it is absolutely impossible to be always sure of success: all we can do is to try our very best to secure success—and that you did on the occasion I am speaking of. ”

“ Needless to say "Uncle French" and his men hugely enjoyed the correspondent's awakening.
Such a man is bound to be the idol of the ranks. "What a good leader General French is," wrote Driver Payne, of the Royal Horse Artillery, to a friend. "He seems so cool at excitable moments; he does not lose his head and rush his men into danger. In fact, he always looks before he leaps, and when he does leap, he makes us move—and the Boers too." Perhaps French was best summed-up one day by a trooper whom, in a curt word, he had just sentenced to barracks for some offence. ”

“ It is the silence of a man utterly absorbed in the task before him, the man whom Tommy Atkins admires. "If the British soldier likes one thing in a General more than another," wrote a soldier who served with French in South Africa, "it is the golden gift of silence, especially when joined to straight action, just to distinguish him from the old women of both sexes. ”

“ It is usual to find that the man of extraordinary merit is in some degree a contrast with and a criticism of the mere average mortal of his set. The dour urbanity of Kitchener, for instance, is Oriental rather than English, and contrasts strangely with the choleric tradition of the army officer. So the infinite alertness and constant good humour of Roberts has a quality of Latin esprit very foreign to the English temperament. But there are no such peculiarities about French. He is the very essence of healthy normality. ”

“ One wonders whether the school-boy who sent French the following letter on his return from South Africa knew the quality of his writing.
"My Dear French,—You are a great British General. I want your autograph, but, whatever you do, don't let your secretary write it."
I have said that Sir John French is the average Englishman in an accentuated degree. How then does he regard war? If the plain truth be told, we are not at heart a martial nation. We have made war when we have been compelled to it by the threat of an Armada or the menace of a Napoleon. ”

“ His genius is one of those which include an infinite capacity for taking pains. Indeed his thoroughness is more than Teutonic. In this war, French has, so far, found no Napoleon to fight. It is, indeed, questionable whether the Germans have a commander of his excellence on the field. But the preparations of the German Headquarters Staff may be admitted to be Napoleonic in their elaborate and far-seeing perfection. Yet time and again, as in the Napoleonic wars, they have gone down before a British General who unites the dash of von Roon with the caution and the prescience of Moltke. ”

“ In the plain to the west of Colesberg there arose an isolated kopje, some six hundred feet in height, called Coles Kop. This hill, which rises almost sheer from the plain, taxes the wind of the unencumbered climber to the utmost. Being higher than the surrounding kopjes, it commands both Colesberg and the enemy's laager. The Boers had left it ungarrisoned, thinking it useless either to themselves or to the enemy. They made a very great mistake. For the mere hint that a thing is impossible fires French to attempt it. ”

“ It is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in taking cover, leggings instead of boots, and a rifle instead of a carbine, would give us a formidable force of 20,000 men who could do all that our cavalry does, and a great deal more besides.... The lesson both of the South African and of the American Civil War is that the light horseman who is trained to fight on foot is the type of the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mounted Infantry—A Plea for the Lance—The Cavalry Spirit—Shock Tactics still Useful.
It does not necessarily follow that because a man is a great cavalry leader, he therefore has ideas on the subject of cavalry. To the popular mind cavalry suggests clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs, the flashing of swords, followed by the crash and sound of an engagement. The man who would conduct this imagined spectacle satisfactorily would therefore be dependent rather on the timely uprush of the spirit than on the mechanical certainty of the mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If he be so original and so thorough a soldier as French, his abilities will be at an even graver discount. For the rehearsal is not the play; and the best Generals, like the ablest actors, are notoriously weak at rehearsal, which does not pluck fully at their energies. Probably French would have hurrahed for South Africa, however, had he had no special [Pg 138] abilities at all. For nowhere is he happier than on the battlefield. If the grisly game of war must be played, French plays it with all his heart. It is the game which destiny put him on the stage to play ”

“ He is ruthless with himself as well as with others. If the Navy were not to give scope for his ambition, then he must quit the Navy. Already, no doubt, his life-long hero, Napoleon, was kindling the young man's imagination. But the English Navy of those days gave little encouragement to the Napoleonic point of view. It was bound up with the sternest discipline and much red tape. If rumour speaks true young French was irritated by the almost despotic powers then possessed by certain naval officers. So he boldly decided at the age of eighteen to end one career and commence another. ”

“ In spite of the revolution he was accomplishing, it is doubtful whether French was at all happy at the War Office. He is essentially a man of action. Unlike Kitchener, he prefers execution to organisation, and he probably chafed horribly over the interminable disentangling of knots which is efficient organisation. His one consolation was the solution every night before he left his desk of a refreshing problem in tactics. ”

“ I cannot speak with any certainty as to what has happened in European Armies, but as regards the British Cavalry, I am absolutely convinced that the Cavalry Spirit is, and may be encouraged to the utmost, without in the least degree prejudicing either training in dismounted duties or the acquirement of such tactical knowledge on the part of leaders as will enable them to discern when and where to resort to dismounted methods. ”

“ THE GUNS
After two days in the mining city, Lord Roberts' triumphant forces moved on their way to Pretoria. French's next task was to cut the railway communications to the north of Pretoria. In carrying this out he made a wide detour to the west, where his cavalry found themselves in a treacherous country of kopjes, scrub and menacing gorges, a type of country most dangerous to mounted men. Anxiously he pushed forward to reach open country before nightfall (of June 2) . But the Boers were before him. A sudden hail of Mauser bullets and shells announced an ambush. But French was undismayed. ”

“ While he held this ridge French had the satisfaction of seeing infantry, cavalry and artillery coming up the railway line to his assistance. In the late afternoon his force numbered something like three thousand five hundred men, outnumbering the enemy by more than two to one.
Those who ask why so many men were required, do not understand the position in which the British force found itself. The enemy were entrenched on a series of high, boulder-strewn tablelands, which offered almost perfect cover. Between these tablelands and French's force lay a wide and partly scrubless stretch of veldt. ”

“ The real business of cavalry is so to manœuvre your enemy as to bring him within effective range of the corps artillery of your own side for which a position suitable for battle would previously have been selected. ”