“ Chary of speech, bold in design, resolute in execution, he raised first his Corps and then his Army to a foremost place among British forces, and now he has raised the British Army to a foremost place among the armies of the world. He has the complete confidence of his men, and has earned the admiration and affection of all who work with him. ”

“ The war has cast upon them the burden of meeting every sort of warfare. They have come triumphantly through the ordeal, winning a grudging praise from the enemy, and the more unmistakeable approval of attempts at imitation. They have shown themselves as resourceful in devising new machines and methods of attack as they are experienced in the orthodox fighting of other days. The war may have new experiences for them, but it cannot daunt or check them. They have seen the worst. They have come through dark places to the approaching light of day. Their record is our best assurance for the future. ”

“ Scotland has given an innumerable host of soldiers to British and foreign armies, but, with the possible exception of Montrose and Sir John Moore (if Moore can be counted a Scotsman) , there has been none who stands in the very front rank of the profession of arms. To-day there is such an one. It has been truly said that the biggest soldiers of all have not the specific military mind, but have a brain indistinguishable from the brain which makes a great statesman or any other great man of action. ”

“ It is natural for us who read daily the record of our soldiers to be more conscious of their small failures, than of their great success. But trace the broad lines of the war, retread those trampled roads of northern France once more behind the armies these men led, remember their mastery in the darkest days and their record becomes luminous with the assurance of final victory. ”

“ He proved himself a dashing and skilful commander, and by the boldness of his movements in the Cape Colony, in the later stages of the war, created a feeling of nervousness in Lord Kitchener's main communications. He was in supreme command in the Cape and was applying himself to the reduction of Ookiep when the news of the opening of peace negotiations brought him back to the Transvaal. His was one of the strongest voices at Vereeniging in favour of peace when terms would still be obtainable, and when the Treaty was signed he returned to the practice of his old profession. ”

“ Le Cateau was a rearguard battle, such as perhaps has never been fought in history before. The men were too tired to do anything but put their fortunes to the final test; and, though overwhelmed by shrapnel, they won through. Courage alone cannot explain such a feat. Experience and the coolness that is born of it only explains half; the skill of the commanders could alone have justified the decision to stand at such hazards and could alone have brought the men through them. Le Cateau was won by the better troops. The British were moved back ”

“ Muirhead Bone to depict for us the conditions in the war zone of the Western Front. To give not only the thing seen but the spirit lying within it, that is the province of the imaginative and selective artist. ”

“ The Somme, the German retreat, the Battle of Arras, and the victory of the Messines Ridge are part of his achievements in Supreme Command.
The foremost living British General, and one fit to rank with any soldier in Europe, is, as Generals go to-day, a young man, only fifty-six. He is at once a scientific soldier after the most modern plan, and a true leader of men. Having been a brilliant Staff officer, he has a proper understanding of the functions of a Staff. ”

“ GENERAL SIR HENRY RAWLINSON
"After the deprivations and tensions of being pursued day and night by an infinitely stronger force, the Division had to pass through the worst ordeal of all. It was left to a little force of 30,000 to keep the German army at bay, while the other British Corps were being brought up from the Aisne. Here they clung like grim death with almost every man in the [17]
[18]
[19] trench, holding a line which of necessity was a great deal too long—a thin exhausted line—against which the pride of the German first line troops were hurling themselves with fury. ”

“ And that is what Mr. Bone has done with a measure of success that almost defies exaggerated praise. He brings to his task the technique of a master and the vision of a true artist."—Daily Telegraph.
"Mr. Muirhead Bone has clearly justified the action of H.M. Government in employing him as an official artistic chronicler of the greatest of all wars."—Burlington Magazine.
"Mr. Muirhead Bone's vigorous drawings of the toil and moil of British warfare and all its circumstantial splendour and squalor stand in no further need of commendation.... It is a noble and enduring achievement.... ”

“ In the months that followed, Britain had to build up an army commensurate with the task she had assumed. For every soldier of the pre-war army she had to find about ten, and her generals had to teach the new armies their business. The action of Neuve Chapelle showed the British army making its début in one of those carefully-planned limited attacks against entrenched positions which have been developed, with growing experience, out of all recognition. Loos was a more ambitious venture. In it there appeared volunteer troops to astound seasoned veterans by their dash and discipline. ”

“ Few British soldiers have had a more varied experience of warfare. He is a scholar in his profession, but his book knowledge is borne lightly, and he has shown himself in every crisis a leader of shrewd judgment and ample resource. He is still a young man, and, fine as his record has been, he is universally regarded as only at the outset of his career. ”

“ In the Battle of Arras he commanded the British left. His troops carried the Vimy ridge and fought their way to the southern and western suburbs of Lens. Sir Henry Horne's Army had now a similar general objective to that which his Division had had at the earlier Battle of Loos.
Sir Henry Horne is one of the most trusted of British soldiers. Like the Commander-in-Chief, he is a man of few words but of many deeds. Scotland has played a great part in the war and has contributed more than her share of brilliant Generals. ”

“ FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT FRENCH OF YPRES, K.P., G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G. LORD FRENCH'S name will descend to posterity as the leader of the British Expeditionary Force. Were all his other great services to his country reckoned as naught, his name would live for ever by reason of the German Emperor's vainglorious allusion to "French's contemptible little army." For, as long as the British Empire shall endure, men will hold in honour "the old Contemptibles," who shattered for ever an Emperor's dreams of world supremacy and made his boast recoil upon his head. ”

“ But they fought coolly, were manœuvred skilfully, saving themselves by sheer fighting ability from the tide which threatened to overwhelm them.
Only consummate leaders could have taken an army to the Marne. The army ought to have been wiped out long before. The Germans had fully resolved upon it, they had the men and guns to encompass it, their long-perfected plans depended upon it. The British, wearied by the pressure of a hurried retreat, fought almost without cover against a great concentration of guns. ”

“ Within a year he had driven the German troops from British territory, reduced them by two-thirds, and penned them [56] into the southern and south-western malarial area with its one healthy spot at Mahenge.
General Smuts is still a young man, though he has had exceptional experience. A scholar by taste, a lawyer by profession, and perforce a soldier, he represents a unique figure in the Empire. The boldness and energy of his leading as a General seem to suggest the born commander. ”

“ PART II. THE central figure of this second portrait gallery of British Generals is that of Lord French, who gives a unity and atmosphere to the collection. The phase of the War he represents is quite distinct, indeed unique. The Army with which his name will ever be associated was an admittedly incomparable force, and many of the Generals whose portraits are to be found here went through the greatest ordeal of our history with him.
There have been many crises in the war. There will yet be others. ”

“ When the full history of the war comes to be written, the Empire will realize how much it owes its security to the high patriotism and indomitable tenacity of the Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force. ”

“ After the battle of the Aisne, the army, moved en bloc from the heart of France, where the war of positions was beginning to develop, appeared on the extreme left flank of the Allied forces, manœuvring towards the East in the effort to outflank the Germans. Here, out of a struggle of cross-purposes, there emerged, little by little, the outlines of a titanic battle for the possession of the Channel coast. The Belgian army had fallen back from Antwerp upon the sea, covered by an army corps pushed from the coast in a precarious venture towards Bruges and Ghent ”

“ They have seen every type of fighting. The war of movements with its swift changes and long hazards was their first experience, an experience that none of those who took part in it will ever forget. For some terrible days the British army stood between the Allies and disaster; but the experience it bought was handed on to the enemy in a series of engagements, the lesson of which he softens by proclaiming the first seven divisions to have been unique. The admission is sufficiently revealing, for the handful of troops ought to have been crushed at Mons ”

“ In a war that seemed to be given over to mechanics, engineering and physics, that was frequently regarded as a mathematical problem, they showed that leadership is still the paramount factor in the art of warfare. ”

“ General Congreve has been in command of the XIII Corps since November 15th, 1915. His son, Brevet-Major William Congreve, The Rifle Brigade, who fell at Longueval, July 22nd, 1916, at the age of 25, [41]
[42]
[43] was universally recognised as the most promising of the younger British soldiers. In two years he had won a Brevet Majority, the D.S.O., the Military Cross, and the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and, after his death, he received the Victoria Cross. No family has a more splendid fighting record. ”

“ But not only did they fight with superb spirit; they fought also with that instinctive appreciation of tactics which comes from perfectly assimilated experience. When the German blow had over reached itself, the British Generals were able to advance, threaten the left wing of Von Kluck's army when his right was dealing with General Manoury's outflanking movement on the Ourcq, outmanœuvre and outfight the enemy on the Aisne and secure tactical advantages of the first importance. ”

“ Bernhardi even said that he doubted if the troops could face a European army. But this latter statement was made before the war, and it has perished in the light of numerous German defeats. The former can never survive our recollection of the conduct of the most difficult operations in open warfare by Sir John French and his Generals. An enforced retreat is a more searching test of military skill than any that is known to soldiers, and it was such an experience that met the British Army on the threshold of the War.
At Mons the Army made retreat possible. The battle was not of long duration ”

“ Wholly free from formality and red tape, and willing to find in every soldier a man and a brother, he could yet maintain a perfect battle discipline and keep the hearts of his men steady under the most desperate conditions. ”

“ They are one in that goodly fellowship of great soldiers who have come through the fire of the fiercest battles in the world's history. We can glimpse their metal in their actions. We have recently seen how potent still is the skill which directs in the face of all scientific and mechanical development of the war. ”

“ Two years later he went to the Cavalry—the 12th Lancers—and a year later to the 11th Bengal Lancers. In the South African War he rose to be Military Secretary to Lord Kitchener, then Commander-in-Chief. In 1902 he was Assistant Military Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in India, and three years later was again Lord Kitchener's Military Secretary. In 1909 he commanded a Brigade on the Indian Frontier. In 1912 he was Quartermaster-General in India, and later Secretary to the Government of India, Army Department, and Member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council. ”

“ For his work in the Kano-Sokoto Campaign, 1903, he was created a Companion of the Order of the Bath, as well as being again mentioned in despatches. In 1904 he received his Brevet of Colonel, and from 1905 to 1909 was Inspector-General of the West African Frontier Force. He returned to England in 1910 to become Brigadier Commanding 2nd Brigade, Aldershot Command. He became Major-General in 1913. On the outbreak of this war he was made Commander of the 2nd London Division, Territorial Force, a command he held until August 31st, 1914. ”