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It was a score or more years ago, and at the Old Vagabond Club (now merged into the Playgoers) that I first met Lord Roberts. When he became the President of the Club, we celebrated the event by a dinner at which he was the guest of honour and Jerome K. Jerome was the Chairman. As one of the original members of the Club and as a member of the Executive Committee, I was introduced to the great soldier. All I expected was a bow, a handshake, and a “How-do-you-do,” but Lord Roberts was as good as to be more gracious and cordial than any great soldier, even if an Irishman, ever was before—so at least it seemed to me—to a scribbler of sorts, whom he was meeting for the first time. He was, in fact, so very kind that I was emboldened to ask a favour. Among the guests was a young officer in what was then the Artillery Volunteers. I knew it would immensely gratify him to meet the Field-Marshal, so towards the close of the conversation I ventured to say:

“It has been a very great honour and pleasure Lord Roberts, to me to meet you and to have this talk. I wonder whether you’ll think me trespassing on your kindness if I ask to be allowed to present an acquaintance of mine? He is a Volunteer Officer, a junior subaltern in the Artillery, and to meet you would, I am sure, be a red-letter day in his life. Would you allow me to present him?”

“Why of course. I shall be delighted. Bring him along by all means,” was the reply.

The young man was accordingly presented. The reader will hardly believe me when I say that this Volunteer Subaltern of Artillery thought well to instruct the Master Gunner in the science of gunnery, and in fact to tell the Field-Marshal what in his, the Volunteer Subaltern’s, opinion was wrong with the British Army.

Had Lord Roberts replied civilly but curtly, as some in his place would have done: “You think so, do you? Oh indeed! Very interesting, I’m sure. Good evening,” and walked away, one could hardly have wondered. But no, he heard the other out with perfect courtesy, if with resignation, and in his own mind, no doubt, with amusement.

I reminded Lord Roberts of the incident when I came to know him better, and he replied with a laugh:

“I recall the matter perfectly, for I like to think I have a retentive memory. Of course I was, as you say, amused at the young man’s assurance and confidence in his own military knowledge. Many very young men are prone either to too great diffidence or to too great assurance. I think, on the whole, I incline to envy the young man with plenty of assurance, especially as I was disposed to be diffident myself at his age, as many of us Irishmen, for all our seeming confidence, are. But in any case I owed it to you, who had introduced him, as well as to myself, to treat him outwardly at least with courtesy and consideration.”

That was Lord Roberts’ charming and kind way of putting it; but to me, a young man myself when the incident happened, it was a lesson in fine breeding and in fine manners on the part of a great soldier and great gentleman.

I heard afterwards that the Volunteer Subaltern of Artillery, in speaking at a Distribution of Prizes to members of his corps, the very evening following upon his one and only meeting with the Field-Marshal, made frequent use of such phrases as “When I was talking to Lord Roberts about the matter,” “What I told Lord Roberts ought to be done,” and so on, no doubt to his own satisfaction and possibly with the result that the members of the audience were for the first time made to realise what a very important figure he was in the military world. Later on, however, some one who knew the facts wrote to him suggesting that the book for which the world was literally panting was a work from his pen entitled My Recollections of Lord Roberts, and when the Boer War broke out, a telegram, purporting to come from Lord Roberts, urging the Volunteer Artilleryman to take supreme command in South Africa, was dispatched to him by a playful friend. I have no doubt the young man, who will now be getting elderly, would be the first to laugh at his own youthful self-confidence, and that if this paper should by any chance meet his eye, he will pardon me for thus, and for the first time, telling the tale in print.

Here is an instance of Lord Roberts’ kindness to and interest in younger men. A Territorial Captain—his brother, an officer in the Regular Army, told me the story—was taking part in a Field Day with his battalion in Berkshire. His instructions were that he was to hold a certain line of country at all costs. It so happened that the attack developed in a direction which made it necessary for him hurriedly to advance his men to a flank and away from his reserves, whom he had posted where they were under cover and out of sight of the enemy. The young officer (he was a junior subaltern recently joined) in command of the reserves evidently had very mistaken ideas in regard to discipline. His idea appeared to be that discipline consists in staying where you were originally told to stay, like the “boy on the burning deck” in the poem of Casabianca, until receiving orders to another effect. Needless to say, the very reverse is true. Soldiers to-day are taught clearly to observe events and to act on their own initiative should unexpected developments arise. Seeing that the tide of war was drifting the Firing Line and its supports away from the reserves, the duty of the officer commanding the reserves was, not to remain stodgily where he had originally been placed (to do that would be less obedience to discipline than a breach of discipline), but while keeping the reserves directly in signalling communication with the Firing Line, as well as under cover and out of sight of the enemy, so to alter his own dispositions as to be ready to reinforce and to reinforce quickly when called upon to do so.

This, however, he failed to do, and when his superior officer, finding himself hard pressed, signalled for the reserves, there was no reply.

Unfortunately there was neither a galloper nor a cyclist at hand to carry a message. “If I don’t get my reserves here in half an hour,” he said, “I shall lose the position, and the loss of this position may mean, probably will mean, victory for the enemy all along the line. It shan’t be so if I can help it. Now what can I do?”

Hurriedly but keenly he scanned the rolling Berkshire down around him. Towards the north, on the whity-brown high road that curved outward in a huge half-circle from the point where he was standing, he saw a cloud of dust. “A motor! and coming this way!” he exclaimed. “Follow me, Brown.” (This to a non-commissioned officer.) Stooping low, so as not to offer a target to the enemy, he sprinted northwards in a line which intersected the high road, at the nearest point which the oncoming car must pass.

The motor was almost on him as he reached the road, and leaping into the centre held up his hand. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to the occupant, “but I’m in command of troops holding this position. We’re attacked in force, and my reserves are some distance away along the road in the direction you have come, near a copse. I’ve signalled for reinforcements, but they have not kept up their communications. I have neither a galloper nor a cyclist. If I get my reinforcements here in half an hour, I can hold the position. If I don’t, I lose it, and losing it means everything to the enemy. I wonder whether you’d be so very good as to lend me your car for a few minutes to carry a message!” “With the greatest pleasure,” said the occupant. Turning to the chauffeur he said, “You are entirely at this officer’s disposal. I shall walk on, and you can pick me up when he has done with you.” As he spoke he got out of the car, and as he lifted his cap, in response to the young officer’s salute and hasty word of thanks, the latter recognised Field-Marshal Lord Roberts.

A day or two later, the great soldier was celebrating his eightieth birthday, and received a letter from the officer in question. It was to remind Lord Roberts of the incident, to apologise for the liberty the young officer had taken in stopping the car, to thank him warmly for his kindness, and to mention that the reserves had been brought up at the double and in time to save the position. The officer concluded by asking to be allowed to congratulate the Field-Marshal on attaining his eightieth year and to express the hope that the great soldier might be spared to celebrate many similar anniversaries.

A reply came almost by return of post.

Dear Captain——,

Many thanks for your letter and kind congratulations on my 80th birthday. I was delighted to be of assistance, and am even more delighted to learn the successful result of that assistance. You did the right and only thing in stopping my car. If ever you are this way and disengaged, I hope you will call and give me the pleasure of making the further acquaintance of so good and resourceful a soldier.

Yours truly,

Roberts.

After my first meeting with Lord Roberts at the Vagabond Club, I saw no more of him—except for a mere handshake and “How-do-you-do?” at a military function—for many years. Then I chanced, in April, 1910, to contribute to the London Quarterly Review an article on National Defence. It was addressed specially to Nonconformists, one of the opening paragraphs being as follows:

I do not for a moment believe that Nonconformists are one whit less patriotic than any other great religious body, but I fear there is some misconception on their part—due no doubt to the intolerance and the exaggeration of some of us who champion the cause of National Defence—in regard to our aims and our purposes. It is in the hope of removing some of these misconceptions that I pen the present paper.

The article I did not send to Lord Roberts, nor did I draw the attention of anyone connected with the National Service League of which he was President to it. I did nothing directly or indirectly to bring it under anyone’s notice. Yet a few days after the Review appeared, I received the following letter from him. The Rev. R. Allen of whom he speaks, I may say, was, and still is, an entire stranger to me, and I to him:

Englemere, Ascot, Berks,

April 4, 1910.

Dear Sir,

The Rev. R. Allen, a friend of many years’ standing, has been good enough to send me a copy of the London Quarterly Review for this month, and to draw my attention to the first article, written by you on “How to Defend England.”

I am delighted with the article itself, and with the very clear and convincing way in which you have put forward the advantages of military training and discipline for all our able-bodied young men as affecting not only the position of Great Britain as a World Power, but the individual moral and physical improvement of the men of the nation.

But I am still more delighted that such an article should be allowed to appear in a Journal published from the Wesleyan Book Room. I am quite at one with you in believing that Nonconformists are not one whit less patriotic than any other great religious body, but that there is some misconception on their part in regard to the aim and purpose of those who advocate universal military training for Home Defence.

My hope is that such misconception may be removed and that every Briton, whatever his position and whatever his sect, will realise the necessity for taking the defence of his country seriously.

Such articles as yours will do much to effect this, and to open the eyes of those who are now blind to England’s needs and England’s dangers before it is too late.

Yours truly,

Roberts.

Other men as greatly concerned in great matters as Lord Roberts was cannot always spare time to acknowledge and to show appreciation of work for a good cause, which is brought directly to their notice. Lord Roberts could find time, or perhaps I should say made time to write graciously about work the doer or the author of which had done nothing to bring that work under the Field-Marshal’s eye.

Thenceforward, no work of mine in the cause for National Defence was allowed to pass unrecognised, once it came under the notice of Lord Roberts—and not very much happened of which in some way or another he did not come to hear.

He followed the doings even of the rank and file under his command, and, like the great leader of men that he was, he thought none of them too humble to be honoured and heartened before going into battle, by a message from himself.

For instance, I was asked to give an address on National Defence to a great gathering of men—some 1500 or more as it turned out—at an Assault-at-Arms in the Kursaal at Worthing. Naturally I never trespassed upon such a busy man’s time by writing to him, unless in answer to a letter from himself, or unless I had something important of which to speak. So as I had not heard from Lord Roberts for some time, and had had no cause to write to him, I did not suppose he as much as knew of the Worthing meeting. Yet in opening the proceedings, the Mayor announced that he had just received a telegram from Lord Roberts to the effect that he was delighted I was to be the speaker that night, and warmly commending what I had to say to the attention of the audience.

Such a message and from such a quarter, did more to assure me—an entire stranger to my audience—a welcome and a friendly hearing than I could otherwise have hoped to receive.

One “Lost Chord” in the way of an unread message from Lord Roberts I often regret.

In the company of Mr. Neville P. Edwards, then an organising secretary of the National Service League, I went as an Honorary Helper of the League on three caravan tours in Kent and Sussex.

The last tour closed only a week or two before the outbreak of war, and Lord Roberts, who followed our progress with the keenest interest, sent us on several occasions by letter or by telegram a special message to deliver in his name to our audiences. These messages directly warned his fellow-countrymen of the imminence of war and of the necessity for preparation. Remembering that in the towns we often had an audience of one or two thousand, and even in the villages, of some hundreds, there must be many persons who now recall the weightiness and the gravity of the great soldier’s words. And I venture to add that no one whose privilege it was to hear them is likely ever to forget the equally grave, eloquent, and memorable words which fell from the lips of Mr. Rudyard Kipling—who by his single pen has done more to awaken the young manhood of the nation to England’s needs than any other writer living or dead—when he presided over one of our meetings. It seemed to me one of the ironies of fate that in the very caravan from which Lord Roberts’ message and Mr. Kipling’s words—both urgent warnings of imminent war—had been delivered, I should a few weeks later set forth as an Honorary Recruiting Officer in search of men to fight in the very war which Lord Roberts and Mr. Kipling had so faithfully foretold.

Before taking the chair and introducing Mr. Edwards and myself to our audience, Mr. Kipling said to me:

“I have just had a telegram from the Chief. He sent his thanks to me for presiding at the meeting, and asks that I convey his thanks to Edwards and to you. It is a very interesting and characteristic message, and I will read it when making my closing remarks to the meeting at the end.”

It so happened that the latter part of the meeting was a Lantern Slide Lecture by Mr. Edwards. His last slide was a portrait of the King, seeing which some one started “God Save the King,” and the audience, taking this as ending the meeting, broke up, and so we lost not only Lord Roberts’ telegram, but Mr. Kipling’s equally coveted closing words.

In nothing that I attempted for the cause that was so near to his heart, was Lord Roberts more keenly interested than in a controversy in the spring and summer of 1914 between an opponent of National Service, a very distinguished divine and scholar, and myself. My opponent’s article was headed, “Why we cannot accept conscription,” and mine “Why we support Lord Roberts.” To a reprint of the controversy in booklet form, published immediately after the outbreak of war, the Rev. John Telford, B.A., contributed an Editorial Foreword, in which he said:

“This discussion of the question of national armaments aroused extraordinary interest among a very wide circle of readers, as it appeared in The Magazine of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in March, April, May and June of this year. It also led to much correspondence in other journals. No one then dreamed of the terrible significance which events were to attach to the subject. … Here are Mr. Kernahan’s words, printed last March, before any shadow had fallen across the sun. He says: ‘I have studied the question at home and abroad with as much closeness as was possible, and the more closely I study it the more convinced I am that we are well within the possibility of one of the most awful disasters that ever befell a great nation.’ In the light of to-day that is a remarkably verified warning.”

This controversy, on account of the importance attached to the issues involved, Lord Roberts followed with exceptional interest. One passage of arms between my opponent and myself I may be permitted to quote, since it centres around Lord Roberts himself.

“Mr. Kernahan proves,” my critic wrote, “that his special hero, Lord Roberts, is a truly Christian man. I would not question it for a moment. And yet—so terrible a power has familiarity with war to blind men’s eyes to its satanic wickedness—it was Lord Roberts who uttered in our Free Trade Hall at Manchester the cynical sentence about Germany’s right to strike when her hour came, which shocked even convinced conscriptionists on his platform. I wonder whether Lord Roberts approved of the way Germany struck when her hour came in 1870! Strange indeed to hear a Christian man echoing the very sentiments of Bismarck, who was so proud of the cunning lie by which he tricked France into a disastrous war!”

My reply I venture to quote, since Lord Roberts was so good as to say it exactly interpreted his views and his position.

“Lord Roberts,” I wrote, “claimed no such ‘right’ for any nation wantonly and wickedly to force war upon another. He pointed out that when one nation has decided, for reasons of her own (possibly because she is ambitious and determined to play a great part in history), to force a war upon another nation, which possibly may decide to resist, if only because she is determined to hold to her own—the policy is that adopted by Germany. That policy—as a student of history as well as a soldier, Lord Roberts had to admit that it is often a winning policy—is to strike at what has been called the selected moment, or in other words, when she (Germany) is at her strongest, and the nation which she wishes to overthrow is weak. It was because Lord Roberts knew that this was and is Germany’s policy, and because he wellnigh despairs sometimes at the criminal apathy of his fellow-countrymen, and because he knows the consequences which must almost inevitably follow, that he felt compelled, under a terrible sense of responsibility, to speak out thus plainly. Had he, knowing what he does of Germany’s ambitions, intentions, and strength, and of England’s ignorance, weakness, and unpreparedness, elected to maintain a cowardly and traitorous silence—then, and not till then, would he be guilty of the ‘cynical’ and ‘satanic’ wickedness of which my opponent speaks. … For the latter cannot deny that Germany has not gone back in her ambition or in her strength since 1870. On the contrary, she has gone on, not only in piling up an army which, as Mr. Churchill warned the nation, is now four and a half millions in number, but also in the most strenuous effort to create a vast Navy, which she has said must be, shall be, greater than ours. With her huge army she needs no Navy for defence. It is, as has been said, a ‘luxury’ and is meant for attack, whereas to us a Navy is a matter of life and death. And my opponent knows that we have twice held out the hand of friendship to Germany with proposals to stay this insane race in armaments, and that her reply was more battleships, more soldiers, more guns.”

I do not print this passage here to reopen an old controversy, but because—though the details of Lord Roberts’ proposals will, in the light of recent events, require considerable modification—the main issues raised by him abide and must be reaffirmed. Here in England we have short memories. It is possible that in the bewildering happenings of the war and in the breathless interest with which, at its end, the shifting of frontiers and the striking of great balances will be watched, there is the danger, if only from reaction, that we slackly fall back into our previous national inertia and national apathy, and that the little puddles of party politics (dirty puddles for the most part) once again matter more to us than to hold sacred and inviolate the great Empire and these world-trusts which God has seen well to commit to Britain’s charge.