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I have heard many noble tributes paid to Lord Roberts, but I remember none which touched him more than that of Sir William Robertson Nicoll at the Whitefriars’ Club. Lord Roberts was the club guest, that brilliant author and journalist Mr. John Foster Fraser being Chairman. I had the honour of being in the Vice-Chair.

The toast of Lord Roberts’ health was seconded by Sir William Robertson Nicoll, who was meeting the Field-Marshal for the first time. The Whitefriars’ dinner to Lord Roberts was merely a compliment to a great soldier. Not all of those present would have shared the views he entertained upon the question of National Service, and controversial issues were carefully excluded. Speaking, therefore, of Lord Roberts as a soldier, as a writer, and as a man, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, in one of the most graceful and generous tributes to which I have ever listened, assured him that by no class was our guest held in greater honour and affection than by the Nonconformists of this country and of every denomination. Lord Roberts knew that many Nonconformists differed from him in politics and upon the question of National Service, of which he was the acknowledged champion, and Sir William’s tribute so gracefully phrased, so obviously sincere in its expression of personal reverence and affection, touched and gratified him deeply.

That he felt a little sore, in regard to the misunderstanding of his views by some Nonconformists, is clear, I think, from a letter to me which lies before me as I write.

I happen to be a Churchman myself, but for the last eight or nine years before the war I devoted no inconsiderable portion of my time in trying to put the case for National Defence, as advocated by the Field-Marshal, before my many friends in the Nonconformist Churches, and I am glad and grateful to remember that, while not sharing my views, the editors of the great Nonconformist and Free Church organs gave me for the most part—there were exceptions—full opportunity to “state a case.” In April, 1913, a prominent Free Churchman of Hastings asked me to speak at the Brotherhood meeting in that town. I told him frankly that I dislike public speaking, but would do so if I were permitted to speak upon the subject of National Defence. My friend demurred, but it was finally arranged that I should first give a reading from a tiny booklet of my own, and after that I should speak for twenty minutes on the subject that lay so near my heart.

As this was the first occasion upon which an address upon National Defence was to be given at a Brotherhood meeting, Lord Roberts took deep interest in the matter. He was, indeed, so anxious to remove any misunderstanding which existed that he sent me a special message to deliver in his name to my audience. The message was in the form of a letter to myself, and as it puts his views very plainly, I print it here in full.

Englemere, Ascot,

Berks, 12.4.13.

Dear Mr. Kernahan,

I am very glad to learn that when asked to speak at the Brotherhood Meeting which is to take place in your own town on Sunday the 20th instant, you refused to do so unless you were allowed to deal with the question of National Service.

I know that there are many very well-meaning people who think that all military training is an abomination, and who are convinced that the life of youth in barracks is a continued round of vice and immorality of all kinds. I am prepared to admit that this certainly was true 200 years ago, and possibly it was true even at the beginning of the last century. During Marlborough’s wars we know from history that the ranks of the Regular Army were filled up by taking broken men of all kinds, and forcing them into the service.

Any man who was really on his last legs—broken debtors, tramps and vagabonds, condemned felons—these and such as these were forced into the ranks. Can it be wondered if the Army got a bad name? and, as we know, there is nothing so hard to live down as a really evil reputation. But all this is changed and has been changed for some years. Have we not heard that the Chief Constable of the county of Cambridge announced, after the Army manœuvres, that although 45,000 men had been turned loose in the area for which he was responsible, yet not a single accusation for wrongdoing had been brought against any of these soldiers? Have not the papers just recently told us that 10,000 men taken at random from the garrison at Aldershot have been billeted upon the inhabitants in the Hartley district, that these men were willingly received by the people of the district in their houses, and that again, in this instance, there has not been one complaint of misconduct? I must confess that I am pained, as well as surprised, when I find that those who profess, and profess very loudly, that they are followers of Christ, should still look upon the defenders of their country with such unchristian suspicion and dislike.

I should like you to read out to the meeting the following extract which occurs in an article on “Germany and the Germans,” by Mr. Price Collier. It can be found in the current issue of Scribner’s Magazine: “Military training makes youths better and stronger citizens and produces that self-respect, self-control and cosmopolitan sympathy which more than aught else lessen the chances of conflict. I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal jealousies, bickerings, quarrels, in the mess room or below decks of a warship, or in a soldiers’ camp, than in many Church and Sunday School assemblies, in many club smoking-rooms, in many ladies’ sewing and reading circles. Nothing does away more surely with quarrelsomeness than the training of men to get on together comfortably. Each giving way a little in the narrow lanes of life, so that each may pass without moral shoving. There are no such successful schools for the teaching of this fundamental diplomacy as the sister-services: the Army and the Navy.”

Here is another extract [Lord Roberts then goes on himself] from a New Zealand paper which was forwarded to me by a friend in that Dominion: “The Rev. W. Ready, the well-known Methodist Minister, took up a strong stand on the subject of military training at a meeting of the Society of Friends held in Auckland last week. Mr. Ready, who was present by invitation, was taken to task for some remarks he had made on the subject at the recent Methodist Conference. He thereupon explained to the meeting his attitude at the Conference. There was a time, he had told the Conference, when he held the opinion that camps were very immoral, and not places to which youths should be sent; but since he had had his sons attending camp as Territorials, he had been converted into believing that these camps were moral and were well-regulated. Every instinct of his moral nature went against compulsory training, but he had his sons in the Territorials. At this point there were cries of ‘Shame’ from the assembled members of the Society of Friends, but Mr. Ready stuck to his guns and declared that he was not going to advise his boys to break the law, merely because he objected on principle to military training. The Defence Act was now the law of the land, and he would no more advocate his sons breaking the law than he would support the English Suffragettes in their militant tactics. This is both sound ethics and common sense, and Mr. Ready has done the community a service in emphasising the duty of every man to obey the law. The change in his opinions on the subject of camps is interesting and gratifying, and should be noted by those who profess to be so concerned about their evil influences.”

I sincerely hope that your discourse at the Brotherhood Meeting will help to dissipate the suspicions against military life and all connected with it.

Yours very truly,

Roberts.

Lord Roberts made some appreciative remarks about my own work in the cause of National Defence. These I took the liberty of omitting when reading his letter at the Brotherhood Meeting, and I venture to follow a similar course in transcribing it here. Otherwise this very interesting letter is given exactly as he wrote it.

That the great soldier should, in his eighty-first year, have been at the pains to write so lengthy a letter for one of the rank and file, merely, of his supporters to read at a meeting held in a Nonconformist Church, bears witness not only to Lord Roberts’ unwearying energies, but also to his earnest desire, one might even say his anxiety, that the case for National Defence should be fully and fairly put before his fellow Britons of the Free Churches. Had he lived to see the magnificent response made by every denomination of the Free Churches—not even excepting some members of the Society of Friends—in sending the flower of its young manhood to the heroic task of subduing the monster of Prussian militarism, it would have added gladness and thankfulness to his “Nunc Dimittis,” when within sound of the guns the hero-soul of the great soldier, patriot and Christian, passed into the presence of his God.

Here I may perhaps be allowed to say a word about a prayer which has often been attributed to Lord Roberts, and was in fact, soon after his death, printed by a leading religious journal as “composed by the late Lord Roberts and presented by him to the soldiers serving under his command in the South African war.” The same prayer has repeatedly been attributed to Lord Roberts in magazines, books and newspapers; and, as the correspondence which I have permission to quote will show, I shall be following Lord Roberts’ own wishes in doing what I can, once and for all, to set the matter right.

Here is the prayer as given in the religious journal of which I have spoken:

Almighty Father, I have often sinned against Thee. Oh, wash me in the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Fill me with Thy Holy Spirit, that I may lead a new life. Spare me to see again those whom I love at home, or fit me for Thy presence in peace. Strengthen us to quit ourselves like men in our right and just cause. Keep us faithful unto death, calm in danger, patient in suffering, merciful as well as brave; true to our Queen, our country, and colours. If it be Thy will, enable us to win victory for England; but, above all, grant us a better victory over temptation and sin, over life and death, that we may be more than conquerors, through Him who loved us and laid down His life for us, Jesus our Saviour, the Captain of the Army of God. Amen.

The first appearance of the prayer as by Lord Roberts was, I believe, in a volume published some years ago at Kansas City, U.S.A., and edited by Dr. Stephen Abbott Northrop. It was entitled A Cloud of Witnesses, and I had from the first my suspicions about the prayer’s authenticity, for, though I never think or thought of Lord Roberts as other than a deeply religious man, I found it difficult to think of him as one who elected to write prayers for publication. Mentioning the matter to Lord Roberts himself one day, I found him very much mystified by what he heard. “I have not the slightest recollection of ever writing a prayer,” he protested, and, later on, when writing on another matter, he recurred to the subject, asking me if I could send him a copy of the prayer. I did so, and received the following letter:

Almond’s Hotel, Clifford Street,

London, W.

(The only undated letter I ever remember receiving from Lord Roberts.)

Dear Kernahan,

I am afraid I cannot claim the honour of writing the beautiful prayer you found in the Cloud of Witnesses—at least I think that is the name of the book you mentioned—but I am away from home and have not got your letter by me.

I thought it might have been the prayer General Colley wrote before “Majuba,” but it is not.

I should like to find out where the author of the book got the prayer, and why he gave me as the writer of it.

Yours very truly,

Roberts.

My reply was to send Lord Roberts the book to see for himself. He returned it, carefully packed and addressed in his own handwriting, with the letter which I here transcribe:

Almond’s Hotel, Clifford Street,

London, W., 1.2.14.

Dear Kernahan,

I return A Cloud of Witnesses with many thanks.

It is very curious about the prayer. I have no recollection of writing it, and I am wondering how Dr. Abbott Northrop got hold of it. What a fine collection of sentiments and opinions he has got together!

Yours sincerely,

Roberts.

There, so far as I was concerned, the matter dropped, but when next I saw Lord Roberts he again expressed his curiosity in regard to the mystery by which the prayer was attributed to him, and his desire to unravel it, asking me if I heard any more of it to let him know.

That I was of some service to him in the matter was due more to chance than to any mystery-unravelling merit of my own.

A friend who is interested in religious work among soldiers lent me a little book, with the request that I would look into it and return it at my leisure. I opened the volume somewhat indifferently, and the first thing to catch my eye was the very prayer which Lord Roberts and I had been discussing. The book stated that it had been written by the late Archbishop Alexander for the use of the troops in South Africa, and so exactly expressed the faith and feelings of Lord Roberts that he had it printed at his own cost and sent it to his various officers, asking them to distribute it to all ranks under their command.

That the prayer was ultimately attributed to the Field-Marshal instead of to the Archbishop I diagnose thus: Even though “Tommy” was specifically informed that it was composed by Archbishop Alexander—to “Tommy” that information meant little or nothing. But to “Tommy” the fact that it had been specially sent to him by his beloved “Bobs” would mean everything; and so, no doubt, it became known as “Lord Roberts’ prayer,” and as “Lord Roberts’ prayer” it came to the knowledge of the editor of A Cloud of Witnesses, and was printed in good faith by him over the Field-Marshal’s signature in that book, whence it was reproduced, equally in good faith, in other prints.

But to recur to the little book in which I found the prayer attributed, and rightly, to the Archbishop. With the owner’s permission I sent it to Lord Roberts to see for himself how, in my opinion—and he entirely agreed with me—the mistake originally arose. His reply has a characteristic touch, for though he went out to South Africa to take supreme command, his soldier-like way of putting it is “When I was ordered out.” Nor is the reference to failing memory without pathos to those whose smallest service to the cause he had so at heart—National Defence—was never forgotten by one of the greatest-hearted and most generous of men and of chiefs.

Almond’s Hotel, Clifford Street,

London, W., 15th Feb., 1914.

Dear Kernahan,

I cannot think how I could have forgotten about the prayer, for I myself asked the Primate to write it. I knew him well, and I was greatly struck by the few verses he wrote about “War” shortly after the trouble in South Africa had commenced.

When I was ordered out I wrote to the Primate and asked him to write out a short prayer. I had some thousand copies printed and distributed.

I am so glad you discovered who the author was, although your doing so proves and makes me sad to think that my memory is not so good as I thought it was.

I am returning your little book. I wish I could have kept it.

Yours sincerely,

Roberts.

My next meeting with Lord Roberts was twelve days later, and was at No. 10 Downing Street, Mr. Asquith’s official residence. Lord Roberts said, among other things, in the talk we had together on that occasion that he was very much indebted to me for the promptness with which I had unravelled the mystery about himself and the Archbishop, and went on gravely:

“I very much dislike having attributed to me a prayer which I did not write. It is not, as you know, that I do not believe in prayer. I have humbly asked God’s help and guidance in everything that I undertook all through my life, and never more so than now, when I am an old man, and His call may be very near. But——” he hesitated a moment, “offering up a brief prayer—it may only be the words ‘God help me!’—before going into action, or in some time of difficulty, is one thing; and sitting down to write, to print and publish a prayer for others is quite another thing—for a soldier, at least. That was why I asked my friend the Archbishop to compose the prayer. It was for him, God’s minister, a clergyman, not for me, a soldier, to do it.”

Lord Roberts then asked me to advise him how best to prevent a recurrence of the error by which the prayer was attributed to him. I replied that if he wished I would on his behalf write to the editor of A Cloud of Witnesses pointing out the mistake, and suggesting that an erratum slip, making the correction, be inserted in all copies of the book already printed, and that the Archbishop’s name replace that of Lord Roberts in any future edition.

“I shall be so much obliged if you will,” he said gratefully. “May I leave it to you, and will you let me know when you hear from him?”

I promised to do so, and carried the promise into effect, sending Lord Roberts, when I received it, the editor’s reply, in which, after expressing regret for the error, he undertook to do what was proposed. That Lord Roberts felt strongly about the matter, and was most anxious that the correction should be made, will be seen by the following letter which I received the morning after I had seen him at Downing Street:

Englemere, Ascot, Berks,

28th Feb., 1914.

Dear Kernahan,

Thanks for your letter of the 21st instant and for sending me the little book, which I wish I could have kept. Would it be possible to communicate with the author of the book you sent me in which the prayer of the Primate of Ireland appeared under my name? I should like to have this corrected, as it is quite wrong that I should have the credit of being the author of such a beautiful prayer when I was only the indirect means of it being written.

(Thus far Lord Roberts’ letter was typed. Then in his own strong, clear, firm hand the letter concluded as follows): This letter was dictated before I met you yesterday. I only send it as a reminder.

I may just add in conclusion that “the little book” which he twice, almost wistfully, said he wished he could have kept (if I remember rightly it told, among other things, of his son’s death in South Africa) was by the courtesy of the friend from whom I had borrowed it, reforwarded to Lord Roberts, and was by him gratefully and gladly acknowledged.