Roberts of Kandahar
The Life of Lord Roberts. By David James. (Hollis and Carter. 30s.) THAT the heroes of two generations back are rarely admirable to their descendants is a truism barely worth re-stating. In retrospect their authors seem verbose and unenlightened, their statesmen prigs or hypocrites, their, actors hams. Faults are remembered, virtues heavily obscured; ' mistakes apparent, the reasons for them long forgotten. On no one perhaps does the belittling influence of half a century's removal work more disastrously than on the professional soldier. The weapons he used, the armies he deployed, seem piti- fully inadequate to the demands of modern war; yet there is no glamour of antiquity to redeem their insignificance. To a genera- tion broken in to atom bombing, the pop-guns of Colenso seem unimpressive; for a nation which fondly believes that the finest days of English chivalry were spent on the battlefields of Agincourt and Crecy, even the march to Kandahar lacks true romance.
It would therefore be almost miraculous if Field-Marshal Lord Roberts were viewed today with the love and veneration which he inspired in his lifetime. When he died he was accepted not only as the most distinguished soldier since Wellington but also as uniquely placed in the affections of his own people, and, still more, of those who had known him in India. This tiny, indomitable figure had become a legend; 'little Bobs,' 'fightin' Bobs,' fearless in war, generous in peace, wise in council, the hero of his age. He died in 1914, and his fame, at least in England, vanished overnight in the holocaust of the First World War. Today he is only a vague pith- helmeted ghost, lumped in the general memory with Wolseley, Napier, Gordon and all the other half-forgotten figures who fought and flourished in the great divide between the Crimea and Mons.
Mr. James is not the perfect instrument to rescue Lord Roberts from oblivion. He has done patient work and assembled much vital material hitherto untouched. As the first full-length biography, this book will prove most valuable. But it cannot be the last word. Mr. James writes of the wars of the late nineteenth century with the undiscriminating enthusiasm of a scoutmaster urging on a favourite troop. 'Well played, Roberts. Keep at it, Kitchener, that's the stuff. Now then, French, no slacking!' There can rarely have been a man who conducted himself more thoroughly in accordance with certain rigid principles than Field-Marshal Roberts. The validity of these principles Mr. James has accepted blindly, without question, even without examination. In the Indian passages in particular his work is not so much a critical study as a careful summary of events.
Yet the worst that can be said of Lord Roberts's beliefs is that today they are unfashionable. Perhaps most deeply of all he was convinced of the might and destiny of England: ' "My country right or wrong; and right or wrong my country ", is the sentiment most trea- sured in the breasts of any worthy of the name of man'—such arrant patriotism fits ill in an age seeking wistfully for international panaceas to eternal troubles. Worse still, he was an imperialist, believing firmly with Marshal Lyautey that 'Colonial wars have nothing in common with wars between nations; they are constructive not destructive.' He put his faith in such concepts as duty and discip- line; he despised the sentimentality which sympathised with mutineers or failures. 'If any Afghan proved guilty of treachery .
he wrote on one occasion, 'I am afraid I shall hang them, notwith- standing all the rubbish the Spectator and the Statesman write.'
From this it might be thought that Roberts was hard and unsym- pathetic, the conventional hidebound soldier of popular conception.
Nothing could be less true. In all his personal relationships ho behaved with a sweetness and generosity which earned more friends and fewer enemies than would seem possible for a man in his position.
What is more, he enjoyed an open mind and readiness to receive new ideas which completely belied the obstinate, tough shortsighted- ness of Sargent's famous portrait. Always he looked to the future, battling with the morass of red tape and vested interest which beset the road to reform. Even at the age of seventy-seven he was 'shocked to discover how little he knew about flying machines' and eagerly pressed this new device on military leaders twenty years his junior and half as ready to apply imagination and vigorous remedies to the solution of their problems.
Mr. James's is not a vivid portrait. Nevertheless, everywhere Is apparent Lord Roberts's immense enthusiasm, energy and nobility.
Demo& though his beliefs may seem, antiquated his methods, doubtful even his achievements, the tremendous personality of this gallant little man remains triumphantly apparent. In a General
Order issued after his death General Maud'huy wrote: 'Up to the moment when death struck him down he pursued the object to which he devoted his whole life, the greatness of England.' It is no bad epitaph on a man, that he devoted his life to the greatness of his country.
PHILIP SANDEMAN
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