[Page Heading:  FRENCH AND HIS MEN]

In that single phrase, “as soldiers and men,” one has the key to French’s popularity with the ranks.  He treats the men as human beings and not as machines.  In other words, he understands the British soldier through and through.  Mrs. Despard has told a touching little story of the affection which he inspires in his men.  She was returning home one evening when she was surprised by a question as she stopped to buy the customary evening paper.  “Are you Mrs. Despard, General French’s sister?” asked the ragged wretch.  She admitted that claim to distinction.  The man then told her, with much enthusiasm, how when working with a battery in a very hot corner during the South African war, he had seen the General ride over to cheer them up.  “Now, hi don’t care ’oo that man is, and I don’t care ’oo I am, I love that man,” he said rather huskily.  Mrs. Despard has told how she forgot her paper that night in shaking the ex-soldier’s hand.

For this tact in dealing with his men, Sir John French has largely to thank the vein of acute sensibility which runs through his character.  This sensibility can be traced in his mouth, which is remarkably finely chiselled.  We have seen it in his childhood, when he shrank from some of the usual noisiness of boyhood.  And Mrs. Despard has crystallised it in a phrase.  Feeling depressed on one occasion before addressing a meeting on some reforms which she considered urgent, she confessed to her brother that she was spiritually afraid.  “Why,” he replied, “don’t worry, I’ve never yet done anything worth doing without having to screw myself up to it.”  French, very obviously, is a man for whom spiritual doubt may have its terrors.  One cannot figure him as harbouring the narrow if sincere religion of a Kitchener or a Gordon.

One might sum him up as the beau-ideal, not only of the cavalry spirit, but of the scientific soldier.  He can lead a cavalry charge with the dash of a Hotspur:  and he can plan out a campaign with the masterly logic of a Marlborough.  Unlike some of his contemporaries, he has attained extraordinary mastery over the science of war without himself becoming a scientific machine.  In many ways he bears, in character and temperament, a striking resemblance to his colleague in arms—­General Joffre.  Although Joffre is three inches taller than French—­he is five foot nine—­he is otherwise very similar in appearance.  There is the same short, powerful physique, the narrow neck surmounted by a massive head and heavy jaw, and the same broad forehead, with masterful eyes peeping from beneath bushy eyebrows.  Neither of these men on whom hangs Europe’s destiny is in the least degree strident or self-assertive.  Indeed, both tend to be listeners rather than talkers.  Both have the same trick of making instantaneous decisions.  Both scorn to be merely “smart” in outward appearance; both are devoted to efficiency in detail; and, most suggestive of all, each finds himself eternally compared to General Grant!  Probably the latter’s dogged personality forms the best possible common denominator for these two remarkable men.