GENERAL RAWLINSON AND OSTEND

Field-Marshal French did not definitely state in his fourth dispatch that General Rawlinson landed at Ostend, but he devoted a number of paragraphs to the subject of “the forces operating in the neighbourhood of Ghent and Antwerp under Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, as the action of his force about this period exercised, in my opinion, a great influence on the course of the subsequent operations.”  However, in “1914” Lord French has written (page 200):  “I returned to Abbeville that evening.  I found that an officer had arrived from Ostend by motor with a letter from Rawlinson, in which he explained the situation in the north, the details of which we know.”  And John Buchan in Nelson’s History of the War, Vol.  IV (page 33), states that “On 6th October the 7th Division began to disembark at Zeebrugge and Ostend, and early on 8th October the former point saw the landing of the 3rd Cavalry Division, after a voyage not free from sensation.  The force formed the nucleus of the Fourth Corps, and was commanded by Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had a long record of Indian, Egyptian, and South African service.”  G. H. Perris in The Campaign of 1914 in France and Belgium is even more emphatic:  on page 305 of that work he writes:  “Part of the 4th British Corps—­the 7th Infantry Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division—­under Sir Henry Rawlinson, had been landed at Ostend and Zeebrugge without interference, and had advanced eastward to cover the Belgian-British retreat to the south.”

APPENDIX IV

EDWARD III AND THE ORDER OF THE GARTER

Colonel Best-Dunkley’s question on this subject can best be answered by quoting in full the first paragraph of Chapter XVI of David Hume’s History of England, Vol.  I: 

“The prudent conduct and great success of Edward in his foreign wars had excited a strong emulation and a military genius among the English nobility; and these turbulent barons, overawed by the crown, gave now a more useful direction to their ambition, and attached themselves to a prince who led them to the acquisition of riches and glory.  That he might further promote the spirit of emulation and obedience, the king instituted the order of the garter, in imitation of some orders of a like nature, religious as well as military, which had been established in different parts of Europe.  The number received into this order consisted of twenty-five persons, besides the sovereign; and as it has never been enlarged, this badge of distinction continues as honourable as at its first institution, and is still a valuable, though a cheap present, which the prince can confer on his greatest subjects.  A vulgar story prevails, but is not supported by any ancient authority, that at a court ball, Edward’s mistress, commonly supposed to have been the Countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter; and the king, taking it up, observed some