in good company 9

in good company 9

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.