I have sketched for you very briefly the rise of the Empire, and now at the close of this third lecture I am going to say a word for the man who has had the chief share in winning it--the British regimental officer. It is the fashion in some circles to belittle him; and the press, in the plenitude of its ignorance, took occasion during the South African War to cover him with vulgar abuse, reproaching him for his ignorance of his profession and various other shortcomings. As a matter of fact he was the one man in South Africa who understood his business, and it was he who brought the war to a successful conclusion. In these days of democracy, so-called, it is common to vituperate, concurrently with the officer, the English public schools where he obtained his education. Neither officers nor public schools make any reply to such criticisms; and they are quite right, for the British Empire is a sufficient reply to the critics, who are fonder of framing theories than of studying hard facts. I am not saying that our public schools are perfect, for in many respects they seem to me very faulty; nor shall I contend that the men who spring from them are, in the ordinary sense of the term, educated, for they are not. The German _gymnasium_ and French Lycée undoubtedly produce men who are better schooled to the study of books, and more amply filled with a certain description of facts. But at any rate the pupils from our public schools become men who, after a certain amount of military training, do not shrink from command, and are willing to take responsibility. In brief, they are formed in character if not cultivated in intellect; they are not ignorant of men, whatever they may be of books; and they are willing to undertake the government of men, not from mere lust of power, but from instinctive delight in the task.