When Indian soldiers were summoned to help the Mother Country in her hour of need, Lord Roberts felt a great desire to go over to France in order to meet them face to face once more, to greet them in their own languages, and to inspire them with some of his own dauntless courage. "I must go and see the Indian soldiers," he said. "It is the most useful thing I can do at this moment." He arrived in France on Wednesday, 11th November, and next day he saw the men to whom he was bound by such strong ties. Everywhere they greeted him with admiration and affection. On Friday evening he was found to be suffering from chill; disease of the lungs set in, and the old warrior, now in his eighty-second year, had no strength to resist the attack. He gradually sank, and at 8 p.m. on Saturday, 14th November 1914, within sound of the guns thundering around Ypres, he died. Lord Roberts was a man of war from his youth up, and it was fitting that he should pass away on a battlefield, amidst the soldiers who adored him. Officers from every corps in the British and Indian armies, and representatives of the French army, escorted the coffin to the hall at St. Omer where the body was laid in state, and a simple but affecting funeral service was held. The Prince of Wales[107] was there, as well as Prince Alexander of Teck, and all the chiefs of the army who could be spared from their duties. By the head of the coffin stood Prince Pertab Singh,[108] taking a last farewell of the warrior who was his old friend and ideal.[109] The hymns, "Now the labourer's task is o'er," and "O God, our help," were sung, and it seemed quite natural that Christian, Hindu, and Mohammedan should all join in the service. [Illustration: Funeral of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts: the Procession in the Rain, on the way to St. Paul's Cathedral, London. (_By permission of The Sphere._)] "It was a gloomy day," says one who was present, "with frequent cold showers; but as they took the coffin out the sun shone forth brilliantly, drawing across a dark bank of cloud opposite a vivid and most perfect rainbow. An aeroplane was flying out of the cloud into the sunshine, and the trumpets of the French cavalry rang out triumphantly. Then the minute guns started booming; the coffin, draped in the Union Jack, was placed in a Red Cross car; and so the gallant little hero went home from the war. "I thought during the service of Lord Roberts, almost a boy, attending John Nicholson's funeral at Delhi, and of all the span of life between, and the link of simple courage and devotion to duty binding all the varied incidents of it together, and was glad of the privilege of having known him."