The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 — John Shaqi
The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914Various
History
The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914
Various
World War, 1914-1918 -- Periodicals
Besides, they have sources of inspiration--have our "Tommies"--denied to
their Teutonic antagonists. General von Kluck, Commander of the First
German Army, has described a visit of the dread War Lord to the line of
the Aisne "behind the line of fire"; and the "Hochs" with which he was
greeted by a Prussian Grenadier regiment. But what are those guttural
"Hochs" compared with the ringing cheers which were evoked by the
presence of Lord Roberts on the occasion of his last visit to his old
comrades-in-arms of the Indian Army, now confronting those Prussian
Grenadiers on the line of the Yser? When Lord Roberts was made a Peer,
after his march from Cabul to Candahar, he chose as his heraldic
supporters a Gurkha and a Gordon Highlander, who had done so much to help
him on to victory; and it is pretty certain that he would have desired no
more congenial and appropriate manner of death than he has found, at the
age of eighty-two, as an inspiring visitor to the lines of the gallant
troops of all kinds whom he himself had so often led to victory. It has
been said that no man can be called happy until his death, and certainly
no one was ever more felicitous in the manner of his end than the veteran
hero, the blameless "Bayard" of the British Army, who has well been called
one of Ireland's greatest Englishmen.
Yet his name will continue to serve as an inspiration to the Army which
adored him; and doubtless his last moments were soothed by the thought
that the soldiers whom he so fervently loved had just added to their
laurels by the brave repulse on the Yser of two Brigades, or a Division,
of the boasted Prussian Guards, forming the very flower and kernel of the
Kaiser's army. And news also must have reached the conqueror of Paardeburg
and Pretoria that the German-prompted and German-paid rebellion against
the Union of which he had laid the foundation-stone--not with the trowel
of an architect, but with the sword of a soldier--was collapsing under the
well-directed blows of such an Imperial patriot and statesman as General
Botha, proud to wear the uniform of the hero of Candahar.
Thus the last hours of our veteran Field-Marshal must have been consoled
with the reflection that, in spite of the fact of all his warnings and his
exhortations having fallen on deaf ears, victory was gilding our arms, as
well as those of our Allies, all round; and that the loss of two of our
cruisers off the coast of Chile had been more than offsetted by the
destruction of the notorious commerce-destroyer Emden in the seas of
Sumatra and the cornering of the equally elusive Koenigsberg among the
palm-trees of an East African lagoon--fit incident for the pages of
Captain Marryat or Mr. George Henty, beloved of the boy-devourers of
stirring adventure books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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