I heard of one venerable lady who was taking a nice drive, as she always did for an hour every afternoon. Her two fat horses were being driven, as always, by her fat old coachman, when suddenly an officer jumped out of a wood at the side of the road and politely requested her to hand them over! The old lady was very much agitated, and the coachman pleaded that he might at least take his mistress home. “Yes, if you give me your word to have the horses back here within an hour.” “And what is to happen to me? It’s my living you’re taking away, sir!” “Oh, you can come too, and look after your horses!” A pretty little story was told about the same time. A mare arrived at a well-known depot with other requisitioned animals. Tied round her neck was a label, with a tiny sprig of heather fastened by a piece of blue silk ribbon. The label bore the brief but pathetic message: “Sorry Lady has to leave us. Hope she will return to us safe and sound. With much love.” This appeal found its way to a soldier’s heart, and he wrote from Woolwich to the _Daily Sketch_: “I should be obliged if you would inform Ivy Clayton that her little horse has arrived here safe and well, and that she can rest assured that ‘Lady’ will receive every attention during her brief stay with us. Sincerely hoping that she will soon recover her pet, “GUNNER R.H.A.” But to return to Sir John French and his officers. This word “officer” is so familiar that I do not suppose anyone of you has ever stopped to think what it means. The ideal officer is gallant, intelligent, and energetic. He is aware that influence over his men is not obtained by discipline alone, but by kindness, firmness, and good sense. He explains to a certain extent to the men under him the reasons for his orders. He does not require of them the blind obedience which is exacted by the German officer. In fact, I cannot do better than quote the description given by a certain corporal in an old comedy called _The Poor Gentleman_: “A good officer, do you see, cannot help being a kind-hearted man. Ship an officer, we will say, with his company to a foreign climate; he lands and endures heat, cold, and fatigue, hunger, thirst, sickness; now marching over the burning plain, now up to his knees in wet in the trench; how could a man suffer such hardships with a parcel of honest fellows under his command, and not learn to feel for his fellow-creatures?” It is because our officers are good officers that the men follow them to the death. It is because they are not only firm and just, but also kind, that they are loved, honoured, and obeyed. A soldier never fails his officer if he has confidence in him, and if he knows he will never be asked for undue exertion unless the good of the service requires it.