d and cried,
"Hurrah for South Africa." If anyone had any right to thank Heaven for
that particular campaign, it was certainly French. But he would have
"hurrahed" any campaign that gave opportunity for his powers. After
all, the soldier's stage is the battlefield. Without wars he is
without an active role, and must spend his years drudging in the
rehearsal theatre of the Colonies. If he be so original and so
thorough a soldier as French, his abilities will be at an even graver
discount. For the rehearsal is not the play; and the best Generals,
like the ablest actors, are notoriously weak at rehearsal, which does
not pluck fully at their energies. Probably French would have hurrahed
for South Africa, however, had he had no special abilities at all.
For nowhere is he happier than on the battlefield. If the grisly game
of war must be played, French plays it with all his heart. It is the
game which destiny put him on the stage to play; the game which he has
devoted his life to mastering; and the only game in which he has ever
seriously interested himself.

Luck invariably follows the man who is utterly absorbed in his
profession, for the simply reason that, being always engrossed in his
work, he is always alive to his opportunities. French's luck consists
solely in the fact that he happens to be a soldier. Men of Kitchener's
organising genius may be many things; in nothing, not even in the
arts, are they likely to seriously fail. But French is a soldier in
the sense quite other than Kitchener. He is a man made for the
endurance of hardship and for the facing of hard practical
difficulties in the field. It is as natural for him to conduct a
campaign as it was for Pope to "lisp in numbers, for the numbers
came." He is the Happy Warrior in being.

FINIS

FOOTNOTES:

[22] From Sir John French's Preface to _The Defence of Plevna_, by
Capt. Frederick von Herbert, by permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder.

[23] From Sir John French's Preface to _The Defence of Plevna_, by
Capt. Frederick von Herbert, by permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder.

APPENDIX

THE MONS DESPATCH

_To the Secretary of State for War_

_September 7, 1914._

MY LORD,

I have the honour to report the proceedings of the Field Force
under my command up to the time of rendering this despatch.

1. The transport of the troops from England both by sea and by
rail was effected in the best order and without a check. Each unit
arri