ria.
The famous veteran was then sixty-eight and for several years had been
living in retirement. Now his sovereign asked him to buckle on his sword
again, and go to retrieve the fallen British fortunes in South Africa.

"You do not think that you are too old for this arduous task?" asked the
Queen. "You are not afraid of your health breaking down?"

"I have kept myself fit," replied the old soldier, "for the past twenty
years, in the hope that I might command in such a campaign as this."

The remark, "I have kept myself fit," is a keynote of his life. The puny
boy of the long ago was to survive this campaign with flying colors, and
to lend his counsel in the Great War of our own time. It was a long life
and full of service. In an address to a children's school, when a man of
eighty, he summed up his creed by saying:

"In the first place, don't be slack in anything that you are doing.
Whether it be work or play, do it with all your might. You will find
that this great Empire can only be maintained by the exercise of
self-denial, by training, by discipline, and by courage."

IMPORTANT DATES IN ROBERTS'S LIFE

1832. September 30. Frederick Roberts born.
1845. Entered Eton School.
1847. Entered military college at Sandhurst.
1852. Went as second-lieutenant of Bengal Artillery to India.
1857. Fought in the Mutiny, and won Victoria Cross.
1858. Returned to England on leave.
1859. Sent back to India, major.
1875. Quartermaster-general of Army of India.
1885. Commander-in-chief in India.
1891. Created a peer.
1895. Created field marshal.
1900. South African campaign.
1901. Commander-in-chief of British army.
1914. November 14. Died in France.

KITCHENER

THE SOLDIER OF DEEDS--NOT WORDS

When Chinese Gordon lost his life in Khartoum, Egypt, in 1884, because
the British relief force reached him two days too late, a young officer
accompanying the expedition was getting his first glimpse of a land
that was destined to make him famous. "Kitchener of Khartoum" was to
become as widely known in a later generation as Chinese Gordon was in
his own. Each won his spurs in a foreign land.

Kitchener was then a cavalry officer of thirty-five, and did not seem
destined to get much higher in army circles. Yet he had never lost
faith in himself. After this first expedition to Egypt, when he was
still only a major, he remarked drolly to a fellow officer:

"Never m