What a beautiful word is the English word "Welcome!" What a world of sympathy it expresses! It does not matter whether the welcome comes from a father, mother, brother, or sister, or from the girl of your own heart. It is always the same. I have arrived at the time of life when I can not expect an eye to look brighter when I come, but many eyes are brighter when they fall on these volunteers who left their homes, not when they thought the war was over, but in the time of England's darkest hour. That was the time when our gallant Yeomanry and Service Companies went to assist their country in its distress. They went to redeem again the honour of England, which at one moment looked as if it were rather smirched. They must have seen suffering by disease and bullet wounds, and in other ways, and must have been brought face to face with all kinds of distress, and witnessed the agony of death from disease and bullets. All that tends to make a man more sympathetic to those whom at other times he might be inclined to blame.

Presentation to returned Volunteers (Boer War), Rogerstone,
July 26th, 1901.