My first meeting with Field-Marshal Viscount French, so long Commander-in-Chief of the "contemptible little army" that has made history, dates back to the South African War. My latest meeting with him before he returned from France, was in August, 1914. On each occasion he was on the point of leaving for the front.

In the wide space that separates the Boer War from the great international conflict, we met very often; he was frequently our guest, and we visited him at Government House, Aldershot. I have had many opportunities of hearing his views of the world problem that confronts us now, for he had seen it coming nearer and nearer, and had laboured night and day to meet it. Other men had doubts; he found no room for any.

It was at Claridge's Hotel in town that we met during the Boer War. My eldest son, Guy, had then arrived at the ripe age of seventeen, and still at Eton, had sold all his personal effects, including his fur coat and jewellery given him by family and friends, to provide himself with the means of getting to the front and equipping himself when there. We only learned his intentions when it was too late to stop them, and I do not think that either my husband or myself was really anxious to keep him from serving his country. The only difficulty was to find him something useful to do, and Sir John French offered to take him on his staff as galloper.

I recall Lord French as I saw him at Claridge's—firm-mouthed, curt in manner, briefly incisive in speech, saying no more than was absolutely necessary, and looking at me with the curious glance that bespeaks the man of action who dreams and sees visions. A strong, resolute figure, with an iron will behind it, a human war machine in perfect order—that was my first impression.

Many of my soldier friends were with him in South Africa, where his gifts as a cavalry leader roused enthusiasm. Writing home from the front, they told me he had but one fault as a commanding officer—he could not realise that horses do not respond as readily as soldiers to human emotions. He could overdrive his men, and they did their utmost for him, as they did for another martinet, the late General Gatacre, because in each case they had implicit belief in their leader's direction and unbounded faith in his skill, but he over-worked his horses, and kept the remount department in despair.

He came back to England wearing all the laurels of a successful general, and I met him several times in town. "The dust of praise that is blown everywhere" was no more to John French than any other dust. He brushed it sharply away, and devoted all his leisure to considering the problems of the inevitable struggle with Germany. He believed then, with that curious gift of divination, that it must come, and he came near to fixing the date, for many years have passed since he assured me that it would not be later than 1915.

When the Entente Cordiale was in the air and there was a chance that Great Britain and France would work side by side, he was delighted. Such an arrangement was for him an ideal one, and he was, I may say, one of the first, if not the very first, of our leading military men who showed a full appreciation of its value. Unfortunately, though a well-educated and, in a strictly professional sense, a deeply read man, he had no knowledge of the French language, and he could not rest until that defect was remedied. So in the Summer of 1906—I think this was the year—he settled in the little village of La BoulÉ, near Rouen, and lived for three months in absolute retirement, mastering the language. He would not claim to have acquired the Parisian accent, but he can at least speak fluently.

We were motoring through France that summer and stayed in the little hotel he had chosen for his headquarters. He was extremely anxious to take me on a motor tour over the scene of Napoleon's last campaign, an ambition of long standing only now possible of fulfilment. We came very near to going with him, but unfortunately, something intervened. Even Lord French cannot make war anything but unspeakably horrible to me, but I am yet free to confess that his vast knowledge and soul-deep convictions make it fearfully interesting.

We could not manage the motor tour, which would have covered Waterloo, but later, when in Paris, I was able to put his views before the then Premier, M. Clemenceau, whom I knew well. I had a very long and intimate conversation about the Entente with the "Tiger," as they called him in France, and I remember how he wheeled round in his chair and said to me in the frank, outspoken way that his opponents hate and fear, "Lady Warwick, the Entente is of no use to us unless your country can put 400,000 soldiers into France in the hour of need." I may remark that the French army was not then in its present state of efficiency.

I pointed out that I was not in the confidence of our War Office, and that his application should be made to other quarters, and went on to ask him to meet General French to talk over the matters in question. "I'll do that with pleasure," said M. Clemenceau. "I regard your General French as one of the few soldiers who understand military problems from their roots upwards." So the two men met, and I think they liked and respected one another.

I remember reporting the gist of their conversation in a long letter to King Edward, who in his reply told me his interest in the military side of the Entente had been greatly strengthened. In the following year several of the leading generals of France were invited over to attend the military manoeuvres and were the guests of Sir John and Lady French at Government House, Aldershot. I was asked to meet them, and heard at first hand the discussion of many difficulties that are staring us in the face as I write. I do not think I have ever had more occasion to be glad that I was taught some foreign languages properly.

On his return to England Sir John French divided his work into sections. First and foremost came the German question, for he knew perfectly well, in the light of the ample information that came to him, how, sooner or later, Germany would fling down the gauntlet, perhaps before Europe, certainly before Great Britain. His other task was concerned with the possible invasion of India by Russia. In early days he had seen service in India, and I have by me now a copy of his own plans for the defence of our great empire there.

King Edward took Lord French with him when he went to meet the Czar at RÉval, and this visit, at which the foundation of Anglo-Russian good-fellowship was laid, had a most reassuring effect upon his mind. Thereafter he devoted himself whole heartedly to the study of the Anglo-German danger.

Taking for his motto the well-known maxim that it is allowable to learn even from an enemy—he adapted what he thought was best from the German methods, and it is well known that he and his close and trusted friend, Sir Douglas Haig, in making the British Army the perfect machine that it is, bore well in mind the lessons to be gathered from the German manoeuvres.

He objected strongly to the German close formation, holding it wasteful and unwise. He had grafted South African experience on his stock of tactical knowledge, and if the drilling of our men was terribly hard, he and Sir Douglas found the ripe fruits of it in that wonderful retreat from Mons and in the battles round Ypres. For German thoroughness he had a generous and unstinted admiration. Prejudice can find no place in his mind.

His prevision of the course of the present campaign startles me as I recall it now. He told me years ago much that has happened since the greatest world struggle of history began.

A born soldier, he is merciless to the inefficient. He broke a high officer, who was also a personal friend, because that officer made a bad blunder. Private considerations were swept aside, as they always are with him. He spares nobody, least of all himself, but his men love him almost as much as they trust him, and he watches over their proper comforts with a jealous eye. They are the component parts of the war machine, and must be at their best.

Lord French has not much in common with his gifted sister, Mrs. Despard, who was prominently before the public when the suffrage question came near to rivalling Home Rule in its claim on public attention, for Mrs. Despard's life is one of self-sacrifice to lighten the sorrows of others. But to one well acquainted with brother and sister, there are the qualities of calm resolution in the face of danger and of commanding will to be associated with each.

I do not think he reads much, save books dealing with military questions. He does not hunt or shoot, or play polo or, indeed, acknowledge any form of sport. He stands professionally as far apart from the ordinary mundane interests of life as any professor in the cloistered peace of an old university town, and yet he is full to the brim of vitalising enthusiasms not to be overlooked by his friends because they are controlled.

He lives in his profession and breathes the very air of it; soldiering claims his every thought, and yet he is in no aspect the "beau sabreur" of the Ouida novels. If you were to drive with him through the most exquisite landscape, his mind's eye would at once select the salient points of attack and defence, he would grasp every military possibility of what lay before him, but the surrounding beauty would pass him by. Sometimes we have talked of war. "I hate war as much as you do," he has said to me more than once, "but——" There it ends, and he is looking with far-seeing eyes at encounters yet to be.

In the conventional sense he has no religion, and yet I regard him as one of the most religious men I know. His views of the hereafter are clear; he is confidently assured of the soul's survival, its reincarnation, the fulfilment of its ambitions. He is an idealist, an enthusiast, a man who could not act dishonestly if he tried, faithful to the bitter end to those in whom he trusts.

Much of the recent gossip in London has endeavoured to suggest that he has been a party to the intrigues of others. I venture to say that nobody who understands Lord French could make such a foolish mistake. The personal interests and trickery of small natures have no meaning for him. First and last and all the time he is a soldier, probably the one soldier who could have overcome the enormous difficulties by which he has been faced. He is the type of the leader of men, an example of the power of concentration driving a single purpose to its end. I think Frederick the Great would have made much of him and that his chief hero in a military sense, the first Napoleon, would have kept him by his side.

He has been sorely tried. It is to be hoped that Sir Douglas Haig, who in a military sense is his creation, will realise his teacher's dreams and ambitions.