The Duke of Connaught’s generous letter—A Dargai Piper at a Music Hall—Consecration of the Colours of Catholic battalions—Lord Chesham’s Yeomanry—Major Milton—Influence of British Officers over Asiatics—I offer to serve under Buller—Strange requests—The Misses Keyser—Colonel Hay—300 guns added to the establishment—A heavy fall—An appreciation of our Infantry.

I was appointed Adjutant-General on the 1st October 1897, and received many kind letters of congratulation; one from His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught gratified me much, for he wrote: “I am heartily glad to see your appointment, and rejoice that now we shall make progress in our War training.”

On my first day in office I submitted a memorandum, which I had had printed in anticipation, to the Commander-in-Chief, pointing out the absolute inadequacy of our forces. For years we had been adding to our Possessions, and consequently to our Responsibilities, without any increase to the army. Lord Lansdowne accepted my proposal for raising a Chinese battalion for Wei-hai-wei, and one of Yaos for British Central Africa, but this was only a small local increase.

In the time of my predecessor Gibraltar and Malta had been treated as Home battalion stations in the Link system,—that is, recruits were posted to units in those garrisons, and the older soldiers were drafted to India and to such sub-tropical stations as were barred, by Medical regulations, to lads only eighteen years of age. Neither of these Mediterranean garrisons were satisfactory training schools, and I strongly urged a substantial increase in Infantry, writing: “The march of events does not foreshadow any diminution of British soldiers on the African Continent, I beg that 9000 more be added to the army.” On the 3rd November Lord Wolseley, supporting my demands of the previous month, added 4000 men to my estimate of what was required.

All through the hunting season of 1897–8 I enjoyed occasional days’ relaxation, keeping my horses as in previous years in a farm near the residence of my friend Mr. H.E. Jones of Ongar. I did not allow my favourite amusement, however, to interfere with duty, as may be seen from one entry in my diary: “27th January 1898—Hunted with the Union Hounds. Worked after dinner till midnight.”

In the Spring of the year I conducted a Staff ride in Essex, with the General Idea which was followed in 1904.

Towards the end of May a piper who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry shown at Dargai was advertised to appear on the stage of the Alhambra. On the morning of the 28th, before going to Mr. Gladstone’s funeral at Westminster Abbey, I saw Mr. Dundas Slater, the manager, and induced him to cancel the “turn” after that week. Mr. Slater behaved with the greatest consideration, and on my telling him we would be responsible for the man’s salary for a week, amounting to £30, he said laughingly: “It is scarcely worth while, sir, to talk about that, when I have spent £300 in advertising him.”

Earlier in the year my attention had been drawn to the hardship to battalions which were practically all Catholics in having their colours consecrated by Protestant clergy. The general officer in command in Ireland felt the incongruity, and asked, in the case of a West of Ireland Regiment, that the ceremony should be performed by a Roman Catholic priest. This was not thought desirable, and afterwards, indeed, the request was cancelled as the officers, who were nearly all Protestants, objected.

With the permission of the Secretary of State I took up the question with the Chaplain-General, who afforded me the most valuable assistance, drawing out a form of prayer for the consecration of Colours of all Denominations. I sent it to my friend Cardinal Vaughan, writing I would call in a week, at the end of which time he approved generally, and I sent a copy in print. Some of those about him objected to one or two expressions in the prayers which they thought would not be acceptable to Catholics, and those the Cardinal altered. They were, however, slight, and I had no difficulty in accepting them on the part of the Secretary of State; but as I pointed out to the Cardinal, the prayers submitted to him were taken literally from those in use in the reign of Henry VII., before England became Protestant.

In the following year, when I was still pursuing the matter, I crossed over to Ireland and saw the Primate, Cardinal Logue, and Archbishop Walsh, both of whom approving the copy, thanked me for my efforts in removing what was felt to be a grievance; and now the form of Consecration of Colours is printed as a War Office document, for the correct use of which the Senior officer present is responsible.

In the early summer I saw the Buckingham Yeomanry under the command of Colonel Lord Chesham. He showed 469 men on parade, who worked in a way which, considering the short training they had received, could only be described as wonderful.

In August I went to Salisbury Plain for ten days, hiring a farmhouse at Durrington, in which I lived while watching Cavalry manoeuvres under General G. Luck, Inspector-General of Cavalry, who was working a Division of 2800 sabres. He thought that our regiments were wanting in uniformity of pace and cohesion, which opinion corresponded exactly with that expressed by the German officers nine years previously in the Aldershot review before the Emperor. This is not extraordinary, as we had never worked a Division as such before I obtained the gratuitous use of private ground in 1890.

After leaving Salisbury Plain I went on to Chilmark Rectory in Wiltshire, which I had hired for the Commander-in-Chief and his Staff, whence he supervised manoeuvres between Army Corps commanded by H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught and General Sir Redvers Buller.

All through August the office work which was sent to me daily while away from Pall Mall was hard, practically all day on the 3rd and 4th of the month, for we were considering affairs in South Africa. It seemed to be certain that war must ensue unless Mr. Kruger abated his menacing tone.

In the forenoon, 8th September, Lord Lansdowne desired me not to leave the office, for I had told him I was going away for twenty-four hours to shoot in Essex, and at 4 o’clock he gave me the order to put four Battalions under orders for the Cape. This involved the moving of seven: three from England to the Mediterranean; three going on from the garrisons there; while one went direct from England to South Africa. Staff officers on the Continent are not troubled with considerations which have to be borne in mind by the Headquarters Staff of our little army, for when Battalions are ordered abroad, many questions arise other than War Service. Corps have to be selected which have been longest in England, and are due to go abroad in their regular rotation, the selection of course being tempered by the question of efficiency, which, speaking generally, may be taken as the efficiency of the Lieutenant-Colonel and Senior officers. Nevertheless, the seven Battalions were selected and placed under orders in forty-five minutes.

I had heard privately, as well as officially, from the Cape that while in certain regiments, such as the King’s Royal Rifles, no difficulty had been experienced in utilising the ponies we had supplied for the training of a Company of each Battalion as Mounted Infantry, yet in some Corps no progress had been made owing to the officers’ want of experience in equitation and in the management of horses. We sent out therefore, six weeks before mobilisation, Major Milton,322 Yorkshire Light Infantry, and Captain E.M. FitzG. Wood,323 Devonshire Regiment, who were known to be good horse-masters, to teach the Company officers, so that they might instruct their men.

On the 21st October I telegraphed to my second son, Lieutenant C.M. Wood, at Wei-hai-wei, whose battalion was on its way to the Cape, suggesting that he should ask for leave, and rejoin. He had been some time in the Chinese regiment, and had no difficulty in obtaining five months’ leave of absence. On the 22nd, when he got authority from his Commanding officer to go, he left within three hours, obtaining a passage on H.M.S. Brisk, commanded by Captain Bouchier Wrey, who had been attached to my Staff in Egypt in 1882, to Shanghai, where he caught a liner, and reaching his battalion after the action at Stormberg, became Adjutant, the offer of which had been telegraphed by the Commanding officer to him while he was on his journey.

The influence British officers obtain over soldiers of Eastern races is remarkable; his Chinese servant begged to be permitted to accompany him, and the senior Sergeant of his Company implored to be allowed to revert to Private, and go as his servant.

My third son, who had been invalided from the Tirah, where he had served with the 2nd Battalion, Scottish Rifles, passed fit by a Medical Board, was on his way to join the 1st Battalion in Natal, being sent out in a Transport with mules. The fact that my three sons were on Service was some consolation for my own intense disappointment in not being sent to South Africa, where in 1881 I had suffered as a Soldier for my loyal obedience to orders.

I had a pleasant dinner on the 24th October at the American Ambassador’s, sitting next to Mr. Smalley, for many years The Times’ Commissioner in America; but what I enjoyed most was a conversation with Mr. Arthur Balfour in a room by ourselves, when, at his request, I explained to him the salient features in the work of mobilisation, for his quickness in comprehending a complicated problem made him a delightful companion.

On the 7th November Her Majesty the Queen, at 11.30 a.m., signed the authority for the Secretary of State for War to send a force out to South Africa, and to call out the Reserves. I having previously obtained the permission of the Secretary of the General Post Office to clear the lines, passed on immediately the Royal authority, which was received at 11.45 a.m., and its receipt at Districts was notified within half an hour. In most of them, all the Posters summoning Reservists were out by 2 o’clock, that is, within two hours and a quarter of the Queen’s authority having been received at the War Office. Colonel Stopford,324 who had worked hard on Mobilisation questions for years, came into my office radiant with the news of the prompt action taken in the Districts, adding, “and now I shall go away and buy old furniture.” I asked, “What is the joke?” He said, “That is what Count von Moltke did after he had telegraphed in 1870, ‘Mobilise.’”

All through the Autumn and Winter of 1899–1900 the work was heavy at the office, and especially for me,325 as the Deputy Adjutant-General was changed three times, two of them going to South Africa.

When at 2 p.m. on the 31st December we heard of the disasters south of Ladysmith, I wrote to Lord Lansdowne offering to start that evening for South Africa to serve under Sir Redvers Buller.326 Lord Roberts was, however, appointed as Commander-in-Chief. The additional bad news kept us in office from early morn till late in the evening, and then I had to work at home till nearly midnight.

I noted in my diary that excitable Pressmen imagined that regiments had been cut off, and indeed all sorts of misfortunes besides those which our troops suffered. I was occupied a considerable part of each day in assuaging the fears of ladies, whose fathers, brothers, or lovers were at the seat of War, and spent a good deal of private money in telegrams for news as to the safety of those loved ones, for the War Office covers only expenses of telegrams for casualties.

My duties were not confined absolutely to Military matters, and I had much correspondence with my friend Lord Wantage, the President of the Red Cross Society. He wrote to me on the 10th January: “The Red Cross has anticipated all your requirements mentioned in your letter, except crutches, and these shall be attended to at once.”

Some of the requests made to me by importunate ladies were peculiar; one was very angry with me because the War Office would not send out an establishment for curing, or destroying painlessly, horses. Another lady said she did not want her son to go to war, because he was only twenty-one. A third wished her son, who had just joined the army, transferred to a depÔt and kept in England, or allowed to exchange to a regiment at home. I explained to her that if her craven request were granted, none of his associates would speak to him. On the other hand, another lady was angry with me because I had not time to see her former footman. He was getting 28s. a week, but wanted to give up his situation and join his two brothers, who were serving under General Gatacre.

Two friends of mine, Miss Agnes Keyser and her sister, gave up their house in Grosvenor Crescent for “Sick and Wounded Officers,” who might have no relatives in London. Some of the most celebrated Physicians and Surgeons volunteered to attend any patients in the Hospital gratis, and the Misses Keyser provided everything, including trained nurses, free of all expense to patients. This, however, was not in any way the limit of their generosity, for when a friend of mine, who had lost a foot in action, was leaving the Hospital, Miss Agnes Keyser asked me if he was fairly well off, to which I replied, “No, he has very small means, but is going to stay for a time with a married sister.” On learning which, Miss Agnes, who superintended the Hospital, sent with him a nurse who had been attending him at her own house.

As I was the means of introducing patients in the first instance, the correspondence connected therewith occupied an appreciable portion of my time. When, many months afterwards, one of my sons was returning to England, invalided on account of appendicitis, Miss Agnes Keyser said to Sir Frederick Treves, “I want you to do an operation for appendicitis.” “Yes, any day you like next week; a hundred guineas. Will you fix the day now?” She answered, “No, I cannot, for my friend’s son is on the sea.” “Why, is he in the army?” “Yes, he is on his way from South Africa.” “Then I revoke my offer to operate, and will do it only on my own terms.” “Well, you shall have them, whatever they are.” “I shall charge nothing for the operation. Your friend’s son will pay only the expense in the Home where I wish him to be under nurses whom I have trained especially for the aftercure of that operation.”

In 1897 I had taken up the question of Artillery, in which the British army was deficient327 and by corresponding privately with the Commander-in-Chief in India, simultaneous efforts were made to obtain the much-required increase. Lord Lansdowne received favourably my application, which was strongly backed by the Commander-in-Chief, and the result, helped by the “War Fever,” was that in 1899–1900 we created 7 Batteries of Horse and 48 Batteries of Field Artillery. Some of them were very short of officers and sergeants; indeed one Battery was raised, and commanded for several months by a Riding-master. The popularity of the war enabled us to fill them up without any difficulty as regards the Rank and File; indeed all of them were, after a few months, considerably over strength, but in many cases there was only one sergeant for 60 or 70 Gunners and Drivers.

Three years before the war, on my suggestion to the Commander-in-Chief, Colonel Owen Hay, Royal Artillery, was sent out to command at Ladysmith; and in January 1899, not forseeing the war would break out so soon, to my subsequent great regret (although his services were invaluable at home), I wrote to ask him as a favour to come home to help in this augmentation of the Artillery, and it was he who really did all the Head Quarters work of it.

Colonel Hay had no sooner got the Artillery augmentation into working order, than I turned his attention to our DepÔts. When the war broke out in South Africa the administration of the Horse and Field Artillery was centralised at Woolwich, where an officer had two depÔts under him. This arrangement for the Field Artillery did not work well even in Peace, and after Mobilisation the depÔt became unmanageable. In March 1900, 200 Recruits joined at Woolwich every week, many sleeping on the floors in passages.

Although the army order which authorised Colonel Hay’s change was not introduced till August 1900, he had been at work at it for months, and had decentralised the Field Artillery. I then asked the Commander-in-Chief to allow him to return to South Africa, but he was unwilling to part with him, and Hay’s soldierlike resignation was a lesson to all of us.

Six months later we had some difficulty, as the Financial side of the office endeavoured, when the war took a more favourable turn, to reduce the batteries to one section each. This might have been carried out if the Commander-in-Chief had not, in strenuously supporting my objections, concurred in my view that it would be better to disband half the Batteries than have cadres of two guns only. This would have indicated such vacillation that I doubt if any War minister could have carried a reduction at the time; but the question was solved by its being made clear to the Secretary of State that the establishment of two guns per Battery would not produce the Reserve men required on Mobilisation.

I foresaw the war would last longer than many of my friends realised. In November 1899 I told an anxious mother that she must anticipate that it would be a much longer business than anyone in London thought, and she repeated this to one of my colleagues, who replied, “Yes, I know he thinks so; but I cannot imagine why he holds that opinion. In my mind, I think it will be over in a few weeks.”

With mistaken views of economy, our Administration had framed Regulations that farriers, having been taught at the Public expense, should re-engage, thus leaving very few in the Reserve. It was clear for a serious war, involving the purchase of thousands of animals, there would be insufficient Shoeing-smiths, and before the first demand was made I consulted Colonel Owen Hay and Colonel C. Crutchley,328 the Recruiting officer in the office. He was not only throughly versed in the complicated problem of the labour market, but a pleasant colleague, never losing heart in the longest hours and most difficult circumstances.

To him and to Colonel Hay I suggested there must be plenty of young blacksmiths in villages, who, if they were promised they would not be drilled as a part of their bargain, would be willing to go to South Africa on a one year’s engagement, with a bounty of £10 and the chance of getting a medal. My forecast was correct, for we sent out over 700 in 1900 and 5 per centum in the two following years to replace wastage, the two colonels taking all the arrangements off my hands.

While the Press reviled the Secretary of State and all who were working under him, officers in South Africa expressed very different opinions, and I was warmly thanked by them.329

I found that the hours in office,330 often from 9.30 a.m. till 6 p.m., and two hours after dinner, told on my health, and an old trouble—neuralgia of the nerves of the stomach—warned me that I could not go on affronting nature by working without some relaxation.

On the 22nd of January Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal came into my office and said in his gentle voice, “I should like to do something for our Country, and raise some Mounted men in Canada and send them to South Africa.” I asked, “Do you know that our men are serving for about 1s. 6d. a day, and you would not get Canadians to go for that?” “Oh,” he said, “there will be no difficulty about that. I shall make up any deficiency. What I want you to do is to write down everything that is necessary in the way of organisation.” “One Squadron, two, or what?” “Anything you like.” So I told him a Regiment of three Squadrons was the most suitable organisation, if money was no object. He replied, “No, no object. I should like to do the thing well, and I want the Mother country to pay them only what she is paying her own soldiers.” It did not take me long, with Colonel Robb’s331 assistance, to sketch out the establishment required, and our only point of difference was that Strathcona insisted, in his quiet way, on having a great number of clergy. Himself a Protestant, he desired to keep on good terms with the Catholic clergy, amongst whom he had many friends; and the number of clergy accompanying the Regiment was certainly redundant, in our point of view. Lord Strathcona paid nearly £500,000 for our Country.

On the 27th of the month I had a heavy fall when riding an impetuous horse with hounds.332 We found at Skreen’s Park, near Chelmsford; and being in pain from neuralgia of the stomach I was irritated by the animal’s impatience, and let him go his own pace at the first fence. The horse over-jumping, hit his knee, and the next thing I remember was being crushed to the ground. Miss Jones,333 who saw me fall, accompanied me back two or three miles, and borrowed a pony-chaise from a friendly farmer, by which I was conveyed to Ongar station. I arrived in London in considerable pain, but without being seriously injured; indeed, I attended office for a full day on the 29th. The horse had pressed me so deeply into the ground that a gold crucifix and locket of Lady Wood’s, suspended from my neck, were driven so deeply into the ribs that the impression was plainly discernible fifteen months later. Two years later I consulted my friend, Dr. Moore, for a peculiar mark on the left temple, saying, “I have got a spot there which is growing larger. I must say it is fainter in colour every week.” He replied, “You remember the horse crushed your face into the ground. It broke a vessel, the blood from which is now slowly dispersing.”

I had a mass of private correspondence from South Africa, for not only had I my three sons there, but many officers who had served under me at Aldershot wrote to me in terms of indignation at the strictures passed by civilian writers on the Aldershot training. One officer, who criticised severely certain branches of the army, wrote in such sympathetic terms of the Infantry, to which he did not belong, that I reproduce his letter below.334

I got some ponies sent to Malta—enough to train men in every unit—and asked the Secretary of State to request India to train a Company in every Battalion at our expense. I urged also that a Company in every Battalion should be trained at all stations at Home and Abroad to act as Mounted Infantry.