HC Deb 17 November 1914 vol 68 cc341-8
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith)

I beg to move:

"That this House will, upon Monday next, resolve itself into a Committee to consider an humble Address to His Majesty, praying that His Majesty will give directions that a monument be erected at the public charge to the memory of the late Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, with an inscription expressing the admiration of this House for his illustrious military career and its gratitude for his devoted services to the State."

The British Empire experienced a sense of personal loss for which it was wholly unprepared when it realised that death had suddenly taken from us the oldest and most illustrious of our soldiers. Lord Roberts, Irishman by race and blood, born in India of a distinguished military stock, educated here in England, entered the Indian Army when he was still little more than a boy, won the Victoria Cross in the Mutiny, and fought his way step by step, unaided by any influence except his own gallantry and skill, to the highest place in the famous force to which he gave the best years of his life. During the forty years which he spent in the service of the country and of the Crown in our great Dependency there was from the first no hazard which he did not encounter, and no daring adventure in which he was not in the front; and in his maturer days there was no campaign in which he did not stand out from among his contemporaries by his consummate strategy, his great powers of leadership, his unique faculty of attracting the devotion of his men, his mastery over the science and practice of the art of war.

Crowned with honours and distinctions, he came home with every title to enjoy during the remainder of his life a well earned and glorious repose. But he never allowed the sword, which had won victories for his country and fame for himself, to rust in its scabbard. He was past the age of sixty when he was called, in a moment of national emergency, to recover ground which had been lost, and to reestablish the prowess of our arms in South Africa. I will not presume to pass judgment upon his military qualities and achievements, but I am confident that I am not going to step in advance of the ultimate verdict of history when I say that he takes a high and an undisputed place among our greatest British captains. As our poet says:— On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. Nor did he, when he retired from the active service of the State, resign himself to an old age of lethargy and ease. His vivid and ardent spirit and his devoted and untiring patriotism were still alert and alight with fervent energy which age could not dim or daunt. I recall the last talk which I had with him only two or three weeks ago, when he pressed upon me his desire to be of use in whatever capacity in this the latest and the greatest of our wars. To the end he was not only wishing but working for the success of our arms. Death came to him at last where, we may well believe, had the choice been his, he would have elected to die. Fresh from reviewing the Indian regiments, to whom his name and fame are a watchword and an inheritance, saluted, as he passed away, with the distant roar of the Artillery, which falls, we may believe, like noble music upon the ears of a dying warrior, and almost within sight of the trenches held by his old comrades in arms, with the same dauntless heroism which he himself had so often inspired and led to victory. Nunc dimittis servum tuum.

Mr. BONAR LAW

I regard it as a great honour to second the Resolution that has been proposed in words which command the sympathy of the whole House, and which will command the sympathy of the whole nation. For a generation Lord Roberts has stood in the public mind as the outward and visible expression of the soul of the British Army. In his courage, in his personal disinterestedness, in his devotion to duty, which never shone so brightly as on the occasion to which the Prime Minister has referred, when he obeyed the call of his Queen and country at a time when he was bowed down with sorrow through the death of a gallant and dearly beloved son; in his simplicity, in his modesty, in his high-minded uprightness, and in his stern detestation of everything mean and base, Lord Roberts was, in real life, all, and more than all, that Colonel Newcome was in fiction. He understood, better than any man, British soldiers of all ranks and of all nationalities. He understood them, he loved them, and they loved him. He was, and he deserved to be, the ideal of the British Army. But his influence extended far beyond the Army. The words used of another are true of him— He was loved as well as admired by all his countrymen, and most by those who had known him most intimately. He was a great soldier, great in the courage, in the originality, and in the breadth of his strategy, but great most of all, perhaps, in the quality which has always distinguished famous commanders—in the blind confidence which he inspired in every man who followed him. How great he was it is impossible to say, for the relative greatness of a soldier must depend upon the greatness of his opportunity. This, however, we can say, that from the day, more than half a century ago, when he won the Victoria Cross, to the day when he led the British troops in triumph into Pretoria, every task which had been entrusted to him was accomplished with unerring sagacity and with complete success. It was my privilege to visit Lord Roberts twice in his own home. On each occasion he was surrounded by soldiers, most of whom were young enough, almost, to be his grandchildren, but in spirit he was the youngest of them all. I was surprised, and I was moved, to see the reverence and the love which the soldiers of the new generation showed to the old hero. No observer could fail to see the spirit of the relationship between them, and no observer in the presence of the man who inspired that feeling could fail to understand it. Our hearts go out to-day in deepest sympathy to Lady Roberts and her daughters. If anything could bring them any comfort in the hour of their affliction, it would be the evidence of the universal feeling of respect, of admiration, and of affection which the death of Lord Roberts has evoked; it would be the knowledge that he died as he had lived, in the path of duty. Since fate or Providence has decreed that his long day's work should now be over, it was indeed fitting, as was expressed in the touching message from our troops at the front, that the great soldier should die in the midst of soldiers. He did not actually fall on the field of battle; still, his was the ideal death of which the poet speaks in words so familiar to all of us:— In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honoured, known, And like a warrior overthrown.

Mr. JOHN REDMOND

I beg to ask the permission of the House to utter a few brief, simple, but sincere words in support of this Motion. I am not, I need not say to the House, going to attempt to give expression to any appreciation of the great military career of Lord Roberts or to utter any panegyric on his life. Indeed, were that my desire, I could add nothing to the speeches that have been delivered. Lord Roberts was an Irishman, and it is fitting that, at any rate, one Irish voice should be heard in support of this Motion. In addition to that, Lord Roberts was closely and intimately connected with the city which I have had the honour to represent for so many years in this House. Lord Roberts was a Waterford man. His family, of good old Irish stock, were associated with the city of Waterford for very many generations, and those whom I have the honour to represent in this House have always felt proud of being able to claim him as a Waterford man. It is pleasant to recollect that quite recently, within the last few years, the corporation of the city of Waterford, consisting of men of all political views, and all classes and all creeds, unanimously paid him the highest honour which it was in their power to bestow by making him an honorary freeman of that ancient city. I am glad to be able myself to recall that recently—since this War broke out—I had some personal relations with Lord Roberts of a pleasant and most friendly character. He was most anxious to aid in every way he could in rousing his country, Ireland, to an adequate sense of the gravity of the crisis which had arisen. May I be allowed to recall the fact that he expressed a few weeks ago to me a desire, if it were at all possible, to attend the meeting in Dublin which the Prime Minister addressed, and to speak from the same platform as the Prime Minister and myself. As things turned out he was unable to do so, but he was passionately anxious to do everything in his power for the Irish troops, those troops whom he trusted, those troops to whom he was so devotedly attached, and those troops who in turn so highly honoured him throughout his career. He was anxious to do everything in his power, passionately anxious to elicit and to gratify their national sentiment and in this way to encourage them to play a part in this War worthy of their past in the military history of this country. A great soldier is dead, dead with his harness on him, fallen at the front in my belief as truly as if he died from a German bullet in the trenches, and I am glad that the House has been good enough to give me as an Irishman the opportunity of saying these few simple words in honour of a man who, whatever may have been his political opinions from time to time, and on an occasion such as this I utterly decline to think of his political opinions, has certainly added to the long roll of great soldiers whom Ireland has given to the Empire in the past one of the greatest of their names.

General Sir IVOR HERBERT

I venture with great hesitation to rise as one—I fear the only one now present in this House, who has had the honour to serve on the staff of Lord Roberts—to say in a few words, few and plain words, that which I feel to be some of the thoughts of the men in the Army. At this moment I cannot expect to emulate, much less add to the eloquence of the tributes already paid to my lamented chief, but I do feel that perhaps without any eloquence at all I may be able to put forward one or two things which might be expressed by the men in the ranks. Lord Roberts was not only a great commander, but he was looked upon by every man in the Army as a comrade, and as a valued personal friend. The men in the Army spoke of him and thought of him as the Grenadiers of France may have thought of that great Emperor when they spoke of him as Le Petit Caporal. It was the personal element that was so strong. One of the secrets of his great influence lay in a certain simplicity of nature, in an innate sweetness of disposition. Officers and men alike would do their utmost for him. Having once come under the influence of his personal charm they would do their utmost for him and feel themselves sufficiently rewarded, though their efforts might never be recognised and might be lost in the general operations. The rank and file knew that they had in him a personal friend, one who ever watched after their interests and whose constant thought was solicitude for their interests, and not only for their material benefit but one who did more perhaps than any commander in the British Army to safeguard those under his command from the moral dangers which unavoidably surrounded them. It was that influence and that example of his which had the effect of building up in the men of the Army that great quality of character which we see so strongly marked, and of which we are daily seeing the proof on the battle fields of France, and which have raised the deeds of our Army to greater heights of heroism than ever before.

It would be improper for me to touch on the question of what the Memorial to our deceased Leader should be. I know that in these days there is often a feeling that memorials should have some material form for the benefit of some object. I think it would not be improper for me to express that which I feel would be the wish of the large number of those who have served under him, allowing, of course, for wishes that he may have expressed or for wishes of his own family. We would like to see somewhere in this great City of London a living presentment of the man whom we knew, and to see him as we saw him at Kandahar, at Paardeberg, or at Aldershot, in the performance of his duties. We would like to see him, that figure which we knew so well with his admirable seat on a horse, which was one of the things that so endeared him to many of us, and with that youthful appearance to which the Leader of the Opposition referred just now, and which endeared him so much to the younger generation as to those who served under him. I should like that image and memory of him to exist as it exists and will for long in our hearts, and I should like that image and memory to go down to untold generations as a precious heritage and as an example to the race in succeeding generations.

Colonel YATE

May I, as an officer of the Indian Army who was on the Staff of Lord Roberts on the march from Cabul to Kandahar, and with him throughout the battle of Kandahar, say one word to express the feelings of grief and sorrow which I am sure reverberated throughout the whole of India on the news of the death of Lord Roberts. I trust I may be permitted to say this word in support of the Resolution, that I am sure that all the officers and men of the Indian regiments now at the front will feel it to be one of the proudest things of their life that the last act of Lord Roberts should have been to inspect them on the field of active service.

Question put, and agreed to, nemine contradicente.