“Not by Eastern windows only,
    When daylight comes, comes in the light;
  In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
    But Westward, look, the land is bright!”

[Hearty applause.]

LORD WOLSELEY

(GARNET JOSEPH WOLSELEY)

THE ARMY IN THE TRANSVAAL

     [Speech of Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of
     the British Army, at a dinner given by the Authors’ Club, London,
     November 6, 1899.  Dr. Conan Doyle presided.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:—­I think that all people who know anything about the Army should rejoice extremely that our first experiment in mobilization has been as successful as it has been. [Cheers.]

Your Chairman has mentioned the name of one, a most intimate friend of mine, the present Military Secretary. [Lord Lansdowne.] I think the nation is very much indebted to him not only for the manner in which this mobilization has been carried out, but still more so for having laid the foundation on which our mobilization system is based, and for making those preparations which led to its complete success. [Cheers.] There are many other names I might mention, others who have also devoted themselves for many years past in a very quiet manner, and with all the ability which now, I am glad to say, so largely permeates the Army, to making these preparations and to try to bring this curious army of ours up to the level of the modern armies of the world. [Cheers.]

Although I say it myself, I think I may claim for myself and for those who have worked with me a certain meed of praise, for we have worked under extreme difficulties.  Not only under the ordinary difficulties in dealing with a very complicated arrangement, but we have had to work in the face of the most dire opposition on the part of a great number of people who ought to have been the first to help us. ["Hear!  Hear!”] The Chairman has referred to the opposition of the Press; but that has been nothing to the opposition we have met with in our own profession—­the profession of ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, when great reforms were begun in the Army by the ablest War Secretary who has ever been in office—­I mean Lord Cardwell.  His name is now almost forgotten by the present generation, and also the names of many other distinguished officers in their day, whose names were associated with many of the brightest moments of English victory and English conquest, and who set their faces honestly against alteration, and firmly believed that the young men of those days were a set of madmen and a set of Radicals who were anxious to overturn not only the British Army, but the whole British Constitution with it. [Laughter.] This prejudice spread into high places, until at last we were looked upon as a party of faddists who ought to be banished to the farthest part of our dominions. [Renewed laughter.] But I am glad to say that the tree we planted then took root, and there gradually grew up around us a body of young officers, men highly instructed in their profession, who supported us, carried us through, and enabled us to arrive at the perfection which, I think, we have now attained. ["Hear!  Hear!”]