nt personality is as essential as
a profound knowledge of generalship to the modern commander. French
possesses both. Although profoundly versed in all the doctrines of the
schoolmen, he is never afraid to jump over the traces where they would
lead to a precipice. He has never been hampered, as so many soldiers
are, by his studies. Knowledge he has always used as a means to an
end, which is its proper vocation. To this independence of mind, as to
nothing else, may be attributed his phenomenal success amid the
abnormal conditions of Boer warfare. Where the books end, French's
active mind begins to construct its own "way out" of the corner.

The Boers were indeed the first to admit his superiority to the other
English officers, if not to themselves. De Wet was once asked in the
early stages of the war how long he expected to avoid capture. He
replied, with a smile, that it all depended on which General was
dispatched to run him down. When a certain name was mentioned, the
reply was "Till eternity." General B---- was next mentioned. "About
two years," was the verdict. "And General French?" "Two weeks,"
admitted De Wet.

French has, of course, never accepted social life in this country on
its face value. The young officer who was studying when his friends
were at polo or tennis, was under no illusions as to the havoc which
an over-accentuation of the sporting and social side of life was
playing with the officers' work. Nowadays, like Kitchener, he is bent
on producing the professional and weeding out the "drawing-room"
soldier. No wonder that his favourite authors are those acutest
critics of English social life and English foibles, Dickens and
Thackeray. The former's "Bleak House" and the latter's "Book of
Snobs" are the two books he places first in his affections.

[Page Heading: A GREAT REPORTER]

He is himself a writer of parts. We are, ourselves, so close to the
event he describes, that we are perhaps unable to appreciate the
literary excellence of the despatches which French has sent us on the
operations in France. A Chicago paper hails him, however, as "a great
reporter." "No one can read his reports," the writer remarks, "without
being struck with his weighty lucidity, his calm mastery of the
important facts, the total absence of any attempt at 'effect,' and the
remarkably suggestive bits of pertinent description."

Undoubtedly, the Americans are right--provided that these dispatches
were actually penned by th