"DEDUCTION” ROBERTS..

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1345, 9 January 1915, Page 4

"DEDUCTION” ROBERTS..

ANECDOTES OF THE GREAT field-marshal.

Lord Roberts was always subject to nick-names. Even when he was at Sandhurst he was known as “Deduction,” because it was noticed that his sagacity in following up small clues gave great satisfaction to the military instructors. He was known as “Bobs” among his friends long before the British Army gave him that title—indeed, in the days of the Indian Mutiny it was the name by which his own fellowofficers used to call him. Another nickname by which he was kuowr in the Aimy was that of “The Little Man,’’ just as the French soldiers delighted to style Napoleon “Le Petit Caporal.’’ Unlike many soldiers, Lord Roberts was singularly unsuperstitious. He was always willing to sit down thirteen to table ; he preferred travelling on e. Friday ; be was married in May ; and once when setting out on a campaign he deliberately broke a )v ~d mirror in two iu order that it might take up less room in his kit. On the other hand, he had a decided weakness for horseshoes, and when a friend at Portrush sent him, one St. Patrick’s Day, a horseshoe together with a piece ot shamrock, he wrote back: “The horseshoe will be kept by me as a souvenir, together with one I picked up the day I entered the Orange Free State, and another I found at Paardeberg the evening before General Cronje and his force surrendered.’’ When Lord Roberts was at Quebec for the Quebec Tercentenary Celebration in 1908, he went to the hotel barber to have his hair cut. In a fit of absentmindedness he did not note that the man cropped him as closely as a billiard ball, so that his helmet fell over his eyes almost. But he told with amusement afterwards how he discovered that the map had sold all the snippets of hair tor souvenirs.

Lord Roberts never smoked or drank. He often presided over meetings of the Army Temperance Association, but it is proof of his broad-minded good sense that he never tried to compel his soldiers to become total abstainers.

He was fond of saying that no Englishman was ever served more devotedly by Indians than himself. When fighting in the Indian Mutiny his khitmutgar used to bring him his meals regularly even under fire ; and during that awful battle that ended in the defeat of the Afghan forces at Kabul, General Roberts —as he then was —was amazed to hear above the din of battle the vo ; ce of his bath attendant shouting to him, “Bath ready, sir.'’ Lord Roberts was known to have a perfect horror of cats ; his feelings about pussy were instinctive and could neither be reasoned with nor overcome.

Euglemeae, Ascot, Lord Roberts’s simple home, is surrounded by guns, trophies of bis campaigns. Prominent among them is the gun for which his son lost his life and won the V.C. at Colenso.