"Monty"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 5

"Monty"

N ninety-nine cases im a hundred shortening a man’s name *- is like knocking off his hat_Joad manners and nothing else; and the more distinguished he is the more offensive such mariners always are. In the. hundredth case it may bring revelation. Not many of those who will have seen or he.-id New Zealand’s famous guest week will have thought at the tme, or will think afterwards, that they were seeing or listening to the Rt. Hon. Viscount Montgomery, Field-Marshal. Their thoughts would be on "Monty," and Monty himself will be very happy. to have it so. It means, as he knows, that the man has fol‘lowed the soldier into the public mind. For it was the soldier who got there first. In the estimate which we are able to print to-day from the péh of General Kippenberger, Monty, when the New Zealand troops first saw him, was a "little sharp-featured man with cold eyes and a hard voice." He had come not to flatter but to conquer; not to create a legend but to stop a rot; not to build up his own personality but to restore the confidence of a bewildered and badly shattered army. The rest is history. The visitor we have entertained is in General Kippenberger’s considered. opinion — and there is no more authoritative opinion in New Zealand-the most successful British general since Wellington. But he is also, in the judgment of the same observer, a great man, and "Monty," instead of cheapening him, marks. the transformation of the cold-eyed commander into the affectionately remembered saviour of our almost lost cause. He is also of course Mcuty the eccentric, chiefly by na(zire but also a little, perhaps, ify Bet. Greatness is always eccentricity up to a point; but the gulf between the big eccentrics and the little ones is never bridged by showmanship. Mannerisms our famous guest certainly has. His: only tricks are his habit of trusting *his own judgment and his confusing tendency to be right. =