I see my handsome and gifted colleague, Mr. Landon, rise to toast the High Commissioner. What's this we hear? He is welcoming the Viceroy as a brother in journalism, a newspaper man like ourselves. Up rises the man who lives in the heart of care and the furnace of dissension--pale, grave, concentrated, like one who thinks of but one thing and has but one thing to do--and that a thing gigantic. He replies that it is true that he was once a writer like ourselves; that he enjoyed those days; that he made delightful friends and spent glad hours in them; that he has had much to do with the gentlemen of the Press in Capetown, and that his relations with all have been without a flaw. After that he speaks but little of the heart of care where his official bed is laid, or of the furnace blasts of treason and of discord round his chair at the Cape, but, with unassumed modesty, calls our attention to the military magician across the table and to what he has done.
It is Mr. Gwynne who rises next--one of the very best-equipped war correspondents with the British forces, both as a campaigner and a critic of war, and high among the best as a writer. It is fitting that he should introduce the Field-Marshal, for he is liked and trusted by his distinguished guest, who has discovered, I fancy, that under the correspondent's khaki beats the heart of the soldier.
Lord Roberts replied that he was very proud to be the guest of the war correspondents. He liked to have them with him, and he was glad when they criticised whatever was amiss, for he profited by reading what they said. Turning to us, the Field-Marshal remarked, "You share all our hardships and exposure. All the troops do not engage in every battle, but you go to all, so that you experience even more danger than most of us. May I call you 'comrades'?"
I remember that he spoke earnestly of the work Sir Alfred Milner was doing, and credited that statesman with the most difficult task of any man who served the Empire. One other bit of his address I recall--a mere phrase, but a remarkable one: "The gentlemen I command--my gentlemanly army."
It was my good fortune to introduce Rudyard Kipling--a delicate as well as a proud task, because I knew that fulsome praise, or even the most honest appreciation, would make him uncomfortable. I remember that I spoke of the narrow compass of Shakspere's renown in his day, and the world-wide fame of a man like Kipling in these days of multitudinous newspapers and telegraphs and cables.