Lord French has not much in common with his gifted sister, Mrs. Despard, who was prominently before the public when the suffrage question came near to rivalling Home Rule in its claim on public attention, for Mrs. Despard's life is one of self-sacrifice to lighten the sorrows of others. But to one well acquainted with brother and sister, there are the qualities of calm resolution in the face of danger and of commanding will to be associated with each.
I do not think he reads much, save books dealing with military questions. He does not hunt or shoot, or play polo or, indeed, acknowledge any form of sport. He stands professionally as far apart from the ordinary mundane interests of life as any professor in the cloistered peace of an old university town, and yet he is full to the brim of vitalising enthusiasms not to be overlooked by his friends because they are controlled.
He lives in his profession and breathes the very air of it; soldiering claims his every thought, and yet he is in no aspect the "beau sabreur" of the Ouida novels. If you were to drive with him through the most exquisite landscape, his mind's eye would at once select the salient points of attack and defence, he would grasp every military possibility of what lay before him, but the surrounding beauty would pass him by. Sometimes we have talked of war. "I hate war as much as you do," he has said to me more than once, "but----" There it ends, and he is looking with far-seeing eyes at encounters yet to be.
In the conventional sense he has no religion, and yet I regard him as one of the most religious men I know. His views of the hereafter are clear; he is confidently assured of the soul's survival, its reincarnation, the fulfilment of its ambitions. He is an idealist, an enthusiast, a man who could not act dishonestly if he tried, faithful to the bitter end to those in whom he trusts.
Much of the recent gossip in London has endeavoured to suggest that he has been a party to the intrigues of others. I venture to say that nobody who understands Lord French could make such a foolish mistake. The personal interests and trickery of small natures have no meaning for him. First and last and all the time he is a soldier, probably the one soldier who could have overcome the enormous difficulties by which he has been faced. He is the type of the leader of men, an example of the power of concentration driving a single purpose to its end. I think Frederick the Great would have made much of him and that his chief hero in a military sense, the first Napoleon, would have kept him by his side.