A GREAT FRENCHMAN.

Evening Star, Issue 21784, 28 July 1934, Page 12

A GREAT FRENCHMAN.

A cheat Frenchman has passed away in Marshal Lyautey, the “ Royalist who gave, an Empire to the Republic.” In New Zealand he has been compared to Sir George Grey, but Grey’s field was divided, and it was only for short periods that ho enjoyed anything like absolute control. The comparison has aptness, however, because both men had the same faculty of understanding and commending themselves to native races, and combined high imagination with their administrative roles. Lyautey might be viewed also as a combination of Cecil Rhodes and Kitchener. Ho was a practical dreamer, and also a soldier who believed in having all the powers conducive to his great designs in Jiis own hands, though the power ,of armed force was one which he used as little as possible. He was singularly fortunate in his career. The best years of his life, after he had received his training in Indo-China under Gallieni and in Madagascar under Joffre, were spent in Northern Africa, first as a subordinate, virtually independent, and afterwards as ResidentGeneral. When he had done his great work and given a vast territory, loyal, prosperous, and contented, to France, he was! able to retire to his ancestral home and live there for ten years more, noting increasing evidences of its permanence. Only this year it was reported that France’s “ war ” in Morocco, which had lasted on and off for twenty-seven years, had ended in complete victory, and the final pacification of 7,000 miles of territory in the region of Mauretania, giving the protecting Power a free passage to the Atlantic. For the first time in modern history the Sultan—a mere cypher of France—ruled the whole of his 218,000 square miles of land. Of Lyautey it has been said: “ No soldier of his time, or of any time, perhaps, has bad a wider culture or eyes more avid of enjoyment, He could move swift and live hard like any legionary; yet, when things permitted, he chose to be in what he describes ■ a sumptuous tent, as large as an apartment, lined with cloth and silk, and, on the ground, carpets soft as moss. The moon is making this cool, refreshing night all alive—my spahi has closed the door, and only a streak of white light touches the carpet. I feel an inexpressible comfort in this home of one night. The tent is so beautiful, lined with red; holsters with their tiger skin and copper, my arms all carefully arranged in a corner, give the touch of command.’ Yet for an extreme characteristic expression of ’ir one would choose this telegram to Gallieni when smallpox had broken out in ■ a district in rebellion: ‘lf you can send mo four more doctors, I will send you back four companies of troops.’ ”