SILENT AND SURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12066, 23 July 1917, Page 2

SILENT AND SURE.

A FAMOUS FIGHTER AND A PRIME ORGANISER.

Tommy Atkins is good at inventing nicknames for his officers. He has, for instance, bestowed upon General Sir Nevil Macready that of " The Sphinx." It fits him like a glove. Silent, stern j of face, impassive—there you have the man summed up in a few words. I For .some weeks prior to the outbreak of the World War, General Macready was tho moft talked-about man in the British Army. The Government cent him to Ulster, where affairs were hastening to a crisis-. | Then came the Mar, and soon Orangemen and Nationalists were fighting side by side against the common enemy. Sir Nevil went with them, and as Adjutant-General to the British Expeditionary Force he performed mirales of organising work during tho terrible retreat from Mons, and afterwards. Ho wins " mentioned" in French's first despatch, and decorated by his Sovereign with a K.O.M.G. SWIFT TO AOT. Born in May, 1862, General Macready joined the Gordon Highlanders as a second-lieutenant at tho age of nineteen, and in less than a year he had seen service under Wolsley in Egypt, taking part with his battalion in the battle of Tol-el-Kcbir. He also fought in the South African War, being twice mentioned in despatches, and gaining the Queen's Medal, with six clasps, and the King's Medal, with two clasps; eight general engagements in all. Although a stern disciplinarian and swift to act when the occasion demands it, General Macready is exceedingly tactful. For this reason, probably, he was entrusted with the Ulster mission. For he ha<l shown previously that his was the iron hand' within the velvet glove at Tonypandy, where the Welsh miners were on strike. Macready was put in charge of the troops there, and quelled the rioting with comparatively little loss of life.

It was General Macready, too, who war, in charge of the military measures taken to cope with the great railway strike of J9ll. Luckily, the trouble was settled by mutual forbearance and concessions.