GREAT LITTLE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

New Zealand Tablet, 21 January 1915, Page 31

GREAT LITTLE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

It is more than remarkable that the greatest of modern military and naval commanders have, almost without exception, been short of stature. Rodney was short and [Nelson was shorter. In fact, the greatest naval commander in the history of the world, the man who now towers literally above all his fellows, and whom German air raiders would probably dearly like to topple o\ei into the fountains of Trafalgar Square, was quite a shrimp of a man, and, being deprived of an arm as well as an eye, looked smaller as he grew older. Kelson was probably the greatest little man who ever lived. Admiral John Jellicoe, whom every Briton believes, if he gets half a chance, will prove himself a modern Nelson and win another and even greater Trafalgar, is also a man of very moderate stature. And it is a truism that ‘ stockiness ’ is the rule in the Navy. Perhaps salt checks growth ! But, whatever it does with the rest of the body, it does not seem to stunt the wits. Witness that gallant little Japanese admiral, Togo. He had brains, courage, and skill in a very high degree. Napoleon, the greatest general of all time, the man to whom all military men look to-day as their exemplar and model in strategy and tactics, whose genius still dominates warfare, was notoriously short of stature. He was the butt of his schoolfellows on that account, and it was reckoned as a great disability in his military prospects.

His final conqueror, Wellington, often regarded as pretty tall, was by no means so. He is generally depicted on horseback, and his portraits are very deceptive, because a big nose seems to require a big body to match it. But what about Wolseley, and Roberts, and French? In ordinary company all three were wont to drop out of sight. Wolseley was the smallest of the lot. The one and only ‘ Bobs ’ would barely have got into Kitchener’s new army if the measuring tape had been applied to him. Well for his country was it that he was measured by capacity and not by inches. Both the leaders of the armies of the west, General French and General Joffre, are little men. General Joffre looks like a healthy, 'good-natured, prosperous, stout grocer. General French is a little taller than Roberts, but not much ; yet it was as a cavalry leader of infinite daring and unsullied success that he sprang to the front in the South African War. Where so many bigger men failed French succeeded, and to-day he has the confidence of the whole British race, as a little man who is capable of great things and intends to do them.