PART I

PEACE AND WAR

A SPEECH TO THE CITIZENS OF MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1912.

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

This is only the second occasion in a long life on which I have had the privilege of speaking in your city; and it is with no inadequate sense of the value of that occasion and of the responsibility attaching to the position which, for the past ten years, I have taken up towards this Empire and its armies that I come before you this afternoon. For in the upbuilding of that Empire what city in our dominions has taken a more conspicuous part than this city, made illustrious almost since its foundation by commercial enterprise and by its political sagacity and spirit in affairs? In the eighteenth century your merchants aided the designs of the elder Pitt, and of the statesmen who followed him, in founding that power in India and the East which to-day is the envy and the admiration of the nations. In the nineteenth, within my own memory, your city, under the unforgotten leadership of John Bright, Richard Cobden, and Milner Gibson, gave a great watchword[1] to a great and still living party, and by its resolute effort forced through Parliament the repeal of the Corn Laws, one of the most momentous and revolutionary measures in this nation's history.

Nor, in more recent times, has Manchester abated her zeal or her vital energy in every phase of English political life. The greatest, most temperate, and statesmanlike Liberal newspaper in England is night by night printed within your walls; so that, at least in one phase of our national life and amongst one group of our fellow-citizens--the Liberal party, that is to say--it is literally true that what Manchester thinks to-night London thinks to-morrow. And a certain election the other day, and the overflow meetings which, I understand, have been held in favour of Tariff Reform within the sacred precincts of the Free Trade Hall itself, give a further proof that here in Manchester you are not petrified in your opinions, but that the stream of your political life flows fresh and from the fountain-head.

Judge then, gentlemen, whether it was not with some concern that I looked forward to this occasion; judge whether it was not with some searching of the heart that I reflected upon what I have this afternoon to say to you. For does it not appear at first sight as if what I have to say is not merely antagonistic to the teaching of the two greatest names of the Manchester School, John Bright and Richard Cobden, but is in every way the contradiction of the characterizing ideas and the traditions associated with this city itself?

For I come before you to-day to advocate the necessity of National Service; to affirm once more that the "Nation in Arms" is the only worthy and sure bulwark of this Empire and these islands.[2] Cobden, on the other hand, has left it on record that he considered it the glory and the exceeding great reward of all his labours that he had contributed, in however small a degree, to that universal disarmament of Europe, which, he sanguinely hoped, would be the result of Free Trade and of expanding commerce and the organization of labour. And John Bright, his great colleague, in one speech after another, added the lustre of his eloquence to that same high and flattering anticipation. I can remember easily the ardent and sympathetic reception which those anticipations met in the France of Louis Napoleon; I can remember also the added weight which France's enthusiasm gave to those happy anticipations here in England. War, indeed, seemed at an end. To-morrow, it seemed, we should be turning our barracks into granaries and our arsenals into banking houses.

Gentlemen, I am, I trust, doing no wrong to the memory of these statesmen when I point out that in the very years--nay, in the very months--that they were cherishing these illusions of peace and universal disarmament, in those very months the mightiest and most disciplined force that this earth has ever contained was silently being drilled in that wide region from the Rhine to the Elbe and the Oder, and from the North Sea to the Bavarian frontier, until, the right hour having struck, that army disclosed itself in all its prodigious and crushing mass and in all its unmatched capacity for destruction and war. And, amid those auspicious dreams of peace, for what was that army being trained? Koeniggrätz, Metz, St. Privat, and Sedan are the answer. Nor did that army pause until upon the ruins of the Empire of the third Napoleon--upon the ruins, I may say, of France, unprepared in peace, and in war scattered and dismayed--it had reared a new Empire, the Empire of William I., of Frederick I., and of William II., for whose personal character, noble and imaginative patriotism, and capacities as a ruler, I yield to no man in my admiration. Such, gentlemen, was history's ironic comment upon John Bright's and Richard Cobden's eloquently-urged enthusiasm. Let me not increase by any word of mine the crushing weight of Destiny's criticism.

Now, gentlemen, at the present day, now in the year 1912, our German friends, I am well aware, do not, at least in sensible circles, assert dogmatically that a war with Great Britain will take place this year or next; but in their heart of hearts they know, every man of them,[3] that, just as in 1866 and just as in 1870, war will take place the instant the German forces by land and sea are, by their superiority at every point, as certain of victory as anything in human calculation can be made certain. "Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck." That is the time-honoured policy of her Foreign Office. That was the policy relentlessly pursued by Bismarck and Moltke in 1866 and 1870; it has been her policy decade by decade since that date; it is her policy at the present hour. And, gentlemen, it is an excellent policy. It is, or should be, the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history. Under that policy Germany has, within the last ten years, sprung, as at a bound, from one of the weakest of naval Powers to the greatest naval Power, save one, upon this globe. But yesterday, so to speak, the British Fleets did not feel the furrow of a German war-keel on the wide seas. To-day every British warship and every British merchant vessel thrills in all her iron nerves to that mighty presence. Just as in 1866, by the massing of her armies towards this frontier or towards that frontier, Prussia controlled the action of Austria, so Germany constrains the action of England at the present day. Do you wish for proofs? I point to the gradual displacement of the British Fleet before the German menace. I point to the Mediterranean, bereft of British battleships, and to the gradual narrowing, year by year, of our once far-flung battle-line.

We may stand still: Germany always advances, and the direction of her advance, the line along which she is moving, is now most manifest. It is towards that consummation which I have described--a complete supremacy by land and sea. She has built a mighty fleet; but, as if nothing were done so long as anything stands between her and her goal, still she presses on--here establishing a new Heligoland, for every available island in the North Sea has been fortified--there enclosing Holland in a network of new canals, and deepening old riverbeds for the swifter transport of the munitions of war, whether to her army or her fleet.

Contrasted with our own apathy or puerile and spasmodic efforts, how impressive is this magnificent and unresting energy! It has the mark of true greatness; it extorts admiration even from those against whom it is directed!

But, it is urged by the advocates of universal peace, how monstrous is this expenditure of human strength and human ingenuity, if unused, and how yet more monstrous the waste of human life if actually used in war![4] And how much more sane is the policy of Cobden and of Bright and of their imitators or followers at the present day! Gentlemen, arguments which prove the folly and criminality of war are, at the present stage of history, like the arguments which prove the folly and criminality of ambition and of the love of glory. Even those who argue most eloquently against glory do, by that very eloquence, seek to win glory; and those who argue most forcibly against war do, nevertheless, live, and for long will continue to live, under an invisible power which has made war an inseparable portion of human polity. Much, during the autumn of 1911, was said and written upon arbitration. America's action in the Panama Canal, and the impotence of diplomatists in the Balkan crisis,[5] are again history's ironic comment in the autumn of 1912! Arbitration most certainly is more humane than war; but, at the present stage of the polity of nations, arbitration again and again refuses to extend itself to some of the most vital and essential questions--questions which, to a nation or empire sensitive alike to its honour and to its abiding interests, make war unavoidable.

Again, we have heard much during the current year of the power of Labour in international politics. The German Socialist, it is said, will not make war upon his French or his English comrade. Gentlemen, it is to the credit of the human race that patriotism, in the presence of such organizations, has always proved itself superior to any class or any individual. Love of country has on the actual day of battle always proved itself superior to love of profit. That law has not been abrogated, and if war broke out to-morrow the German working man would quit himself like a German, and the British working man, I hope, like a Briton.

Hence, gentlemen, the mistrust with which I have always viewed the proposals of British Ministers for a limitation of armaments. Emanating from Great Britain, such proposals must always, I imagine, impress a foreign observer as either too early or too late in English history. For how was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire--war and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the habitable globe, when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the utterance of one of her greatest Chancellors a year and a half ago,[6] or of General Bernhardi three months ago, with any feelings except those of respect?

Gentlemen, other world-Powers besides Germany have arisen and are arising around us; but there is one way in which Britain can have peace, not only with Germany, but with every other Power, national or imperial, and that is, to present such a battle-front by sea and land that no Power or probable combination of Powers shall dare to attack her without the certainty of disaster. That is the only reply worthy of our past and wise for our future which we can or ought to make to those unparalleled efforts which I have described. And there is a way in which England can have war; there is a way in which she is certain to have war and its horrors and calamities: it is by persisting in her present course, her apathy, unintelligence, blindness, and in her disregard of the warnings of the most ordinary political insight, as well as of the examples of history.

And what is the lesson which History enforces? Of two courses you must choose one: you must either abandon your Empire, and with it your mercantile wealth; or, in the world as it is at present, be prepared to defend it.

But, you will say, are we so unprepared? Have we not a Fleet? Have we not an Army?

We have a Fleet, but that Fleet is rapidly becoming unequal to the fleets by which we may be opposed, and by the inadequacy of our land forces it is maimed and hampered in its very nature as a Fleet. For the essence of a Fleet in such an Empire as ours is the utmost mobility: it must have complete freedom of action. But if, in addition to its own duties, our Fleet has to perform the role of an army of defence, what must follow? It becomes a "wooden wall" indeed, unmoving and inert, anchored around these shores. It is helpless to protect our food-supplies, without the regular arrival of which we must starve.

A paramount Navy we must possess, whether of two keels to one or three keels to two. That is a self-evident truth. But if this Empire is to keep abreast of the rapid and tremendous developments amongst the world-Powers around us, something more is necessary, and the necessity increases with every year, almost with every month. It is the necessity for an Army strong enough to insure the mobility of our Navy, and strong enough also to make our strength felt on the mainland of Europe, should we ever appear there as the armed ally of another Power, as we were on the verge of doing last autumn. That also is, or ought to be, self-evident.

What, then, is my plan, and what is my ultimate counsel to the nation and the message to my countrymen that at this solemn hour I would utter? It is the message burnt into my mind twelve years ago during the crisis of the South African War; it is the message which every hour of that protracted and not too glorious struggle made me feel to be more and more necessary; and, I am compelled to say frankly, it is the message which events, some quite recent and some remoter, have compelled me to regard as more pressing in 1912 than in 1900-1901. Gentlemen, that message is: "Arm and prepare to quit yourselves like men, for the time of your ordeal is at hand." A long interval has been allowed us for preparation; for in this era of rapid evolution twelve years is a big space in human affairs. Twelve years have been given to us, and in those years what have we done? We have modified and remodified the effete voluntary system; we have invented several new names and a new costume. But as regards efficiency and as regards preparedness for war, we are practically where we were in 1900.[7]

For, so far as the choice between the voluntary system and some form of National Service is concerned, what have these twelve years demonstrated, except the futility and positive danger of any and every other system except some form of compulsion? There has, I say, been much juggling with words and names. The old Militia and Volunteers have disappeared, and the Special Reserve and the Territorials have taken their place; there has been much complimentary and interested or disinterested laudation by Members of Parliament, and, I regret to say, by some few officers of the army. The fact remains, that in the opinion of every impartial soldier with any experience of modern war--in the opinion, I say, of every soldier, whether British, German, or French, who has given any attention to the subject, this great Empire is wholly unprepared for war. As a European Power, as a Continental Power, we do not exist--for war. Our Army, as a belligerent factor in European politics, is almost a negligible quantity. This great Empire, indeed--and the more we exalt its greatness and its unrivalled character, the more astounding does our recklessness appear--this great Empire is at all times practically defenceless beyond its first line. Such an Empire invites war. Its assumed security amid the armaments of Europe, and now of Asia, is insolent and provocative.

For remember that war does not begin, nor does it end, on the day of battle. There is a kind of war which goes on silent and unperceived amid apparent peace. That is the war which undermines commerce, which profoundly affects a city like your city. If once you permit any one State to be your undisputed superior by sea and land, that hour, even if not a shot be fired, you cease to be a free nation. You are no longer an Empire. Your commercial greatness is vanished. You hold your very lives by the sufferance of another, and would have to submit to any terms he might dictate.

Such, gentlemen, is the origin, and such the considerations which have fostered in me the growth of this conviction--the conviction that in some form of National Service is the only salvation of this nation and this Empire. The Territorial Force is now an acknowledged failure--a failure in discipline, a failure in numbers, a failure in equipment, a failure in energy.[8] I have so often demonstrated this thesis; I have so often analyzed the contradictions[9] in the arguments of the supporters of the Territorial movement; I have so often exposed their vamped-up statistics, and the rewards and encouragement offered by politicians to every soldier or civilian willing to say a word in praise of that scheme--I have done all this so often that there seems nothing left for me to say. To you, as practical business men, I will merely repeat this one statement--a statement the truth of which is known to every experienced soldier--that so long as the Territorial Force is based on voluntary enlistment, it is impossible to give its members a sufficiently lengthy and continuous period of training to insure a discipline which will stand the severe test of modern war. In saying this, I am making no aspersions against the zeal or intelligence of the patriotic men who compose the Force; neither they nor their employers can afford the necessary time, so long as all men in this country are not treated alike, and all compelled to serve their apprenticeship in the National Forces.[10] And, unless I am misinformed, the majority of the Territorials are now in favour of compulsion.

Gentlemen, only the other day I completed my eightieth year, and to some of you, doubtless to many of you, I am indebted for one of the moments of the deepest gratification in my life, and the words I am speaking to-day are, therefore, old words--the result of earnest thought and practical experience; but, gentlemen, my fellow-citizens and fellow-Englishmen, citizens of this great and sacred trust, this Empire, if these were my last and latest words, I still should say to you, "Arm yourselves!" And if I put to myself the question, How can I, even at this late and solemn hour, best help England?--England that to me has been so much, England that for me has done so much--again I answer, "Arm and prepare to quit yourselves like men, for the day of your ordeal is at hand." I have commanded your armies in peace and in war. In my early years, as in my middle life, and now in these my latest years, I have felt to the quick the glories accompanying the armies of the past across every battlefield. What made the valour of those armies so distinguished? One thing at least: it was that, in officers exclusively, and in the ranks mainly, they were composed of men who regarded citizenship as incomplete unless it involved soldiership. Gentlemen, you have been enfranchised, many of you, by the great Acts of 1832 and 1867. I say to you, the young men of this city and of this nation, that your enfranchisement is not complete until you have become soldiers as well as citizens, prepared to attest your manhood on the battlefield as well as at the election booths.

Much has been said recently of the rights and the power of the workers of this nation. We all, I hope, belong to that class--workers--but the artisan class of the nation has been urged--and to you, the working men of Manchester, I now specially address myself--you have been urged, I say, to refuse to do your duties in war until your rights in peace are granted. Gentlemen, I say to you, that is not the policy either of Britishers or of men. I will go further: I say to you that it is not by declining or shirking duty that you will extend your rights. He who diminishes the power and vital resources of Great Britain diminishes the power and the vital resources of every Britisher. How can you most easily and most securely better yourselves as Britishers--as working men? By making England better, by making it better worth your while to be a citizen of, and a worker in that nation! If you seized by violence or by Act of Parliament all the accumulated capital of the centuries, you might have a madman's holiday for a time; but in the end you would emerge bankrupt and starving. You yourselves are the capital of the nation--the life-wealth of the nation--its manhood. Weapons, however perfect, will not make an army. Men are necessary--men of spirit, men of energy, loving their country, not merely loving their class or themselves. And on you, in turn, that discipline and those duties will confer unreckonable benefits. A tyranny imposes an exterior restraint; but you, in your free democratic constitution, should consider it as your privilege to impose upon yourselves from within that discipline and those sacred duties.

I say to you, therefore, assert your rights as Britishers by demanding the greatest, the highest of all civic and of all national rights--the right to be taught to defend your country--the right, that is, to defend your own honour as Britons and your liberties as citizens of this Empire. Thus, and thus only, shall you be worthy of that Empire's great past and of the dignity which that past confers upon every man of you, whatever your position in life may be.

[1] Apart from Free Trade and unrestrained competition, there are three other doctrines, or political principles, associated with the Manchester School: (1) To maintain peace at any cost; (2) strictly to avoid all interference with the internal affairs of foreign Powers; (3) to subordinate as far as possible all other interests to the interests of industry. The complete organization of industry was to have, as its immediate consequence, the abolition of war. These principles crystallized later into the familiar watchword of Liberalism: "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform."

[2] Succinctly, by "the Nation in Arms" I mean that every able-bodied citizen has patriotism enough to take his place in the firing-line to repel invasion; and, secondly, that he has common sense enough to undergo the discipline to make that self-sacrifice effective. In the second part of this book I have indicated what that preparation means. Here I may only observe that when Lord Haldane speaks of "the whole nation springing to arms at the call of duty" he is once more forgetting the part which discipline plays in modern war. A nation may "spring to arms," but if it is not disciplined, and thoroughly disciplined, its very courage will only serve to hasten its destruction. Within the last few weeks tens of thousands of brave Ottomans have sprung to arms, but with what dire results!

[3] It would be easy, I am informed on good authority, to illustrate this from passages in the works of German writers from Treitschke, the great exponent of Bismarckism, to writers of the present day. And I may quote a paragraph in support of my thesis from an unexpected source, that of Mr. H. M. Hyndman, in a letter to the _Morning Post_ of November 9, nearly three weeks after my Manchester speech. Mr. Hyndman, I need not remind my readers, not only enjoys a wide experience of German Socialism, but of many phases of German politics and political life. He writes: "I cannot for the life of me understand what Sir Edward Grey hopes to gain by rebuking Lord Roberts for stating that which the whole Continent knows perfectly well to be the truth. The German Fleet is being strengthened now, as it has been increased up to the present time, in order either to attack us in the North Sea, when the German Government thinks it safe to do so; or, by threats of what will occur, to force us to accept German policy, and allow the German Empire to do what it pleases with Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland, after having crushed or arranged with France. If Germany is not hostile to this country, why does the whole Pan-German party (and Press), to which the heir to the German throne openly belongs, declare that she is? Why is it that 'England is the enemy' is the common talk all through German middle-class circles? Or, on the other hand, if the relations between the two nations are so excellent as our Foreign Minister assures us they are--thus leading many sober Frenchmen to believe that our _entente_ with France only means that we shall betray the French Republic the moment it suits us to do so--why are we fortifying Rosyth as a naval base, why have we withdrawn our Fleet from the Mediterranean to concentrate it in home waters, and why was every journal in this country discussing the issues of peace and war with the German Empire when the late German Ambassador came to this country? More important still, why have we given way to a worse Government than that of Germany--the Russian Government, to wit--on matters of the first importance in Persia and elsewhere? Are the English people mere children thus to be fed on the pap of fatuous pacificism and convenient party misrepresentation at one of the most serious crises in the history of our race?"

[4] It is, or ought to be, superfluous to rebut the frantic accusation brought against myself and the National Service League by a leading Liberal weekly on October 26--that of blood-lust. Can there be Englishmen--or men bearing English names--in whom all sense of personal honour is so decayed, that to resent a national affront or to defend their Fatherland from foreign aggression appears a duty from which they recoil in shuddering apprehension?

[5] Since these words were spoken, with what an unparalleled rapidity has event crowded upon portentous event in the Near East! I have no wish to establish hasty analogies or to draw premature inferences; but what Englishman can consider the events of these past three weeks and remember without a pitying smile Lord Haldane's naïve assurance that with six months' training our Territorials would be ready for war! Did ever dilettantism so give itself away?

[6] In March, 1911, when every pulpit and every newspaper, under the influence of President Taft's message, promised us within a brief period universal peace and disarmament, the German Chancellor, Herr Bethmann-Hollweg, had the courage and the common sense to stand apart, and, speaking for his Emperor and his nation, to lay it down as a maxim that, at the present stage of the world's history, the armed forces of any nation or empire must have a distinct relation to the material resources of that nation or empire. This position seems to me as statesmanlike as it is unanswerable; but in applying the principle to our own country, I should be inclined to modify it by saying that the armed forces of any nation or empire ought to represent, not only its material resources, but the spirit which animates that nation or empire--in a word, that its armed forces should be the measure of the nation's devotion to whatever ends it pursues.

[7] For a more complete examination of this subject, I must refer the reader to the First Part of "Fallacies and Facts," published two years ago in answer to Lord Haldane's and Sir Ian Hamilton's "Compulsory Service."

[8] Since these words were spoken a remarkable series of letters in the _Daily Mail_, emanating from every grade in the Territorial Army itself, has illustrated and demonstrated this position point by point.

[9] See, for example, my speech at the Mansion House, which forms the second part of the present publication.

[10] As an illustration, let me quote a letter which I received from an important firm of manufacturing chemists in reply to a request from the Secretary of the National Service League to be allowed to speak to their men on the subject of Universal Military Training: "We regret that our manager at Hounslow is not in favour of your going there, for fear Territorial enlistment may be encouraged. Our business is of a peculiar nature, and is already quite seriously interfered with by the training of the appreciable number of Territorials in our employ. The difficulty is that ours is very skilled labour; in many cases we have no duplicate men, and outsiders cannot temporarily take up and discharge the duties of these men. When service is compulsory we shall be on equal terms with everybody else, and willing to bear an increased burden."

ADDITIONAL NOTE

ENGLEMERE, ASCOT, BERKS. November 5, 1912.

To THE EDITOR OF THE "MANCHESTER GUARDIAN."

Sir,

My attention has been drawn to the leader in your issue of the 4th instant, in which you deal with a passage in my speech in Manchester. I am too much accustomed to adverse criticism in my efforts to arouse the nation to a sense of its unpreparedness for war to resent in any way the attacks of my opponents. But when a paper of such standing as that of the _Manchester Guardian_ completely misconstrues what was certainly a salient passage in my speech, I feel bound, in justice to the cause which I have at heart, to explain my meaning more fully than was possible when I was dealing with the whole question of National Defence in relation to our position as a world-Power.

It is true that I pointed out the striking process by which Germany has developed from a loose congeries of petty federated States to the united Empire which arouses the admiration of the world to-day. Before 1866 the German States, under the scarcely-established leadership of Prussia, were surrounded on every side by jealous rivals or hostile neighbours, and it seemed doubtful whether the unity which was the dream of Stein in 1806, and of the Revolutionists in 1848, could ever be attained, except by a policy of blood and iron. Certain it is that Bismarck, the architect of united Germany, saw in the policy of successful war the only means of realizing German nationality, and of constructing the edifice of national greatness so firmly that it should stand "foursquare to all the winds that blow." The three hammer strokes of 1864, 1866, and 1870, were needed to achieve this result, but the strength and precision of those hammer blows were prepared by long years of patient, self-sacrificing labour, during which the German forces were made "as certain of victory as anything in human calculation can be made certain, by their superiority at every point." Of this process and development, inspiring the whole nation to manful effort and to individual sacrifice for the common fatherland, even if it be in preparation for death or victory on the battlefield, I said that "it is an excellent policy. It is, or should be, the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history." And I repeat that statement to-day, when the glorious achievements of the younger Nations in Arms have lent point to its truth, while they have established their claims to nationhood and the gratitude of hundreds of thousands of their kinsmen.

But to suggest that I am urging upon England that it should be her policy, first, to arm herself better than Germany, and then to make war on Germany, with or without a just cause, with or without even a quarrel, simply because England thinks herself at that moment able to win a war--this is a suggestion so strange and so repugnant to my mind that I am utterly at a loss to understand how it could be attributed to me, or elicited from my speech. A moment's reflection will show the vast difference between the position of Germany, with which I was dealing, and that of England to-day. While Germany, owing to her rapidly expanding population and vast economic development, is impelled to look for means of expansion in a world which is already for the most part parcelled out, we, on the other hand, do not require or seek another square mile of dominion. Our object must be to develop the resources of our Empire, commercially, industrially, and socially. But in order to be able to do so we must be in a position to defend ourselves successfully against aggression, and so to remove the temptation which a wealthy but ill-defended Empire must always offer to a strong and virile people, proud of its achievements and conscious of its fitness to fill a greater place amid the nations. My whole speech was directed, therefore--as are all my efforts--to impressing upon my fellow-countrymen the terrible danger which is involved in the present situation, in which we alone find ourselves, as a nation, untrained, unorganized, and unarmed, amid a Europe in which every people, not only great Powers like Russia, Germany, and France, but the smaller States--Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--stand as armed nations, providing a balance of forces which, while it strengthens each one of them physically and industrially, makes for peace with honour--or for the triumph of the right.

Yours very truly, ROBERTS, F.M.