page_title: Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts
section_title: National Service League
hierarchical_section_title: Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts / Later life / National Service League
caption_attribution_description: English: FIELD-MARSHALL EARL ROBERTS
context_page_description: Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, VC, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, KStJ, VD, PC, FRSGS, was a British Victorian era general who became one of the most successful British military commanders of his time. Born in India to an Anglo-Irish family, Roberts joined the East India Company Army and served as a young officer in the Indian Rebellion during which he won a Victoria Cross for gallantry. He was then transferred to the British Army and fought in the Expedition to Abyssinia and the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in which his exploits earned him widespread fame. Roberts would go on to serve as the Commander-in-Chief, India before leading British Forces to success in the Second Boer War. He also became the last Commander-in-Chief of the Forces before the post was abolished in 1904.
  A man of small stature, Roberts was affectionately known to his troops and the wider British public as "Bobs" and revered as one of Britain's leading military figures at a time when the British Empire reached the height of its power.
context_section_description: In retirement he was a keen advocate of introducing conscription in Britain (directing the National Service League) to prepare for a great European war. Following his return from the Boer War, he was instrumental in promoting the mass training of civilians in rifle shooting skills through membership of shooting clubs, and a facsimile of his signature appears to this day on all official targets of the National Smallbore Rifle Association.
  In 1907 a selection of his speeches was published under the title A Nation in Arms. Roberts provided William Le Queux with information for his novel The Invasion of 1910 and checked the proofs. In 1910 Roberts' friend Ian Hamilton, in co-operation with the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, published Compulsory Service in which he attacked Roberts' advocacy of conscription. This caused much hurt to Roberts. He replied, with the help of Leo Amery and J. A. Cramb, with Fallacies and Facts (1911).
  In an important speech in Manchester's Free Trade Hall on 22 October 1912 Roberts pointed out that Cobden and Bright's prediction that peace and universal disarmament would follow the adoption of free trade had not happened. He further warned of the threat posed by Germany:
  In the year 1912, 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...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...complete supremacy by land and sea.
  He claimed that Germany was making enormous efforts to prepare for war and ended his speech by saying:
  Gentlemen, only the other day I completed my eightieth year...and the words I am speaking to-day are, therefore, old words—the result of years of earnest thought and practical experience. But, Gentlemen, my fellow-citizens and fellow-Britishers, citizens of this great and sacred trust, this Empire, if these were my last 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 say, “Arm and prepare to acquit yourselves like men, for the day of your ordeal is at hand.”
  The historian A. J. A. Morris claimed that this speech caused a sensation due to Roberts' warnings about Germany. It was much criticised by the Liberal and Radical press. The Manchester Guardian was disgusted at the
  insinuation that the German Government's views of international policy are less scrupulous and more cynical than those of other Governments...Prussia's character among nations is, in fact, not very different from the character which Lancashire men give to themselves as compared with other Englishmen. It is blunt, straightforward, and unsentimental.
  The Nation claimed Roberts had an "unimaginative soldier's brain" and that Germany was "a friendly Power" who since 1870 "has remained the most peaceful and the most self-contained, though doubtless not the most sympathetic, member of the European family". The historian John Terraine, writing in 1993, said: "At this distance of time the verdict upon Lord Robert's Manchester speech must be that, in speaking out clearly on the probability of war, he was doing a patriotic service comparable to Churchill's during the Thirties".
caption: Field Marshal Earl Roberts
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