India and Tibet : vol.1 / 237 ページ（カラー画像）

0237	India and Tibet : vol.1
インドとチベット : vol.1

0237

India and Tibet : vol.1

インドとチベット : vol.1

SHEPPARD AND OTTLEY 193

paigns for his bravery. Here he added daily to his

reputation, and he and Captain Ottley were the two

ki whom I, as an onlooker—seeing a good deal, if not always

most, of the game—singled out to myself as having in them

the surest signs of military genius. In a military career

so much depends on chance that these two may very

possibly sink down to the usual humdrum. respectable

!1 commander or staff officer. But I will stake my reputa-

â tion as a prophet that, if the chance ever does come to

either of them before routine and examinations have

quenched their burning vitality, they will make a mark

like Lord Roberts or like the daring Hodson of Hodson's

Horse.

Here I must in a brief parenthesis criticize some re-

h marks I heard Mr. Roosevelt, for whom otherwise I have

the greatest admiration, make to the Cambridge University

Union Society. He said that in public life and in the

army geniuses were not wanted, but that what was required

were average men with the ordinary qualities developed

by the men themselves to an extraordinary degree. In

~► this I most profoundly disagree. It is not the ordinary

ü average man, however much lie may develop his mediocrity,

that is most wanted. It is the exceptional man. It is the

t man with just that touch which we cannot possibly define,

but which we all instinctively recognize as genius. 'There

is a superabundance of ordinary men, and it must be

admitted that they do ordinary work very much better

than geniuses. But it is the genius alone who, when the

M occasion arises, will flash a ray through these masses of

ordinary men, and make them do what they would never

do with any amount of development of their ordinary

plodding qualities. And it is of the highest importance to

find out these exceptional men. But the way to do this

is not by examinations—unless those who are least capable

of passing them are chosen. It is by letting the best

select the best, by letting the proved best select whom

they think promise best.

All this, however, is by way of interlude, and is merely

one of the many reflections I made while I was myself

under enforced inactivity, and had nothing much else to

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