trying, and--well, I'm jolly well going to do it." In these words,
uttered many years ago to a group of brother officers in the mess room
of the 19th Hussars, Sir John French quite unconsciously epitomised
his own character in a way no biographer can hope to equal. The
conversation had turned upon luck, a word that curiously enough was
later to be so intimately associated with French's name. One man had
stoutly proclaimed that all promotion was a matter of luck, and French
had claimed that only work and ability really counted in the end. Yet
"French's luck" has become almost a service proverb--for those who
have not closely studied his career. Luck is frequently a word used to
explain our own failure and another man's success.

Not that success and John French could ever have been strangers. There
are some happy natures whose destiny is never in doubt, Providence
having apparently planned it half a century ahead. Sir John French is
a striking instance of this. Destiny never had any doubt about the
man. He was born to be a fighter. On his father's side he comes of the
famous old Galway family of which Lord de Freyne, of French Park, Co.
Roscommon, is now the head. By tradition the Frenches are a naval
family, although there have been famous soldiers as well as famous
sailors amongst its members. There was, for instance, the John French
who fought in the army of King William, leading a troop of the
Enniskillen Dragoons at Aughrim in 1689.

Sir John French is himself the son of a sailor, Commander J.T.W.
French, who on retiring from the Navy settled down on the beautiful
little Kentish estate of Ripplevale, near Walmer. Here John Denton
Pinkstone French was born on September 28, 1852, in the same year as
his future colleague, General Joffre. His mother, a Miss Eccles, was
the daughter of a Scotch family resident near Glasgow.