TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD KITCHENER.
IN attempting an appreciation of the character of the great soldier whom all Englishmen mourn, we need not sur- vey the familiar achievements that marked him out as the right man to be Secretary for War in our time of great stress. Every one knows of the steadfast patience with which (as surely as by the iron road laid across the desert, the very symbol of his scientific method) Kitchener obliterated the power of the Mahdi. Every one knows how he "cleared up" South Africa in a military sense in the latter part of the Boer War. Every one knows how he remodelled the defences of India, and how he visited Australasia and was received as a trusted adviser when our truly democratic brothers over the seas were laying upon every citizen the obligation to defend his inheritance in arms. Every one knows that Kitchener was the greatest of our soldier-organizers. We want rather to examine his qualities as they presented themselves during the war. The central fact in Kitchener's administration of the War Office is that he both invented and created the New Armies, and that he did it of his own motion, alone bearing the responsi- bility of the idea, and almost alone stubbornly asserting and reasserting the belief that this miracle was possible. Beside this everything else that Kitchener did seems of small account. Beside this everything else that he did not do, or that he did wrong, can be forgiven and forgotten. His claim to greatness as Secretary for War is firmly established by his one great act of prescience and construction. Events have moved so rapidly that it is not easy to cast the mind back and look with the eyes of nearly two years ago upon the situation as Kitchener then saw it. He saw a country utterly unprepared for a great Continental war. There was none of the material to equip a host. There were no rifles in reserve, no ammunition, no guns, no uniforms, no officers, and no men, when one had written off the splendidly trained Expeditionary Force already abroad and the Territorial Force legally destined for home defence. Even our most intelligent and adaptable officers thought, so far as we remember, that we must be content to make the best of the bad job which had been handed down to us by sins of omission. That is to say, they believed that there was now nothing for it but to try to keep reinforcing a make-weight Army which by its pre-eminent skill and training might succeed in inclining the balance to the side of our Allies. They saw no hope but to rely upon the old policy of Chatham even in the tremendously changed circumstances of to-day. Lord Kitchener, consulting no one but himself, took a far larger view. He announced his belief that the war would last three years, and that great Armies could and must be created. Others were sensible, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, of the desperate position of our outnumbered troops abroad who were being hammered to death where they stood. It was quite natural that this feeling of pity and passion for rescue should prevail. It seemed that there and then in Flanders the fate of the Empire was being decided, and that the only rational thing to do was to send every officer, N.C.O., and man who had already had a respectable military training to harden the thinning line and take the places of those who were daily falling. That was natural, we say, in onlookers who were conscious that a terrible crisis had already arrived, and that even if great new Armies could be created they would probably be too late. "Where," they asked, "is the equipment ? How can you officer the Armies ? How can you get enough men under our s oluntary system ? " Kitchener never wavered. The mis- givings of other men were natural, but his own faith. and confidence were supernatural. He believed that the Armies could be created somehow, and he conjured them up out of the dust. As for the Expeditionary Force abroad, which must meanwhile"hold on, he thought that it might be able to do it successfully. But he believed that even if it could not— such was his length of view— our only hope of ultimate success was to put great Armies in the field and help to drive the Germans back, though in the meanwhile they might have reached the Atlantic seaboard. Knowing what we all know now, which one of us will say that Kitchener was wrong ? Rather, who will be daring enough to deny that he was magiufi- cently- right ? Surely he fairly earned by his grand stubborn- ness and independence the deepest gratitude it is possible for man to win. He saved us.
And then in this great act of creation Kitchener wielded an influence which would have belonged to no other man. No one else could haveJ4e it with so little friction. In looking back we are incl. ed to say that there was no friction. It was marvellous. Kitchener had the reputation of being a forbidding and austere man, rather sphinx-like and inhuman. The explanation was probably that he was shy, and never overcame some of the social clumsiness of shyness. Of course, he was a bad man to quarrel with ; any one of his supreme independence would be. But those who knew him best testify to his almost childlike simplicity among his friends and his affectionate loyalty to those whom lie trusted. Certainly there must have been much in this side of him, for the notorious fact is that in his dealings as Secretary for War with the leaders of Labour he was respected and. liked to a degree that must have astonished those who took the legendary view of his character. Trade Union officials used to say that he was like a father to them ; he was so accessible, so sympathetic, and so reasonable. It should be remembered that he made exactly the same impression on the Boer leaders at Vereeniging, where the friendly confidence he evoked was the equivalent of a stroke of statesmanship and did much to end the war happily and honourably.
We often criticized somewhat sharply Lord Kitchener's methods of recruiting. And logically we still think we were right. But we must confess that now that the millions of men have been successfully drawn into the net, we can say with certainty that Kitchener's methods were good enough to "get there," whereas we cannot with certainty say the same thing of our own suggestions. His method, which, at all events, succeeded whether it was inherently right or wrong, was a method of secrecy. lie, did not take the nation into his confidence and say, in effect : "I want so many men ; at present I have only got such-and-such a number, but know I can safely trust to the gallant British people to make good the required number." With his great reputation and popularity, he could at any moment have told the people to do anything he liked, and we think they would have done it enthusiastically. But he had none of the arts of setting people on fire by public speeches. He had no glimmering of the histrionic talent of Nelson. He wrapped his schemes in a kind of Oriental mystery. Yet we fully confess that some- how or other he put the necessary pressure on us all. Ho never allowed us to feel that we could rest content with our efforts. He kept us, so to speak, in a funk, because we never knew whether we were securing our safety or not, Whether Kitchener thought all this out as a psychological problem we do not know, but at least his instincts about his country- men were absolutely true. When the standard of measure- ments was raised—unwisely, we thought—emulation was very likely excited. Men wanted to force the forbidden door. As Dickens said, a play is bound to be a success, irrespective of its merits, if people hear that they cannot get into the theatre.
Kitchener was, to put it in a word, no idealist. He treated the nation with the instincts of a brilliant sergeant. His defect as an organizer was the common defect of organizers. He liked personally to watch the progress of every part of the machine and to hold every lever in his own hands. Much might have turned out differently if he had not accepted too much responsibility. It would be treating the memory of a truly great man with something like contempt to pretend that his qualities had none of thee defects. But for the immensity of his qualities let his achievement speak. He looked clearly into the future and provided for it. His astonishing self-dependence gave us the New Armies. Without him we should not have had them.
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