IN DEFENCE OF LORD KITCHENER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Pray give to a man who has never before written a letter to a newspaper, nor taken any public part, an opportunity of associating himself with you and the few other men who are protesting against the base and scandalous attempt that is being persistently made to blacken Lord Kitchener's memory, and rob it of the prestige which it gathered during a lifetime of splendid Imperial service, the crowning point of which was his conduct of the war during the first eighteen months.
Of Lord Kitchener, it is no exaggeration to say that he saved the country. He was the one man needed—the man with a personality that appealed to the multitude, and a physical pre- ecience that corresponded to the picture of their imagination. I believe there is not a living soldier who would deny that Lord Kitchener was the only man who could have done what he did in the matter of raising the New Armies. So great was his per- sonality that it is likely he will become legendary for the part lie played in the early months of the Great War. As to his pre- science, has the country forgotten the shock with which it read his speech in the House of Lords predicting a three years' war? And at the present moment, without boasting, are there not signs that his forecast will prove nearly accurate?
Finally, as a proof of the man's essential humility, remember the closing sentence of that speech, which I paraphrase from memory : " If it is not finished by that time, others will need to take on the work." The Prussian mind would have promised to be in Berlin in three years signing peace as conquerors. But Kitchener was merely an Englishman. As a trained scientific soldier he made the careful calculation, but he took into account the moral factor that might make his calculation fail of exact- ness. But he was rightly confident that the job which he took up would be finished by his countrymen soon or late. Let our English Prussians keep their hands off a great man, one of the greatest men the last hundred years have seen.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Claypitts house, Earls Coins, Essex.
ANDREW MELROSE.
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