LORD KITCHENER.
fTo THE EDITOR or THE " SEECIATOR."] BIR,—In the first issue of the Spectator after Lord Kitchener's death you said that a sense of personal loss had suddenly visited all Englishmen. That sentence was to me a key which unlocked the confused and complex maze of my emotions. I had loved the great soldier ever since reading the judgment of an early biographer that when Kitchener was twenty-one years of age at Aldershot he combined great efficiency in tent-pegging with active Church-going. But why was I, a mere unit among millions, feeling his death so acutely? The opening words of the Spectator article told me why. I was experiencing a sense of personal loss.
Happily nothing has been said by Lord Esher or any other writer in derogation of Kitchener's unehadowed personal character.. Upon that essential point no revision is anticipated even sixty years hence. Kitchener's place in the Great War, not his most enthusiastic devotee can now deny, has become problematic. His confession, " I am too old," seems final. But do not let us forget certain responsible and representative estimates of that " place " based not upon what he felt or said but what he did. For example, it was declared that Kitchener saw the real situation at a glance, and perceived three years ahead when the maximum strength of the Army would be needed. The " miracle " was that he created as well as ex- panded armies. May I add with what gratitude I found that neither in the Spectator's leading article nor in its review of Lord Esher's " Tragedy " last week was there the slightest with- drawal of the belief that Kitchener was universally trusted. Again, apart from what he felt or said, when Kitchener asked the men of England to join up they did join up. It was stated in the House of Commons that the workers of England trusted Kitchener because they found him to be straight. I think that it was the Daily Telegraph, on the morning after the news of Kitchener's death had come, that said : " The brave eyes which had faced so many dangerous and difficult passages in life looked steadily into the face of death. One thing in God's good mercy is possible—that to those eyes, always strained to pierce the future, there was vouchsafed in the storm and in the dark- ness and in the death agony the vision of the eternal."—I am,
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