CHAPTER XXXI

LORD KITCHENER--PERSONAL TRAITS AND INCIDENTS

It does not appear that Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept the Mediterranean post to which he was assigned has impaired his popularity or diminished the general confidence in him. Possibly even official confidence survives, in a degree. The tone of the Prime Minister's replies to questions about the refusal may denote resentment but hardly censure. So I think I may still venture to reprint sundry personal reminiscences which were written before this collision between the great soldier and the Prime Minister--or was it the War Minister?--had occurred.

"The greatest chief-of-staff living," said the Germans of Lord Kitchener; possibly with a reservation in favour of themselves. They would not go beyond that limited panegyric. The remark was made by a German officer, high in rank, not long after the Boer war, and it was Paardeberg which rankled in his German mind and would not suffer him to award to the English general a great power of leadership in the field. But I believe German opinion on that battle has {293} since undergone revision. Whether it has or not Lord Kitchener's military renown can easily take care of itself; nor is it his soldiership which I am going to discuss. I happen to have met him now and then, and what else I have to say about him is personal. I hope not too personal.

It was on a journey from London to Alderbrook, Mr. Ralli's beautiful place in Sussex, that I first saw Lord Kitchener. We were a week-end party and went down together in a saloon carriage. The figure which next to Lord Kitchener's stands out clearest is the late Lord Glenesk's still in the vigour of his versatile powers and accomplishments and attractions. The occasion was the more interesting because Lord Kitchener had then lately returned from Egypt, and from that victorious campaign which he, and he alone, had planned and carried through from beginning to end in strict fulfilment of the scheme framed before the actual preparations for it had been begun. This also might induce our German military friends to reconsider that chief-of-staff opinion above quoted.

It was known that this second hero of Khartoum--Gordon being the first--was to travel by this train. It was an express, and there was no stop before Guildford. But consider the enthusiasm of the British people when they have a real hero. The stations through which the train thundered at forty miles an hour were crowded with people. They could not get so much as a glimpse of their idol, but they stood and cheered and waved their hats to the train and the invisible hero-traveller. {294}

When we reached Guildford six or seven thousand people thronged that station. They hurrahed for "Kitchener," and as the cries for "Kitchener" met with no response, they were raised again and again. Lord Kitchener sat in a corner, buried in a rough grey overcoat, silent and bored. He had no taste for "ovations" and triumphal greetings. Lord Glenesk told him he really must show himself and acknowledge these salutations. So Lord Kitchener rose, with an ill grace, walked to one of the open doors of the saloon, raised his hand with a swift military jerk to his bowler, and retreated. The tumult increased but he would not show himself a second time. The cheers rolled on without effect. The idol would not be idolized. It was not ill-temper but indifference. He was in mufti and it was the soldier the multitude demanded to see. In truth, Lord Kitchener's appearance at the moment was not military. It was remarked by his fellow-passengers that he showed to little advantage in his grey clothes, none too well fitting. When evening came he was another man, just as unmistakably the soldier as if in full uniform.

He was at that time brooding over his Gordon College scheme for Khartoum. He wanted £100,000, and he doubted whether he should get it. In vain his friends urged him to make his appeal.

"No," said Lord Kitchener, "nothing less than £100,000 will be of any use. It is a large sum. I should not like to fail, and if they gave {295} me only part of the amount I should have to return it."

He was told that his name would be enough. It was the psychological moment. Delay would only injure his chances. Lord Glenesk offered him £1000 across the dinner table, and other sums were offered there and then, and the support of two powerful newspapers was promised. Still he hesitated, and still he repeated, "I should not like to fail." At last one of the company said:

"Well, Lord Kitchener, if you had doubted about your campaign as you do about this you would never have got to Khartoum."

His face hardened and his reply was characteristic of the man:

"Perhaps not; but then I could depend on myself and now I have to depend on the British public."

But he did ask for the money and got all and more than all he wanted with no difficulty whatever. It appeared that the British public also was to be depended on.

The United States Government was at this time in some perplexity about the Philippines, where matters were not going well. Lord Kitchener asked what we were going to do about it and how we meant to govern the 1200 islands. He seemed to think they were giving us more trouble than they ought. I explained that the business of annexing territory on the other side of the globe was a new one to us, that down to within a few years the American Republic was self-contained, {296} that we had therefore no machinery for the purpose, no civil or military servants intended or trained for distant duties, no traditions, no experience of any kind, and no men. Whoever went to the Philippines had to learn his business from the beginning, and the business was a very difficult one.

Lord Kitchener listened to all this, thought a moment, looked across the table, and said: "I should like to govern them for you." And although it was not said seriously and could not be, it was evident that Lord Kitchener would very well have liked to take over a job of that kind had it been possible. His mind turned readily to executive, administrative, and creative work. The task of reducing eight or nine millions of Filipinos and other races to order was one for which he was fitted.

Not long after that, an American who had already once been Civil Governor of the Philippines for a short time resumed that post and held it for two years. He won the confidence of the people. Out of chaos he brought order. He set up an administrative system. He treated the natives justly. He brought them to co-operate with their rulers. When he left, he left behind him a Government incomparably better than the islands had ever known. Life, liberty, property, all civil and personal rights, were protected. Progress had begun. Trade and commerce had begun to flourish and have continued to flourish so far as tariff conditions permit. Loyalty, a sentiment {297} never before known, though a plant of slow growth, prevails. Rebellions are at an end. The name of the American who accomplished all this, or laid the foundations of it all within two years, is Taft. He is now President of the United States.

The last time I saw Lord Kitchener was at a house in one of the Southern counties, in 1902. He was then on his way to take up the commandership-in-chief of India. He drove over to luncheon from another house some sixteen miles away. Luncheon, usually at 1 o'clock, had been put off till 1.30 because of the distance he and his friends had to drive; a great concession. But the roads were heavy and they arrived just before 2. Lord Kitchener said to me as we were going in: "Look at me. I really cannot sit down to lunch in all this dirt." I suggested that he should come to my room. He did, and after spending ten minutes on his toilet emerged looking not much less the South African campaigner than when he began.

He said: "You don't seem to approve."

"Oh, I was only wondering what you had been doing for ten minutes. But late as we are there is one thing you must see."

And I took him to the hall where stand those two figures in damascened armour inlaid with gold, Anne de Montmorenci and the Constable de Bourbon, whom a Herbert of the sixteenth century had taken prisoners. They woke the soldier in this dusty traveller.

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"If I were a Frenchman I think I should try to get them back."

"It has been tried. One of their descendants offered £20,000 for the pair, but you see they are still here."

We found the rest of the company at table, where a place next his hostess was waiting for him. If you had seen Lord Kitchener for the first time you would have felt that his toilet did not much matter. The man's personality was the thing. There are many men who produce an impression of power, but with this man it was military power. You could not take him for anything but a soldier. Not at all the soldier as he presents himself to the youthful imagination. He was not in uniform; no English soldier ever is except on duty or on occasions of ceremony. But it is possible to be a soldier without gold lace or gilt buttons, and to appear to be. The carriage of his head, rising out of square shoulders, announced him a soldier; so did his pale grey-blue, steel-blue eyes, and the air of command; a quite unconscious air for the simplicity of his bearing was as remarkable as anything about him. It has been said he is not a natural leader of men, not a man whom other men follow in the field just because they cannot help it; that he does not "inspire" his soldiers. I doubt it; but even were it so he is a man whose orders other men must obey when they are sent. His pale steel-blue eyes have in them the hard light of the desert. I believe, in fact, the light of the desert, which we consider a poetic thing, injured {299} his eyes. But there is in them that far-off look as of one whose sight has ranged over great spaces for great intervals of time. The races of South-eastern Europe and of Central Asia have it. There has been seen in London a beautiful girl who has it; gazing out, from the graceful movement of the waltz, on a distant horizon much beyond the walls of a ballroom.

Yet as Lord Kitchener sits there talking at luncheon the hardness of the face softens. The merciless eyes grow kindly and human; you may forget, if you like, the frontal attack at Paardeberg and the corpse-strewn plains of Omdurman, and remember only that an English gentleman who has made a study of the science of war sits there, devoting himself to the entertainment of two English ladies. It is a picture which has a charm of its own. And it is a Kitchener of whom you hear none too often. That is why you hear of him in these social circumstances from me. Most men have a human side to them. Even "K." has, and sometimes allows it to be seen.

He had a human side when he departed without leave from the Military Academy at Woolwich to take a look for himself at what was going on near the French frontier in July or August 1870, when the Prussians were giving their French neighbours a lesson in the art of war that seemed to young Kitchener a lesson likely to be more profitable than those of Woolwich; so he went. It was a grave breach of discipline. I never heard how the matter was settled but it {300} did not keep Kitchener out of the army for he entered the Royal Engineers the next year. But I imagine we all like him the better for such an adventure.

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