FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
LORD KITCHENER ENTERING OMDURMAN AFTER THE BATTLE
From a painting by Charles $1. Sheldon
1
FIELD-MARSHAL t
LORD KITCHENER
in!
His Life and W^or]^ for the Empire
BY
E. S. GREW, M.A.
Author of "A History of the War with the Boers" Contributor to "The Great World War"
AND OTHERS
VOLUME I
THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY
34-35 Southampton Street, Strand, London
1916
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NOTE
The chapters are initialled by the several contributors, namely: —
E. S. G. Edwin Sharpe Grew. W. H. Wentworth Huyshe.
G. T. George Turnbull.
(Vol.1)
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The whole of Lord Kitchener's life, seen in retrospect, is an ennobling lesson in duty and patriotism, discipline and efficiency. It is in the hope of revealing those deep-seated, sterling qualities, which made him ever ready to sacrifice all other things to the single aim of maintaining his country's honour and purpose, that the present life -story has been undertaken. The laborious steps by which Lord Kitchener rose to the place where he became the Empire's indispensable right arm in her hour of need are traced by writers who have been generously assisted in certain of the chapters by kinsfolk and friends of the late War Minister.
For his account of the Palestine period, which throws a flood of light on the character and mentality of the soldier- archaeologist, Mr. Grew is indebted to the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, who kindly permitted him to make his illuminating extracts from Kitchener's letters and journals to the Society, as well as to reproduce one of the interesting photographs taken at the time by Kitchener him- self. The quotations afford one of the most intimate self- revelations which Kitchener ever made in writing, and fully testify to the way in which the beauty, the interest, and the sentiment of the Holy Land had seized on their observer.
Mr. Turnbull, who in the present volume deals with
vl PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Kitchener's homes and ancestry (among other phases of the subject), is able to give a considerable amount of interesting information regarding the great soldier's early life, and his various estates both at home and abroad; while Mr. Went- worth Huyshe, War Correspondent for The Times in the Soudanese Campaign of 1885, writes with intimate knowledge of this and other stages of Lord Kitchener's military career. By these, and other contributors in the later volumes, the course of Lord Kitchener's romantic career is thus traced down to the closing tragedy off the Orkneys on the evening of June 5th, 1916.
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I Pa<e
THE MAN : HIS CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT - i
The Man and the Hour — "He inspired us all with the Utmost Confi- dence"— Kitchener and his Colleagues — Soldiers and the Leader — Popular Ideas of Kitchener — Revised Estimates — Labour's Tribute — Great Britain's Appreciation — The Prime Minister's Testimony — Kitchener's Personal Traits — The Words of his Friends — Continuous Evolution of Kitchener's Career and Powers — Eastern Influences — His Handling and Training of the Egyptian Army — Knowledge of the Soudan and Familiarity with its Problems — The Years of Preparation — Kitchener's Recognition of the Indispensability of a Strategic Railway — Omdurman and Khartoum: the End of the First Phase of his Career — His Exercise of Statesmanship — The Influence of the War in South Africa on his Future — Experiment in making a Modern Army in India — Kitchener and Greater Britain — Application of Theories of Modern Armies to Great Britain — The Test of the Great War and the Making of Imperial Armies.
CHAPTER II
LORD KITCHENER'S HOMES AND UPBRINGING - - 34
Kitchener's Ancestry — Homes in Suffolk — His Father's Estates in Ireland — Like Father, like Son — Kitchener's Home in Kent and his Estates in East Africa — His Island on the Nile — Other Homes and Haunts — Careers of his Three Brothers — His Sister and other Relations — Boyhood of Kit- chener— His Early Life Abroad — Training at Woolwich — Volunteer in the Franco - Prussian War— Its Object-lessons for Kitchener — Army Troubles of the Period — Commission in the Royal Engineers.
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER III pagc
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 63
Lieutenant Kitchener's Appointment to the Survey of Palestine — Work of the Palestine Exploration Fund — Kitchener's Archaeological Work — His Rescue of Lieutenant Conder from Drowning — The Attack on Lieutenant Conder and Lieutenant Kitchener at Safed — Lieutenant Kit- chener's Second Visit to Palestine, as Director of the Survey — The Last Fight of the Crusaders — Caves of Irbid — Survey of the Shores of the Sea of Galilee — Kitchener's Description of his Dealings with the Natives and of their Customs — Jews, Christians, and Bedouins — End and Summary of the Survey — Cyprus, Anatolia, and Egypt — A Journey to Palestine from Egypt for the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1883 — The Sinai Peninsula — The Tomb of Aaron — Kitchener's Return to Egypt by the Desert.
CHAPTER IV
LORD KITCHENER'S EARLY CAMPAIGNS IN EGYPT - 95
Kitchener's First Associations with Egypt — Salient Features of his Egyp- tian and Soudanese Record — Egypt before the British Occupation — Origin of British Power in Egypt — Ismail's Ruinous Reign — The Story of Arabi Pasha — Kitchener's Share in the Egyptian Campaign of 1882 — Evelyn Wood as Sirdar — Kitchener as Second in Command of Egyptian Cavalry — The Rise of Mahdism — Loss of the Soudan — Kitchener and Gordon — How he won over the Mudir of Dongola — His Adventures in Disguise — Bennet Burleigh's Impressions — Kitchener's Efforts to save Gordon — Gordon's Faith in Kitchener — Fall of Khartoum — Kitchener's Official Report.
CHAPTER V
PREPARING THE RECONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN - 129
Death of the Mahdi — Kitchener returns to England — Boundary Com- mission in Zanzibar — Governor -General of the Red Sea Littoral — At Grips with Osman Digna — Kitchener wounded — A.D.C. to Queen Victoria — With Sir Francis Grenfell at Gemaizeh — Kitchener and his Soudanese Troops — His Share in the Victories at Gemaizeh and Toski — Sir Samuel Baker's Tribute — Kitchener succeeds Grenfell as Sirdar — Current Criticism of the Appointment — Lord Cromer and the New Sirdar — Accession of Abbas II — His Sneer at the Sirdar's Egyptian Soldiery — His Punishment — Reconquest of the Soudan decided upon — Slatin Pasha's Escape — The Story of the Dongola Expedition — First Stage of the Reconquest completed.
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER VI Page
THE ATBARA BATTLE AND THE DESERT RAILWAY - 162
Egypt, the Nile, and the Desert Railway — Girouard's Work — Ruling the Steel Lines — Hunter's Raid on Abu Hamed — Kitchener's Improvised Tele- graph Transport — Completion of Line from Wady Haifa to Abu Hamed — Rolling Stock — Gunboats — Railway Extension to the Atbara River—- In Omdurman with the Khalifa — Mahmud summoned from Kordofan — The Sirdar seizes Berber — Reinforcement by a British Brigade — Concen- tration at Berber — Kassala taken over from the Italians — The River Atbara — Mahmud's Advance froim Metammeh — His Interrupted Plan — Kitchener advances to Kenur — Colonel Broadwood's Reconnaissances of Mahmud — The Raid on Shendi — Hunter's Discovery of Mahmud's Dispositions and Zareba — The Sirdar's Decision — The Final Reconnais- sance— Broadwood's Action — The Night March to Mahmud's Camp on the Atbara — The Plan of Mahmud's Stockade — The Atbara Battle — The Advance on the Thorn Hedge — Gatacre's Camerons — The Soudanese Rush — The Destruction of the Dervish Force — Mahmud's Capture — His Reply to the Sirdar — The Sirdar's Policy — The Soldiers' Cheers for Kitchener — The First Lesson.
CHAPTER VII
GORDON AVENGED - - ~- - - . . _ 201
Results Material and Moral of the Atbara Victory — The Army for the Omdurman Expedition— Atbara Camp— Wad Hamed the Advanced Base — Shabluka Gorge— The « Friendlies "—March from Wady-el-Abid in Fighting Formation— First Sight of the Dervishes near Kerreri — " Khar- toum " in Sight — The Khalifa's Battle Array of 50,000 Men — Sirdar and Khalifa— The Halt— Shelling the Mahdi's Tomb— Position between Sorgham Ridge and Kerreri Hills — Possibilities of a Night Attack— The Morning of the Battle— Dervish Movements— The Khalifa's Plan of Battle— Frontal Attacks by the Dervishes— Rout of the White Flags — Collapse of First Dervish Attack— The Sirdar's Counter-attack — Task of the zist Lancers— An Ambuscade— Charge of the zist Lancers— Risks of the Sirdar's Advance — Echelon Movement and Macdonald's Brigade — Yakub's Attack on Macdonald— The Sirdar's Change of Front— Broad- wood's Share in the Battle— The Delayed Green Flags— Their Attack shattered by Macdonald's Soudanese and the Lincolns — Kitchener orders the Advance— His Summary of the Battle— Flight of the Khalifa— Kit- chener's Entry into Omdurman— The Sirdar's Fearlessness— A Descrip- tion of Omdurman— Destruction of the Mahdi's Tomb— At Khartoum — The Gordon Memorial Service.
LIST OF PLATES
VOLUME I
Page
Lord Kitchener entering Omdurman after the Battle (in colour)
Frontispiece
Lord Kitchener : a Portrait taken during the Great War - - 12
Lieutenant-Colonel Kitchener - - - 36 Lord Kitchener's Birthplace : Gunsborough House, County Kerry 40
Lord Kitchener's Early Home : Crotta House, Kilflynn 40
Broome Park, Kent : Lord Kitchener's Country Residence 44
Lord Kitchener as a Baby on his Mother's Knee - - 52
Lord Kitchener as a Cadet at Woolwich Academy - - -56
Lord Kitchener as a Young Officer of the Royal Engineers 60
Elisha's Fountain at Jericho; from a Photograph by Lieutenant
H. H. Kitchener - ... 72
Lord Kitchener and his eldest Brother ..... go
Lord Kitchener in 1882 (Major of Egyptian Cavalry) - 100
Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. General Gordon - - -112
The Governor's Palace, Khartoum - 124
Lord Cromer. Major-General Sir Percy Girouard - - 154
Lord Kitchener in 1896 (Sirdar of the Egyptian Army) - - 168
The Sirdar, Sir H. H. Kitchener, and his A.D.C. - -. - - 176
The Charge of the 2 1st Lancers at Omdurman - - . - 226
xi
xii LIST OF PLATES
MAPS
Page
Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan - - - - 161
Plan to illustrate the Battle of the Atbara - » - - - 192
Plan to illustrate the Battle of Omdurman - -- • * - -219
The Upper Nile x- "- .--•-- at page 200
' FIELD-MARSHAL
LORD KITCHENER
CHAPTER I The Man : His Character and Development
The Man and the Hour — "He inspired us all with the Utmost Confidence" — Kitchener and his Colleagues — Soldiers and the Leader — Popular Ideas of Kitchener — Revised Estimates — Labour's Tribute — Great Britain's Appreciation — The Prime Minister's Testimony — Kitchener's Personal Traits — The Words of his Friends — Continuous Evolution of Kitchener's Career and Powers — Eastern In- fluences— His Handling and Training of the Egyptian Army — Knowledge of the Soudan and Familiarity with its Problems — The Years of Preparation — Kitchener's Recognition of the Indispensability of a Strategic Railway — Omdurman and Khar- toum: the End of the First Phase of his Career — His Exercise of Statesmanship — The Influence of the War in South Africa on his Future — Experiment in making a Modern Army in India — Kitchener and Greater Britain — Application of Theories of Modern Armies to Great Britain — The Test of the Great War and the Making of Imperial Armies.
HISTORY will not ask whether Lord Kitchener was a great soldier or a great organizer or a great ad- ministrator : it will know him for a great man. In the supreme crisis of Britain's history his countrymen turned to him as the one man whom the tremendous issues could not master, but who would be able to fashion the means with which to deal with them. They were confident of his devoted patriotism, his sleepless energy, his strength of will ; but they
VOL. I. 1 1
2 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
were confident, above all things, in the belief that these qualities would suffice in him for the work he had to do. Other men there have been who were great patriots and single-minded, strong of heart and will, who served Britain well; but among the others some stand isolated, because in them these qualities were joined for the sole purpose, it seemed, that they should be the instruments of their country's salvation in her hour of need. Of such was he.
The soldier who stood nearest to him in his last task, Lord French, and who spoke of him as a soldier — " the great and glorious soldier which I knew him to be" — put into words what the whole people felt of him : " He inspired us all with the utmost confidence, we relied upon him to lead us to victory, we knew we were v assured of his utmost help and support in trouble and difficulty — and that he would give us the fullest measure of credit in success". The soldierly estimate detaches the last clause and lays stress on that characteristic in Lord Kitchener which made him just and generous in praise. But his countrymen divined it too, and one of the most shining tributes to him was that paid by a Labour member in the House of Commons, who, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party, said that what they felt of Lord Kitchener was that he was straight.
He was reputed a hard man, extreme to mark what was done amiss. Those who had failed knew that the bitterest part of their failure would be that of explaining it to him. " I cannot have the safety of my troops made dependent on a cast horse- shoe,1* he once told an officer whose horse had fallen lame in carrying dispatches; and he gave no one the opportunity to make a slip twice. But that was because he was engaged on a business where the best excuses were of no avail to alter facts, where victory could not be won merely by good intentions, and where success was the only thing by which a man could expect to be judged.
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 3
It was Kitchener's business to be hard. It was necessary to him to know that his orders would be obeyed without fail. "I can't face CK' with a story like that," an officer was once heard to say of an occurrence in which there was a good reason why some delay in giving effect to Lord Kitchener's wishes should have taken place. The reason was a good one, the officer's personal responsibility in the matter was slight, but he knew that these considerations would not suffice for " K " ; and it was because Kitchener knew how to assure obedience without fail that he could command events. It was thus that he got things done, and that he ensured against the breakdown of his plans, which were not to be disarranged by luck or negligence or the miscarriage of somebody else's good in- tentions.
In him there was the aloofness of all great men, which is the aloofness of the spirit rather than of the temper. The common conception of him as a stern, silent man with steely eyes and unapproachable manner was wide of the mark. He was neither stern nor silent with those who worked with him; he was receptive, sympathetic, and helpful with those who had his confidence, or who, with the right credentials, sought it. All his life his work had been cast among men who were not men of words but of '.deeds, often of violent deeds, and often men who would have thwarted him if they could. Such an experience does not contribute to urbanity; it armoured Kitchener against the approach of those whom he had not a good reason for trusting. Nor was his confidence lightly or easily given. He was never a man of many friends; the few he had he trusted without reservation, and for them would do anything; it is perhaps no less a tribute to the value of his trust and confidence that his friends would do anything for him.
But as he grew older, and time and death narrowed the circle of his intimates, he did not replace them. He was not expansive; he was by nature reserved; and, undemonstrative
4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
himself, he retreated from demonstrativeness in others. But as a man to work with he captured confidence as he captured efficiency. Men believed in him; they did not stop to ask if he was generous, because they knew him to be just; and strong men and efficient men ask no more. It would be idle to deny that in the army he had critics. Lord French, who by his own admission did not always see eye to eye with him, was not the only one; but an army is an organism which by its nature and training is made up of units who are men of stub- born will and masterful inclinations. Even a Kitchener cannot dominate such an organism without arousing opposition or condemnation, and in his methods of governance persuasion was not a large factor. But he secured from his colleagues the most valuable kind of confidence — the confidence which arose from a belief in his strict efficiency. Kitchener's way might not be their way, but it was a way which would not fail. "We depended on him to help us," said Lord French; and no higher professional compliment was ever paid to Kitchener than Lord French's offer, revealed afterwards by Lord French himself, to go out to France as Lord Kitchener's Chief of Staff, instead of in the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force, which had been designed for him.
The same confidence in Kitchener's ability ran through all ranks of the army. " None but Kitchener would have had the audacity to ask us to make regiments out of the raw material of the New Armies of 1914," said a colonel who had licked noo miners into a battalion, after beginning the task with the aid of two non-commissioned officers. But it was because the belief in Kitchener was so unshakable that when he gave men impossible tasks they undertook them — the tasks could not be impossible if Kitchener thought they must be done. This was the feeling with which he inspired the rank and file. They believed in him and trusted him. Even if they had thought themselves to be no more than the instru-
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 5
ments to carry out his purpose, they would know that their lives were precious to him because of the purpose, and that they would never be wasted.
They may have discerned, also, beneath the exterior which appeared to repel all sentiment or enthusiasm, the deep spring of sympathy and feeling which he was so careful not to betray. No leader ever made less bid for popularity. It was said of him that he was never known to speak to a private soldier — an exaggeration, doubtless, but one convey- ing accurately his relation to the mass of the armies he used. Yet when he rode by after the battle of the Atbara — the first great step on the long road — his troops cheered him and cheered again, unasked and unexpectedly — and greatly to his disconcertment. They often cheered him in after years, though his way always remained the same. There is one true story of him which has never before been told, but which seems to the writer who now tells it, to furnish the clue to that unsought love and admiration which the common soldier felt for the great man. When the news of Neuve Chapelle reached London, and the heavy tale of the losses became known to him, he was moved as none ever imagined of him. "My poor soldiers!" he repeated, " my poor soldiers ! " and for hours he paced his room at the War Office alone. . . . To him there was one supreme need — his country's need. To that he gave his own life. To that he never scrupled to sacrifice the wills, the careers, the lives if need be, of others. But though his heart was steeled to the sacrifice, it was not unmoved by it.
Such was Lord Kitchener as the army which called him " K " knew him. To the public he was a figure drawn to the conventional pattern of the iron-hearted, iron-willed autocrat. Those who met him in ordinary life were always surprised to find how little correspondence there was between this con- ventional portrait and his everyday demeanour. He had an
6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
unaffectedly cheerful manner ; there was something in it that one would certainly describe as good-humoured ; and he was communicative on subjects which interested him, though he had no small talk. He was very modest in giving his opinion on matters in which he was an accepted authority; but, pro- vided his hearer was an expert on a subject, he was ready and even eager to discuss it with him, his mind being, like all fine minds, carnivorous, deriving sustenance by selecting and digesting the best material in other minds.
Even those who saw and heard him on such public occa- sions as Guildhall banquets might have seen reason to revise the popular portrait. He had, in later years, an unexpected deliberateness. His speeches were written, and the way in which he slowly rose, drew out a pair of large -rimmed spectacles, and adjusted them as a preliminary to reading his carefully-framed sentences, was always a surprise to those who saw and heard him for the first time. He very much disliked making these speeches, and gave himself an amount of trouble and worry in preparing them which was quite unnecessary, taking into account their formal and deliberately unspeculative character — they were seldom much more informing than a lengthened communiqut. He could make a speech of another kind. There was one which we heard him deliver on his return from Khartoum, and which, though very short, was statesmanlike in diction, and its admirable phrases enhanced by his deep, pleasant voice — another surprise always to those who heard him speak for the first time. But it was in con- verse freed from restraints that he was at his best; and he never failed to be equal to the occasion when he could meet those whom he had to convince or persuade, face to face, and speak to them as man to man. It was no mere fashion of speaking that made Mr. Hodge, the Labour representative, say that Labour thought Kitchener straight. Labour had met him, and he had " had it out " with them, being in this respect
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 7
more successful than some of Labour's chosen representatives or temporary heroes. He was not less happy when, on the eve of his death, he met his House of Commons critics in a Committee Room conference, and emerged from this ordeal with a success with which, as Mr. Asquith bore witness, he was boyishly pleased. To explain these triumphs something must be granted to his power of handling men. But there is more to be granted to the belief he inspired in his integrity, and in the certainty that the one thing which he would put before all others was the safety, honour, and welfare of his country.
To the people of his country, those inarticulate millions whose opinion finds expression slowly but irrevocably, one may turn for the truth about him with more confidence than to many individuals who knew Lord Kitchener in varying degrees of intimacy or acquaintanceship. The people judged him as he judged other men, not by externals, but by what he did. They prized in him those qualities of cool resolution and doggedness which they like to think are essentially British qualities ; they condoned a suspected vehemence and im- patience of opposition ; and the questions of Kitchener's intellect or brilliance did not concern them at all. What they had in him above all other things was an undying trust that Kitchener, having taken a thing up, would see it through. In that he personified a British ideal ; it was the hall-mark of his career. Throughout his life he was always seeing the job through. The first and greatest exemplification of this ability in him was in his work in Egypt — fourteen years of patient organization, of waiting, of making Egyptian riflemen out of mud, of convincing his superiors, of moulding his staff in order to get the weapons he wanted. His life-work seemed crowned at Khartoum; his countrymen never have forgotten, and never will, that there he wiped a stain from the British flag.
If the British public could have had its way, they would
8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
have brought him to the War Office then and there, to begin a task which nobody has ever ended. But before that un- settled question could arise there was other work for him to do in South Africa. He went out to the Cape as Lord Roberts's Chief of Staff. What his value in that capacity was, his chief, Lord Roberts, testified. But the British people saw in him, besides, the man who was left with the task of tying up the loose ends. He did it in his irresistible, methodical way by his system of drives and blockhouses, and he did it in spite of all the imperfections of his raw material. In the Soudan he had rounded off his conquest by a piece of the most delicate and trying diplomacy at Fashoda, where he had to per- suade Colonel Marchand to return to Europe without prejudice to Anglo-French relations. In South Africa, the attitude he took up to the Boer leaders at the Vereeniging Conference, and the advice he tendered afterwards with respect to the treatment of the Boer people now that the war had ended, proved to be examples of true statesmanship. The British nation did not forget these things. When, thereafter, he went to India as Commander-in-Chief, and spent seven years in carrying out his system of army reorganization there, in the teeth of criti- cism, and in spite of the opposition of the Viceroy, he carried his points; and the reason that he was able to do so was that in the last resort the British people, though knowing little? or nothing of the points at issue, would have supported him. When his period of office in India ended, he accepted an appointment very incommensurate with his abilities at the desire of King Edward. After his release from this obliga- tion, the Government could find no employment for him till the death of Sir Eldon Gorst offered him the post occupied by Lord Cromer when Kitchener had been Sirdar. Lord Kitchener took it, in lieu of that Viceroyalty of India, which was his ambition, and again turned his energies to the reform and reorganization of the land which he knew so well.
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 9
This was his task when the war with Germany broke out in August, 1914. He happened to be in England at the moment. It was clear to the country that there could be only one man to take charge of the unmeasured, unknown military responsibilities which the situation had created; and Mr. Asquith rightly interpreted the country's call. He sent for Lord Kitchener, stopping him by telegram as he was making his way to Dover in order to return to Egypt, and offered him the post of War Minister. The appointment at once re- assured the public. It stilled apprehension; it inspired con- fidence; it roused enthusiasm; above all, it created a state of feeling in which it was certain that whatever Kitchener asked for, the country would give him. This unalterable confidence in him remained till the day of his death, and survived it, as it had survived many attacks, both open and covert, upon him. It was a confidence which reached to the Dominions beyond the seas, where his was almost the only British name which excited a sympathetic echo in the ears of people who are apt to think that the mother country forgets them. The first-fruits of this confidence were evident, and they found expression in some words from the Prime Minister which were spoken some ten days before Lord Kitchener's death.
"There is no other man in this country or in this Empire who could have summoned into existence in so short a time, with so little friction, with such satisfactory, surprising, and even bewildering results, the enormous armies which now at home and abroad are maintaining the honour of the Empire. I am certain that history will regard it as one of the most remarkable achievements that has ever been accomplished, and for that achievement Lord Kitchener is personally entitled to the credit."
It was because the public saw very little of the man for whom they had so great an admiration that the legend grew up of him as "the silent Sphinx; the emotionless machine; the harsh and heartless commander". His appearances in public
io FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
were not numerous, and the larger part of his life was spent away from Great Britain. Before 1896, the year of the success of his advance on Dongola, very few home-staying Britons had set eyes on him. He paid a flying visit to London to see the authorities at the War Office. An invitation had been sent to him, by the Lord Mayor elect, to the Guildhall Banquet of that year, but nobody knew till after the banquet had begun whether he was present or not. A whisper ran round that he had come, and presently he was discovered in a rather modest position at one of the cross tables. The applause which greeted the recognition of the hero of the hour plainly embarrassed him, and the tall man in full-dress uniform, after rising, sat down again with relief. He was not seen in this country again till he came back with the victory of Khartoum to his record, and he was quite unprepared for his welcome. While crossing on the Calais boat to Dover he perceived Dover pier black with people; and he asked an officer on his staff, who was with him, what these people were doing there ? He was soon to discover, for Dover was prepared with an official welcome, to which Sir Herbert Kitchener replied in very few words. It was one of the few speeches he ever made in public without reading them, and, brief though it was, its phrasing was admirable. The welcome at Dover was only preliminary to that which London was waiting to give. Victoria Station and its approaches were packed. Lord Wolseley, who came to meet him, could hardly get into the station, and Kitchener could hardly be got out. London and the whole of Britain were anxious only to give expression to the admiration they felt; and their enthusiasm for him never declined from this altitude during the years that followed, despite the comparatively few occasions they had for showing it. That great soldier, Lord Roberts, suffered some decline of his popularity in the years before the war, but Lord Kitchener never. When in the November of 1914 he again attended a Guildhall Banquet, there to make
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT u
the speech in which he said he should want more men and still more, he was greeted, as he entered the Guildhall library, with a shout of applause, fierce in its fervour, such as few guests can ever have heard in that place.
To one who had not seen him since the day of his return from Khartoum, it seemed that the years had not altered him very much. In the year of Khartoum, as in that of the Dongola expedition, he had worn full-dress uniform; in the year of the beginning of the Great War he was the one soldier at the Guildhall Banquet who came in khaki. But men did not often observe Kitchener's uniform; it was his face and build which fixed one's eyes. He was very tall, and did not look less so on account of his heavy, high shoulders. Those who knew him as a young man speak of him as "tall, slim, vigorous, dark-haired"; "a thin-faced, slightly stooping figure " ; and the descriptions scarcely tally with later im- pressions. He never became bulky or heavy, and he moved with lightness, and gave an idea of great activity as well as strength. The " stooping figure " of the earlier description was a confused impression, no doubt, of the heavy shoulders; but the thin face we find hard to reconcile with later im- pressions of him. Lord Kitchener's face was broad, whatever Lieutenant Kitchener's may have been; and his features were heavier than his photographs make him appear, and were burnt red by Eastern suns. The face was older in Khartoum days than any of his portraits; for Lord Kitchener, despite his growth of thick hair and his upright figure, looked his age. Even the eyes, on whose steely qualities so many have dwelt, were not young or brilliant — too much sand had blown in them for that; and there was a slight — a very slight — diver- gence between them. But they looked very straight at any person Lord Kitchener wanted to see; and nobody would ever have believed of them that they could be stared down. They added their impression to the rest of the bold-featured, strong-
12 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
jawed face that this was a man who was determined to have his own way, and had generally had it. We may add to this portrait a few words of description once penned by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, which lose nothing by not being conventionally adulatory: —
" The large, strong mouth, heavily covered with the typical military and brush-like moustache; the square, strong jaw; the heavy brows; the glittering eyes, and even the brick-red complexion — the complexion that told so many tales of hard rides for many hundreds of miles under blazing Egyptian suns, through wild and trackless Egyptian sands; all the features of a strong, fiercej dominant nature were really brought out into greater relief by that occasional smile. . . . Through it all the face seemed strangely familiar to me. ... In the end it all at once struck me why — it was the typical face of the Irish Resident Magistrate!"
The touch of dry humour in the last phrase is not unfair to Lord Kitchener. Nobody could look at him for a moment and believe that he was a man to trifle with; and even those photographs of him which so smooth out the weather-beaten character of his face leave that impression. One of the last portraits of him was drawn in crayon by a newspaper artist only a few weeks before his death. Lord Kitchener liked it, and declared it to be a better likeness of him than any recent ones. Finding him in this cordial temper, the artist asked him if he would write his signature below the picture. After a momentary hesitation he agreed — a great concession, for his autographs are few. The artist began laboriously to remove with a palette-knife the glass which covered the crayon drawing to protect it. But the process was too slow for Kitchener. He came to the artist's aid, and in his haste broke the glass. Not in the least dashed, he shook the fragments off, wrote his signature, "Kitchener, F.M.", and handed back the finished product to the artist without a word. There was something very characteristic of the man in the incident.
LORD KITCHENER One of his latest portraits, taken during the Great War
From a photograph by Elliott and Fry
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 13
He could be both impatient and violent ; when driving power was necessary, none could be more peremptory than he; yet, when the occasion demanded it, he displayed a power of sitting tight which was not only disconcerting but exasperating to his opponents, whether in war or peace. He preferred to work alone, and to concentrate power in his own hands. In the crisis with which the nation was faced the people would gladly have given him the position of Dictator. It was a position which a Cabinet imbued with the tradition of civilian authority and responsibility was less willing to concede, and the fact has not been concealed that during the long months of a war in which there were many mistakes — as there were bound to be, having regard to the nation's unpreparedness and the super-preparedness of the enemy — he had to struggle for his authority and powers. He was quite aware that he had made mistakes, and he was unfairly made responsible for that which arose out of the shortage of high-explosive shells in 1915. Lord Desborough told a story of him, that a high staff officer, afterwards a commanding general, came to see him from the front, and was searchingly asked by him about munitions. Kitchener listened, and then he said : " I hope the army does not think I have let them down", and tears rolled from those eyes which had been burnt out by desert suns. That story might seem unduly sentimental as applied to him, but it is the truth that he felt the criticisms directed against him very keenly; not that he cared for criticism or opposition, but because the army was dearer to him than his own reputation. To Lord Derby, who was one day in Lord Kitchener's room at the War Office, he said: " I wish you could tell me what I am doing wrong." When Lord Derby expressed his surprise, Kitchener added: "I feel there is something I ought to be doing. There is something more I ought to do for the country. I am doing all I can: and yet I ,feel I am leaving much undone." It is some consolation to reflect that in these hours
i4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
the nation always stood by him, and, as Colonel Repington wrote in the Timesy if the public had been asked by a referendum to choose between Kitchener and the Cabinet, it was certainly not the Cabinet which would have won the day. He fully appreciated the support which he had from the country during this great and grave time. "1 have made a lot of mistakes", he said to someone in the spring of 1916, and added that " the country still seems to give me a great deal of confidence." " Confidence" was the just word. To some great commanders soldiers give their devotion, to others their respect. What Kitchener inspired in every man under his command was confidence.
To this incomplete and preliminary sketch of Lord Kitchener one must add the testimony of the friends who spoke of him not as a commander but as they knew him apart from his work. Lord Desborough said of him that no one of his friends was a more stimulating companion. " When alone with you he was very talkative, and his curious humour and his quaint summing up of individuals and situations was an unfailing source of interest and surprise. . . . Children accepted him as a natural friend."
" People who only knew him a little were quite unaware of his true nature," wrote an anonymous friend, "for he showed himself in intimacy to very few. Latterly he made no new friends, the people he liked to be with were the men and women he had known well for twenty years; and the three or four houses he stayed in during his holidays were always the same, and the company was the same too. For these inti- mate friends he had a very strong affection. Years did not win him to forget, sadness did not drive him to more cheerful worlds; once fond of anyone * K ' was always fond of them, never forgot them, and always in a shy sort of way wanted to show he was fond of them. . . . He was very reserved about the deeper things of life, though he was talkative enough on all others. In daily intercourse he had a sense of humour, a hatred of * tosh J, and a simplicity of nature which made him fine company, and in the great world he always seemed the most impor-
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 15
tant person present, the natural centre of gravity around which -others turned." (Times, June 9, 1916.)
Another friend, Sir Frederick Milner, wrote that "those who really knew him would have gone through fire and water for him " ; and that though " he was reserved, and was by nature shy, behind all there beat a heart as warm and generous as ever man possessed ". That, as may be seen, was not a solitary tribute. One friend, his secretary, Colonel Fitz- Gerald, died with him, and those who knew them both said that FitzGerald would not have wished to survive his chief. " Never was there a stronger or more loyal affection than that which these two men had for one another. They rest to- gether, a loss to all who knew and loved them, enshrined together in the hearts of their countrymen." To that epitaph one other sentence only need be added, from his friend, Lord Derby : " We in these islands from time immemorial have paid a heavy toll to the sea for our insular security, but speak- ing as the friend of a friend I can say that the sea never exacted a heavier toll than when Lord Kitchener, coffined in a British man-of-war, passed to the great beyond ".
§2 .
A great physician once said that no man could ever tell, till the end of his life was come, what was the most important hour in it. To those who can now survey Lord Kitchener's life as a whole, it will seem that all its events led up to that supreme hour when he stepped forward to lead a nation in arms. For that all his knowledge, all his tutored ability to order and to command, had been gained, all the victories which stamped him with authority had been won. Among the earliest reminiscences of him is the time when he seized the oppor- tunity to enlist as a volunteer in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; and forty-six years later Field-
1 6 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
Marshal Joffre's generous message of condolence recalled that the man " who with patriotic ardour created and organized the noble and valiant British army, now fighting by our side" had himself fought in the French ranks as a volunteer. From that time forward each incident in his career, as this record will show, is a step which leads to the next one ; and Kitchener himself, though so cool and resolute, so certain of the course he meant to take, and the objects at which he aimed, was led by a destiny greater than his own consciousness towards the summit he reached.
Of his earlier career only the industriously-laid foundations are perceptible. He entered the Royal Military Academy in 1868, and obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers three years later, in 1871. It was in a memorable interval in the course of these military studies that his adventurous entry into the French army was made. After his commission had been obtained he settled down to the solid work of his pro- fession at Chatham and Aldershot. But because his profession was to him a career, he was quick to seize the first opportunity that offered of enlarging the scope of his duties. In the long peace which Britain enjoyed after the Crimea, the only way of advancement for an ambitious soldier was by way of special service. Lieutenant Kitchener took the first appoint- ment offered to him, that of doing survey work in the Near East. The work was done under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and the object of it was topographical and archaeological. To Lieutenant Kitchener it promised the oppor- tunity of getting out of the ruck, of acquiring practical acquaintance with the engineer's work of surveying and map- making on a considerable scale, and of gaining an intimacy with the East such as could be obtained in no other way. It was a momentous decision to which fate seemed to have led him, for the whole of his life was directed by the bypath which he chose. He spent four years here, with intervals of
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 17
work at home, and his surveying was done thoroughly and well. But he was learning a good deal more than appeared in his reports. He learned Turkish and Arabic, and he learned a good deal about the native mind ; and to his natural love of adventure he added the capacity of dealing with it when it led him into awkward situations. The more immediate outcome of his excellent work was that it attracted the notice of his superiors, and young Lieutenant Kitchener, without any in- fluence to push him, became marked as a man to be given a task requiring ability, when it offered. The opportunity came with the occupation of Cyprus, and he seized with eager- ness the opportunity to make for Great Britain a complete and detailed survey of the newly acquired island. There he met, as his chief, Sir Garnet Wolseley — another link in the chain.
It is typical of what is best in the service to which Kitchener belonged, that when it does confer responsibility it sometimes does so with an unsparing hand. This young lieutenant of twenty-eight was told to undertake the business of setting up a regular system of land courts to replace the chaotic ownership which had been the result of Turkish mal- administration. He succeeded in evolving a workable system. He was working hard at Eastern dialects all this time, and his survey of Cyprus was interrupted by an undertaking which gave him a larger share of responsibility than any he had yet had. The Russo- Turkish War had filled Anatolia, that Asiatic province of Turkey, from which the chief part of her supplies (and of her armies) is derived, with crowds of destitute fugitives. Sir Charles Wilson was appointed British Consul- General, and asked for Lieutenant Kitchener to help him in the organization of relief set up by the British Government. This was yet another invaluable experience, for not merely did it afford experience in organization but it brought the " reliev- ing officer " into contact with every kind of Mohammedan.
He returned to the humdrum work of the Cyprus survey,
VOL. I. 2
1 8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
but he could not remain unmoved by the stirrings of dis- turbance which, not many sea-miles away, were beginning in Egypt. Arabi Pasha had raised the standard of revolt there while the peaceful survey of Cyprus was being conducted by a young officer who was tingling with the desire to be in the midst of alarms. Lieutenant Kitchener was on furlough in Alexandria just when, from a young officer's point of view, the fun was about to begin; and he assumed an extension of his leave in order that he might have a share in it. When Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived with a land force, to complete the campaign against Arabi Pasha which the bombardment of Alexandria had begun, Lieutenant Kitchener secured an ap- pointment as a major of Egyptian cavalry, and thus went through his first Egyptian campaign. It was a swift little campaign, ending in less than a month in the rout of Arabi at Tel-el-Kebir; and it did not offer much chance of distinc- tion to a major of Egyptian cavalry. But it was the first decisive step which Great Britain had taken along that long road of the reorganization of Egypt which so many fine soldiers and administrators have trod; and it was the second decisive step in the career of the greatest soldier among them. Lieutenant Kitchener, R.E., had come to Egypt to make his mark.
He made it in the absence of any backing, but he had one advantage which was inestimable at that time: he knew Arabic — arid he knew it well; and he knew the fellaheen almost as well. Lord Dufferin had pointed out that Egypt could not be left to work out its own salvation unless it had an army to protect it from collapsing before the first Bedouin invader; and so a British general, Sir Evelyn Wood, was appointed the first Sirdar of an Egyptian army — an army which had to be made. It was to have regular battalions and a cavalry arm; and twenty-five British officers were to build it up. Captain Kitchener was appointed second in command to
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 19
Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor of the cavalry. When, many years later, Field -Marshal Lord Kitchener told officers to make British battalions out of men who had never handled any weapon more lethal than a shovel or a pen, he may have reflected that he had once attempted and accomplished a far harder task on the banks of the Nile. He had to make men out of serfs before he made Egyptians into soldiers. But the Egyptian recruit learned that if Kitchener wanted him to become an efficient soldier, the best way to avoid trouble was to make an effort to attain the Kitchener standard.
Progress was not very fast in Egypt, and it had one damaging interruption. Captain Kitchener was away in South Palestine on a new surveying expedition when he learnt by Arab messengers, who had been sent after him, that disaster had overcome the army of Hicks Pasha, which, with incredible folly, the Egyptian Government had dispatched to subjugate the Soudan. When Kitchener reached Cairo a new situation had arisen in Egypt. The Soudan was in the hands of the Mahdi; the Egyptian forces, such as they were, could not move out of their garrison; the British forces were neither masters in their own house nor in that of which they had assumed the tenure. The Mahdi, inaugurating and con- solidating his pretensions by wiping out the forces of Hicks Pasha, was the ruler of the Soudan, a perpetual menace to Egypt and the Nile. It was the removal of that menace to which sixteen years of Kitchener's life were given.
It was long indeed before much of value could be driven into the Egyptian soldiery, and if one examines" the dusty record of unseen, hardly recognized, effort which British officers were doing in the Soudan in those days, it is to find that it proceeded without any coherent plan and without much reward or evident success. There was one failure which was none of the making of the new Egyptian army, but which stamped itself on the British imagination more heavily than
20 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
any other except Majuba Hill — it was the abandonment of Gordon and his death at Khartoum at the hands of the same hardy fighters who had wiped out poor Colonel Hicks. At that time Kitchener was in the Intelligence Department, an office in which there were very little thanks and very great risks. Many stories were told of Kitchener's sudden appear- ances and disappearances, his aptitude at disguising himself as an Arab, an aptitude to which his ability as a speaker of native dialects contributed. But the legends are hardly necessary. Certain it is that he volunteered for one difficult and dangerous duty after another. Certain, also, it is that his work in the Soudan captured him, so that it was to him an aim, an end in itself, implying more to him than anything else.
It is likely that he discerned the end as he meant to make it, and believed it to be in his power to fashion destiny even when the destiny 'was that of the British Empire. But for many years he may have felt himself in the clutches of some- thing almost as strong, namely, the policy of British Govern- ments. The respective responsibilities of General Gordon and of the Foreign Office for the desperate position in which Gordon found himself at Khartoum may be a matter of controversy, but there is little to be said for the policy which endeavoured to hold Egypt by a series of military expedients and expeditionary makeshifts which were costly in life, costly in prestige, and always compromising to the British status in the country which they protected. It needs no divination to imagine the feelings with which the British officers making the Egyptian army viewed their futile advances and successive withdrawals. It is conceivable that to one among them, who was not given to lamenting failure, they may have served as a spur to the determination to alter the policy in order to redeem the failures. There was never any man who was more capable of measuring means with ends, or who was less likely to attempt impossible tasks. Major Kitchener had received too many
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 21
hard knocks, and had seen others receive them, to cherish illu- sions about Egypt. He had seen Colonel J. D. Stewart's dash to relieve Gordon end in massacre; he had seen the failure of the larger relief expedition of General Sir Herbert Stewart. The failure meant a good deal to Kitchener. He had pre- served touch with General Gordon through his Intelligence messengers; he probably believed, as others did, in Gordon's star and influence; and the blow of the murder of Gordon may have seemed to him the end of all on which he had built. At any rate he was in the best position to know how serious was the task of rebuilding.
He resigned his commission in the Egyptian army, and spent some time in Zanzibar as a Boundary Commissioner. But if he had thought himself at that time the master of his own career, fate — and Egypt — were too strong for him; for in 1886 he was back again, now Governor of Suakin, and once more plunged into the fierce routine of struggling with inade- quate means against the strong enemy at the Egyptian gates. His end of the log was kept up with his usual thoroughness and energy. He fortified Suakin and made it proof against Dervish raids; with a very full knowledge of the indispensable qualities of baksheesh, he subsidized the right tribes, and saw that he got value for his money — even to the extent of in- ducing " friendlies " to co-operate against Osman Digna, an adherent of the Mahdi. In a long decade of the little fights that made the Egyptian army he was always fully employed. Osman Digna, whom he harried from Suakin, left a keepsake for him that was the most expensive gift which that elusive leader ever had to pay for. Kitchener had captured Osman Digna's camp at Handoub, but the friendlies pressed on too far, and Kitchener's reserves had to be thrown in too soon. In the counter-attack Major Kitchener received a bullet which went through his jaw into his neck; and that was the nearest approach to what soldiers call a "decision" that was reached
22 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
that day. It is not, perhaps, fanciful to suppose that Kitchener, who never after that gave battle in the Soudan without making certain of an annihilating victory, always kept in mind his experience of the haphazard rough and tumble with Osman Digna at Handoub.
There were many victories and half-victories in the suc- ceeding years, and there is a line of division between them. There were the hard-fought fights of the second Teb and Tamai; Wolseley's expedition up the Nile, with Abu Klea and Kerbekan ; the second Suakin campaign, in which Kitchener's brigade of black Soudanese helped the then Sirdar, Sir Francis Grenfell, to give Osman Digna the second lesson — gallant, futile affairs many of them, and leading nowhere. Then came the period in which, in the nine years between 1887 and 1896, the long days of re-organization, of retrenchment, of difficulties and discouragements, of unconquerable, undisappointed work began to tell — and the Dervishes began to beat against a pro- tected Egypt and to go to pieces. The battle of Toski was the sign and symbol of the new order of affairs. In this battle Wad-en-Nejumi — the great emir who had destroyed the forces of Hicks Pasha — strove to invade Egypt; and here Grenfell tested the new Egyptian army in its first ordered battle. Kitchener commanded the Egyptian cavalry, which he had done so much to make. One does not think of him as a dashing cavalry leader, but he rounded off that fateful day by the cavalry charge of the Egyptian Horse and the 2oth Hussars. All sorts of experiences go to the making of a leader. Kit- chener tasted them all; but in one respect the cavalry charge at Toski closed one epoch of his career and opened another. That was not his metier in life; he was not to win back the Soudan by leading horsemen, but by conquering it in another fashion — by Kitchener's way, the way of the locomotive and the light railway, the boiler-houses and the store-rooms.
In the long years he had learnt that to conquer the
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 23
Dervishes the desert must itself be conquered. It could be conquered only by a railway. Others had projected desert railways: Kitchener made one. In 1890 he succeeded Sir Francis Grenfell as Sirdar, and two years later he began the reconquest of the Soudan. Without a single throw-back the work went forward — often very slowly, but always onward. Kitchener was never in a hurry, which is one reason why the world will not forget him in a hurry. With immovable self- control he consolidated every yard of ground won before taking the next step. The Soudan's real power lay in its desert waste and barrenness. Kitchener's machine, by making transport possible, defeated it. The bayonet action waited always till the railway action had piled the camp with supplies and munitions of war. Patient and swift, certain and relent- less, the Soudan machine rolled southward. The man who controlled it was often in those days compared to a machine. He worked like one; he asked others to work like one. He would have no married officers, and the sick were sent home; he would have everyone give what he gave — his life to the end in view. " As far as Egypt is concerned ", wrote one who observed him on the eve of his final triumph, " he is the man of destiny — the man who has been preparing himself sixteen years for one great purpose. For Anglo-Egypt he is the Mahdi, the expected; the man who has sifted experience and corrected error ; who has worked at small things and waited for great; marble to sit still, and fire to smite; stead- fast, cold, and inflexible; the man who has made himself a machine to retake Khartoum!"
He took it. The task was done. At Omdurman the dervish rule was ended, the Khalifa put to flight, his army destroyed rather than routed, for there were over 9000 killed, 16,000 wounded, and 5000 prisoners. The Dervish army was killed out as hardly an army has been killed out in the history of war. And the cost to Kitchener's army was
*4 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
194 British, 463 native — total 653. It was an incredibly cheap victory; but it was not to be reckoned in this way. It was a victory which had given back to Britain her honour. The symbol of it was the funeral service that was held for Gordon in his Residency garden, with the men who had fought for Gordon V life while he lived standing under the flag. The minute-guns boomed after the twenty-one guns' salute to the flag; the chaplains read the psalms. Father Brindle, who died within a few weeks of Lord Kitchener, read a memorial prayer bareheaded in the sun; the band played "Abide with me". There were some who said that the tears stood in Kitchener's eyes as his brigadiers stepped out according to their rank and shook his hand. What wonder? He had trodden the road to Khartoum for fourteen years, and stood at the goal at last.
Yet not the goal of his life, but the beginning of new tasks. Hardly had the guns ceased, the wounded been gathered together, than a mission of the most delicate kind was imposed upon the conqueror. A French exploring-party under Major Marchand, afterwards to serve in the Great World War as General Marchand, had reached Fashoda on the Blue Nile, and the situation thus created gave to French diplomacy the opportunity to claim territorial rights in the region thus reached. There is reason to believe that Lord Salisbury never supposed that Marchand's expedition would reach the Nile and raise these awkward questions; and the moment could not have been worse for disposing of them. But Lord Cromer, the British Agent-General in Egypt, was at the moment in London, and, when consulted by Lord Salisbury, averred the most complete confidence in Kitchener's ability.
"I urged", he wrote after Lord Kitchener's death, "that he was fully aware of all the general facts of the case and of the necessity of acting with great caution and moderation. I therefore advised that no
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 25
detailed instructions of any kind should be sent to him, and that reliance should be placed on his discretion. ... It is now a matter of history that Lord Kitchener amply justified the confidence which was placed in him. The whole of this unfortunate and most regrettable incident has now, to the great advantage of both the British and the French nations, passed into oblivion, but it ought to be remembered that we owe it largely to Lord Kitchener's tact and judgment that a solution was found of a question which had it been injudiciously handled might have led to very serious consequences."
To the public which does not deal in diplomacy, and has a distrust of it as profound as its ignorance, Kitchener's diplomacy was overshadowed by his military achievement. They proposed for him, as they always propose for victorious soldiers, that he should come to reform the War Office, a task for which perhaps he was equipped better than most men, but which has broken most soldiers who have attempted it. But long before that crucial test could be applied to him, immediate tasks arose. The war in South Africa, with its black week and its triple disaster of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso, shook British belief in Aldershot and the home generals. A cry went up for Lord Roberts and for Lord Kitchener, which was almost as poignant as that which arose in a later day for the younger of them. The history of that campaign and of Kitchener's share in it, a most difficult share, and not a very thankful one, is also part of the development of Kitchener. It was his organization which made Lord Roberts' s strategy possible and successful; it was his unlimited patience and method which brought the long-drawn guerrilla warfare to an end; it was, again, his statesmanship and large views which made possible a fruitful peace with a brave and resourceful adversary.
There arc two other developments in his subsequent career of which the briefest mention need here be made, his work in India and his tour in Australasia. Both were part of his
26 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
equipment for handling the Great War, to the emergency of which his whole ability, his energy, experience, and know- ledge were finally called. In India the history of his seven years' administration of the army is the history of effort to overcome the defects of its armament, equipment, and its organic and administrative defects. In Australia his recom- mendations for a Federal Defence Force led to the adoption of a scheme which might be advantageously adopted by the Empire as a whole. It was adopted by the Commonwealth Government. For New Zealand Lord Kitchener drew up a similar scheme, which was also adopted. On his way home he returned by way of the North American continent, and, visiting Canada, conferred with its military authorities. The result of his advice was seen in the constitution of Canada's forces into complete divisional units. Thus, when the great moment came, the great call of 1914, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India were ready, each in its own way, to answer the call which Lord Kitchener addressed to them.
In the trying hours of Britain's history there is often a cry for a dictator, for the strong man who will take the reins of affairs into his own hands and ride down opposition. There never was a nation less amenable to a dictator, or one in which his action was quicker to awaken the bitter opposition of vested interests. While Kitchener was under Lord Cromer, the strong man in Egypt, receiving at every step and at all times Lord Cromer's unwavering support, his actions received almost unalloyed approval from his countrymen, because the only unsound institutions he upset were not theirs. When, how- ever, he left the conduct of military operations in a sphere where he was the proved master, to undertake the winding up of a difficult campaign in South Africa, where the con- ditions were unprecedented, where the materials with which he had to work were not fitted for the task, and where, besides being his own Chief of Staff he had to forge a new weapon,
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 27
criticism soon lifted its head. Lord Kitchener found himself no longer a commander who was a law to himself, but one who was tied to the War Office, and who had to handle com- manding officers who had years of Aldershot or Pall Mall behind them. He had also to walk warily of that side of English opinion which, beginning by describing itself boldly as pro-Boer, never ceased at any stage of the campaign to repudiate strong measures against the enemy, and at one point denounced them as "methods of barbarism". That was Lord Kitchener's first experience of doing the unpleasant work of an unmilitary nation, and one cannot doubt that it was a useful lesson to him. It strengthened that imperturbability which was a necessity to the man who, in a democratic coun- try, has to do what he thinks best, whether it is popular or not. The accusations against him of undue severity to the Boers were ludicrous. Lord Kitchener, although a stern fighter, always remembered that war was only a means to an end, the end in view being -a settlement, in some way, of the causes of strife. Therefore, although unrelaxing in his efforts to subdue the resistance of the Boers, he was equally incessant in his efforts to induce them to come to terms. In the course of the last negotiations, which brought peace at last, Kitchener's influence was exerted strongly to induce the Government to offer lenient terms to the gallant adversaries who had won his respect and admiration. His practical mind saw clearly that the demand for the unconditional surrender of the Boers was due to the desire to salve the wounded vanity of the British nation, and, being himself singularly free from vanity, he could not understand why concessions which were certain to be given in case of surrender could not be offered beforehand as terms for an honourable settlement. It was a strong man's view.
In the seven years quickly following on the South African War, which Lord Kitchener spent in India as Commander-in-
28 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
Chief — from 1902 to 1909 — he came into contact or conflict with interests, prejudices, and an order of things more solidly established than that which he had encountered in Egypt or South Africa. The criticisms of his administration have not yet died down; they appeared in at least one obituary notice by a contemporary officer. This detraction is applied chiefly to the strong view which Lord Kitchener took and enforced with regard to the position of the Commander -in -Chief in India. Under the old system the Commander-in-Chief had no place in the Viceroy's council of India. His views were transmitted to the military member of council, who in his turn put them before the council. Lord Kitchener's view was that, as he, the Commander-in-Chief, was responsible for the efficiency of the army in India, he ought to have the oppor- tunity of explaining his own plans to his supreme authority, the Indian Government, instead of being compelled to submit them at second-hand through the lips of another. In short, he believed that the military head should have a seat on the Board of Directors. The innovation was fought by the Viceroy, and was resisted by the other members of the council. Even- tually Kitchener got his own way, and became War Minister of India, even as he afterwards became War Minister in the British Government.
It is not contended that the arrangement was, or is, ideal. In a Cabinet framed as is that of Great Britain, or as the Council of India is, there are several drawbacks to it, and the chief of them lies outside it. The drawback was that in the Indian army there were many faults of organization which it demanded all a great soldier administrator's time and energy to repair. It cannot be said that Lord Kitchener's reforms produced all that was expected of them or that he himself desired; and when his own strong hand was withdrawn, others who lacked his driving power and persistence found the machine he had constructed beyond their control. The
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 29
machine and its constructor have, therefore, been adversely criticized, and not least by those who opposed the reconstruc- tion at the time; but we believe that the future will show Lord Kitchener's scheme to have been the only one on which the army of India could ever have been raised to the level of a modern national army commensurate with India's power and needs. When Lord Kitchener arrived in India, the troops, British and native, were organized and administered in an antiquated -and unpractical system. The distribution of the Indian army had been changed little since the Mutiny; regiments were distributed without relation to any possible emergency ; the cantonments were chosen rather for convenience than for their suitability either to manoeuvres or to mobilization. Commands in peace had not necessarily any relation to commands in war — a state of things which had been evilly conspicuous in the British army before the South African War, and had exacted the appropriate penalty in the earlier disasters. Only a small proportion of the total force of the Indian army was regarded as immediately available for war — the comparison with the British army need not be pressed. Nor was there any proper system of training staff officers. Military conditions such as these were opposed to all Kitchener's ideas of efficiency and preparation for war. Isolated reforms could be of little use, for all the details of the organization of an army are inter- locked and overlapping; it was apparent that an entirely new organization must be evolved. Lord Kitchener created a new army out of the old materials.
When he went to India the available field force of the army consisted of four divisions drawn from different com- mands and by no means completely equipped for war. Five years later, in the year 1907, Lord Kitchener had completed his reorganization by creating a Northern and a Southern Army, one of five, the other of four, divisions ready for war. Their divisions and brigades were permanently organized and
30 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
staffed, and were commanded in peace by the generals who would lead them in war. This co-ordination and coalescence of command from general to subaltern is the first condition of the efficiency of a striking force; the responsibility of com- manding officers for the training of the young officers, on which Kitchener insisted, is the guarantee that men shall be able to depend on one another in the hour of war. As he made colonels responsible for subalterns, so he made com- manding generals responsible for the commanding officers of regiments. "Troops", he said, "must be accustomed to regard their generals not as hostile critics, always on the look-out for something to find fault with, but as their trusted leaders in war, their instructors in peace, and at all times their ready helpers, able and willing to promote their welfare and to spare no effort to increase their preparedness for the stress of active
service."
There was another characteristic dictum in this historic Army Order, which was that "to be regarded as leaders, generals must be competent to lead; to be accepted as instructors, their professional knowledge must be undoubted, and this entails on them the obligation of increasing study and of constant practi- cal application. In this way alone can they properly prepare their troops for war, and at the same time so train themselves as to be able adequately to discharge the great responsibilities which will devolve upon them when called upon to command in the field." In brief, the Indian army was to be a pro- fessional army, new style. It was to have, and did have, a Staff College at Quetta and a remodelled Staff system. Kitchener was aware that all these reforms would be useless unless they reached to the bottom as well as to the top. He greatly benefited the material position of the sepoy; the pay of all ranks was much improved; a higher pension scale was established; clothing and kit regulations were altered in the interest of the soldier. He considerably widened the areas from
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 31
which the native units were recruited. Here he was much helped by the loyalty of the great feudatory princes of India, some of whom once complained to him, so he told an acquaint- ance, that the chief defect of the British rule in India was that by making peace so secure it had diminished the opportunities of the recreation of war. Besides the Gurkhas and the Sikhs, other warlike tribes, such as the Rajpoots of Jodhpur and the Jats of Bikanir, were largely drawn upon. Inefficient battalions were disbanded and replaced by others drawn from these more promising sources of recruiting.
The need for much that he did in India was obvious. It was left for him to get it done. His term of office came to an end in 1909, and it was his ambition to consummate the work he had begun by becoming Viceroy of India. He made no secret of his disappointment when this post was given to another, for he had entertained the belief, not without reason, that it would be offered to him. The appointment of Lord Hardinge was warranted by political reasons; but Lord Kitchener understood the East, and our position in India would have been bettered had his ambition been gratified. It was reserved for him to serve the Empire in another fashion than he had wished. It must seem to all now that destiny chose for him the better way. The first service he rendered to Greater Britain was that of visiting the Dominions — Aus- tralia, New Zealand, and Canada — in succession and in im- planting there the germs of the idea of preparedness for war. His reports of the visits to Australia and New Zealand are State papers of the greatest value. Kitchener the statesman showed his thorough grasp of Imperial problems and strategic principles. Kitchener the practical soldier sketched a mili- tary organization suited to the requirements and possibilities of a patriotic and democratic community. "The first and im- perative principle of the enrolment and maintenance of an efficient citizen force", he wrote, "is that the nation as a whole
32 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
should take pride in its defenders, insist upon the organization's being designed for war purposes only, and provide the means for properly educating, training, and equipping their officers and men. Unless these requirements be met, no military system can be devised which will be other than an illusion and a source of waste of public funds."
How admirable the teaching; how exact in its application to the needs of a national army for Great Britain as well as for these offshoots of Greater Britain! It is apparent now that an even greater opportunity was missed in not entrusting to Lord Kitchener the reform of the War Office, and all that reform implies, than in the failure to make him Viceroy of India.
Yet to those who have studied the political history of Great Britain, and the history of Army Reform since the Franco-Prussian War, it will be even more apparent that no real reform of the British army could ever have come without some such great awakening to the need for it which the shock of the Great War of 1914 gave to the nation. When that moment came, there was one man whose whole life, experience, and convictions fitted him to attempt the superhuman task of attempting that which had been delayed so long, and at such stupendous risk — the task of giving to his country the citizen army that was indispensable to her needs. The effort taxed even his enormous energy and power of will; and, it need not be said, strained to the utmost the willingness of men, whose position and authority in the huge military hierarchy was inde- pendent of Lord Kitchener, to co-operate with him. He was the new broom, and the War Office had no love for new brooms: it is no mean tribute to its tenacity and forcefulness that broom after broom has been worn out or broken in the handle in the effort to sweep there. Lord Kitchener was not to be worn out; but his work was not made easy for him, and from the first he determined to do it in his own way. He did not depend wholly on the expansibility of the Territorial
CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT 33
organization, and for that he has been blamed, because the new army which he set about raising on an independent basis was regarded as competing with and overlapping the Territorials. But Lord Kitchener realized what no one else did — that there was no existing machinery which could possibly cope with the ultimate demands which the military situation would make on the manhood of the nation. To have attempted to expand the Territorial organization into a Continental army would have been akin to making a howitzer with a set of jeweller's tools. "More men, and still more men", the phrase which he after- wards used, was always in his mind. The " New Armies" — "Kitchener's Armies", as they were unofficially called — stirred the public imagination, and kept it from being lulled into a security which our island position mistakenly imparts. Lord Kitchener had no illusions. "Three years, or the period of the war", that pregnant phrase showed what was in his mind, and he accustomed the country to think in millions. In doing so he showed once again how his quick and prescient mind could understand the mind of others. He knew his country for a country of compromise; he knew, also, that it could be led by stages to go anywhere and do anything, like the armies it sends out, and he adhered as long as was possible to the voluntary system. His famous letter, in which he asked for another half-million men, is well known. He wrote out the draft himself, and at the fourth time of writing he said: " If I have to write this out again — I shall have conscription". The remark was made jokingly; but behind the jest lay hidden the knowledge of the truth that, at the bidding of the man who knew what was needed, there was no sacrifice which the nation would hesitate to make.
E. S. G.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER II
Lord Kitchener's Homes and Upbringing
Kitchener's Ancestry — Homes in Suffolk — His Father's Estates in Ireland — Like Father, like Son — Kitchener's Home in Kent and his Estates in East Africa — His Island on the Nile — Other Homes and Haunts — Careers of his Three Brothers — His Sister and other Relations — Boyhood of Kitchener — His Early Life Abroad — Training at Woolwich — Volunteer in the Franco-Prussian War — Its Object-lessons for Kitchener — Army Troubles of the Period — Commission in the Royal Engineers.
IT is related of the great Duke of Wellington that, on being asked whether he was an Irishman, he replied by enquiring if a man who was born in a stable would be called a horse. Lord Roberts was an Irishman, though he first saw the light in Cawnpore. Lord Kitchener was no Irishman, though he was born and spent the first thirteen years of his life in County Kerry. This part of Ireland has another interesting link with the World War. It was on the coast of Kerry that the emissaries of Germany, led by the ex-British Consular officer Casement, effected their inglorious landing in a collapsible boat from a submarine on Good Friday morning in 1916. The Sinn Feiners, upon whom they counted to overthrow British rule in Ireland and to distract our attention from the German armies in France, were a power in County Kerry. Next to Dublin, it was, perhaps, the principal centre in which the traitorous propaganda had won adherents. Even so, remembering the love of creating dramatic coincidence which the Germans exhibited repeatedly in waging their war, it is not impossible that the childish
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 35
vanity which is part of their mentality found satisfaction in contemplating a certain appositeness about the chosen jumping- off place for the revolution. At any rate, the greatest military Power in the world was quite capable of remembering that the man whose genius had made Great Britain, for the first time, a great military Power, and won the honour of bitter hatred in the enemy country, had early association with the district of Tralee.
The stock from which Lord Kitchener sprang was East Anglian on both sides for many generations. The Kitcheners migrated there from Hampshire, where Lord Kitchener's ancestors were closely connected with the parish of Binsted, Alton. His earliest known progenitors were churchwardens of the Church of the Holy Cross, the parish church of Binsted, and lived at Wheatley. Thomas Kitchener, born in 1666, was agent to Sir Nicholas Stuart of Hartley Maudit, Bart., and at the age of twenty-seven left Binsted and went to live at Lakenheath, near Ely, in Suffolk, where Sir Nicholas was lord of the manor. Thomas was churchwarden in 1697. Parochial registers of the parish of Lakenheath and age-worn grave- stones of the churchyard tell the story of the family. One inscription runs thus: —
" Here lyeth the body of Thomas Kitchener, who came from
Binsted, Alton, Hampshire, A.D. 1693, as agent to the Honble. Sir
Nicholas Stuart, Bart., dep. this life April the 5th, 1731. Aged 65 years."
From this Thomas Kitchener the tree of genealogy grows. By his wife, Abigail, he had three sons. The youngest of these, Robert Kitchener, settled lands upon charitable uses in 1756 for the education of the poor boys of Lakenheath. His son Thomas, who married Martha Robinson, daughter of William Robinson of Eriswell Hall, near Lakenheath, had three sons. The eldest was William Kitchener, who was born
36 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
at Lakenheath in 1768, and died on June i, 1807 — Lord Kitchener's grandfather. His sister Elizabeth became the wife of Habakkuk Robinson, tanner, of Bagshot, Surrey, brother of Henry Crabb Robinson, the diarist and friend of Wordsworth.
With William Kitchener the orbit of the family immediately extends. He became a London merchant, and after attaining the dignity of admission to the freedom of the Clothworkers' Company, married, in 1792, the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Waldegrave, of Bury St. Edmunds. By her he had two sons, the elder of whom, named Robinson John, was Master of the Clothworkers' Company in 1864—5. William Kitchener's wife died, and he married, as his second wife, in 1799, Emma, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Cripps, the rector of Cheadle, in Cheshire. Three sons of this marriage grew to manhood. One, William Cripps Kitchener, born in 1803, practised as a solicitor at Newmarket, Suffolk, was widely known and respected, and lived to enter his seventieth year ; another was Henry Horatio Kitchener, the father of Lord Kitchener.
Henry Horatio was the first of his line to adopt the pro- fession of arms. He was born on the day which was to make the most celebrated son of East Anglia famous for ever in the annals of British history for the victory of Trafalgar (2ist October, 1 805). At the age of twenty-five he entered the army as a cornet in the I3th (then Light) Dragoons. Promoted lieutenant in 1834, and captain in 1841, he exchanged into the 29th Foot, became major in 1846, and in the following year attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Meanwhile he had married, in 1 845, Miss Frances Chevallier. It is of interest, in view of what their greatest son's future was to be, that Lord Kitchener's parents both visited India before he was born, his father serving there during the latter part of his career in the army, from which he retired in 1849.
By tracing Lord Kitchener's maternal ancestry we arrive
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL KITCHENER
Father of Lord Kitchener
From a portrait in a Jamily album
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 37
at another of what may be called his homes — the moated and delightful Aspall Hall, in the heart of Suffolk. Although, owing to a dispute between Colonel Kitchener and his mother-in-law, Herbert was twenty-six before he first visited Aspall, he became very fond of the place. He commemo- rated this by making Aspall part of his title when he was raised to the peerage. His mother's people, the Cheval- liers, were a Jersey family. Kitchener's maternal ancestry is more interesting than his paternal. There is not a single Kitchener in the Dictionary of National Biography at the present date, but there are several Chevalliers, the first being Anthony Rodolph, Hebraist and French Protestant (1523-72). He was born in Normandy, and descended from a noble family. He settled at Cambridge for some years, and, return- ing there later, after an absence during which he visited Calvin at Geneva, received the appointment of Hebrew professor in Cambridge University in 1569. Hebrew lectures at St. Paul's Cathedral also appear to have been among Chevallier's activities. He was prebendary of Canterbury in 1569—70, and a year or so later received two years' leave of absence. His life was menaced in the St. Bartholomew massacre in Paris, but he escaped to Guernsey, where he died. Next we have the record of John Chevalier, chronicler of Jersey, about the period of the Civil War, who was a vingtenier, or tything- man, of the town of St. Heliers. But the family which became united with the Kitcheners by the marriage at Aspall Church on 24th April, 1845, spells with a double "1" — Chevallier, pronounced with accent on the last syllable. In the seventeenth century Clement Chevallier married Susanna Temple, a descendant of John Temple of Stowe, the ancestor of the Duke of Buckingham. A son of this union, Temple Chevallier, born in Jersey in 1675, was tne first-of his name to settle in Suffolk, where he purchased the Aspall Hall estate, near Debenham, in 1702. Prior to this date Aspall Hall had
3 8 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
been, from the time of Henry V, the seat of the noble family of Brooks, Lords Cobham. Temple Chevallier lived to enjoy Aspall for twenty years, and was succeeded by his great- nephew, Clement Benjamin Chevallier, who died in 1762. Next in succession came his son Temple, of Magdalen Col- lege, Cambridge, perpetual curate of Aspall, who married -Mary Fiske, member of an old Suffolk family. His eldest son was Temple Fiske Chevallier, rector of Badingham, in Suffolk — he died in 1 8 1 6. His son, Temple Chevallier (i 794- 1873), n°ted as an astronomer, became a canon of Durham, was an able classical scholar, mathematician, and lecturer, and a pioneer in the introduction of scientific studies into educa- tion; in 1837 he framed regulations for a class of students in civil engineering and mining in the University of Durham. Temple Fiske's youngest brother, with whom we are here concerned, was John Chevallier, born in 1774. After qualify- ing as physician, John took Orders, and in 1817 presented himself to the living of Aspall, which was in his own gift. For many years he received deranged patients into Aspall Hall. He concerned himself also in agriculture, and has the credit of being the first to cultivate and introduce to practical agriculture the celebrated Chevallier barley. All this is extremely interesting in view of certain aspects of Lord Kitchener's career. John Chevallier, who was Lord Kitchener's grandfather, died on I4th August, 1846. He was married thrice. By his third wife, an East Anglian named Elizabeth Cole, of Bury, Dr. John had several children. The fifth of these, Miss Frances, or Fanny, Chevallier, was to be Lord Kitchener's mother.
We have already noted that Lord Kitchener included his mother's home in the title he chose. In the grounds of Aspall Hall there grows to-day a deodar-tree which she brought home and planted as a sapling on returning from India with her soldier husband. During a visit to Ipswich to
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 39
receive the freedom, in 1902, before his departure for India, Lord Kitchener stayed with his cousin, Mr. J. B. Chevallier, at Aspall Hall, and one of the ceremonies which he attended was a Morris-tube competition at Aspall, in which the competitors were teams of three from Eye, Debenham, Framlingham, and elsewhere.
To Mr. J. B. Chevallier the writer is indebted for the following interesting note on Colonel Kitchener and Lord Kitchener: —
" I remember my father saying that Colonel Kitchener took his wife to India just at the time of the Sikh War [1845-6], and he arrived to join his regiment just after some severe engagement — Aliwal or Sobraon — where his regiment was much cut up: but he wrote home that he must consider himself fortunate in being late, ' as a live dog is better than a dead lion '.
" Lord Kitchener's heir — Viscount Broome — was, as a boy, at school with the son of the Maharajah Duleep Singh, at whose deposition old Colonel Kitchener was present about 1849 at Lahore. I remember old Colonel Kitchener telling me how curious it was that the grandson of a then junior officer, and the son of the Prince whom he had seen deposed, should be friends together in England — an instance of the wide embrace of the British Empire.
" An incident in Lord Kitchener's life that he once told me, about 1878 when at Aspall, is as follows. He was attending a senior officer who was representing the British Army at some German manoeuvres. The senior officer fell ill, so that the junior officer had to take his place, and on one occasion Herbert K. travelled in the same carriage as the Emperor William I, who talked to him. He first enquired in what language he would like to talk, and H. K. chose French. Then the Emperor asked him if there was anything he wished to enquire about. H. K. said he was puzzled to understand how they could cross a certain river — I forget the name — which was very swift. Next day the Em- peror arranged that a detachment should cross the river on pontoons for Kitchener's edification. Herbert told me that he was probably a bigger man on that day than he ever would be again."
Lord Kitchener's first home, as we have seen, was in
4o FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
County Kerry. The state of Ireland then furnishes a clue to his father's reason for settling there in 1849. ^n t^ie troubled history of Ireland, 1847 *s marked not only by the death of Daniel O"Connell while on his way to Rome, but also as a year of great famine, which brought in its train considerable ruin among landowners. The Encumbered Estates Act was thereupon passed, in order to enable owners of land or leases subject to encumbrance to apply to Commissioners appointed under it to direct the sale of such property. Colonel Kitchener, being then on a holiday in Ireland, saw his opportunity to make an advantageous purchase in Kerry. He was a friend of Mr. Pierce Mahony, of Kilmorna, who lent him Guns- borough Villa, a square, unpretentious, white-fronted home- stead about three miles from Listowel, on the road to Bally- longford. In that house, on 24th June, 1850, Lord Kitchener was born. He was baptized on the following 22nd September, at Ahavallin church, by the Rev. Robert Sandes, rector of the parish of Ballylongford. About this date Colonel Kitchener bought an outlying portion of the Knight of Glin's estate, which he afterwards sold, and from Mr. Samuel Julian he purchased Crotta, near Kilflynn, about seven miles from Tralee. The town of Ballylongford is situated about four miles west -south -west of Tarbert, near the estuary of the Shannon, immediately south of which is Tralee Bay. A mile or so from the head of the bay is Tralee, capital of the county, and seaport. Crotta House was a great improvement upon Gunsborough. Larger, more picturesque, and with a fine garden, it had distinction also as having once belonged to the Ponsonbys, a family of large landowners and of great political power in Ireland.
From the occupations which centred around Crotta, Lord Kitchener may well have received his first bent towards agri- culture. Like father, like son. In after life Lord Kitchener (who revisited Tralee and the scenes of his boyhood in 1912)
LORD KITCHENER'S BIRTHPLACE: GUNSBOROUGH HOUSE, NEAR LISTOWEL, COUNTY KERRY
LORD KITCHENER'S EARLY HOME: CROTTA HOUSE, KILFLYNN
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 41
was to become a tremendous creator: one who loved to see things grow, and, as it were, to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. His father in those early days not only reclaimed the ground he had acquired, but established a brickwork and pottery. In the country-side the retired sol- dier quickly won a reputation as an authority upon questions of crops and stock. He applied himself diligently to the im- provement of breeds. With an eye to business, also, he anti- cipated a custom which had considerable vogue in England many years later, by taking in a couple of young gentlemen pupils to learn the farming. So when, in due course, Colonel Kitchener wished to leave those pursuits and Ireland, he was in a position to realize a handsome profit on the original cost.
Perhaps it was due to the experiences of those earliest years in the beautiful south-west of Ireland, to which we shall return later, that Lord Kitchener was always happiest in the country. When he could spare the time from London, during the Great War, he paid fleeting visits to Broome Park, in Kent, the old place whose beauties he was restoring, and to which he had become deeply attached. Very characteristic of the soldier in him was the step he took here on the very day war broke out. Workmen had been busily employed, and rails laid down in the grounds for the purpose of conveying earth for the terraces he was making. Suddenly all that activity was arrested. Trucks that stood half-filled then continued standing throughout the remainder of Lord Kitchener's life. Had any onlooker been able to enter the house itself he would have found only the hall and the drawing-room furnished. Some of Lord Kit- chener's china was there. All the other rooms were gutted, the process of restoration being stopped by the war. We can understand how he would have loved to see his designs for his home growing to completion under his eyes. But there had been no delay or hesitation about his course. " I won't employ a man who should be serving," he said on the day the
42 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
war began. Such work as was afterwards carried out was done by men who were ineligible for the army.
Just as he had planned and schemed for his homes over- sea, so he had lavished his personal hopes and love of organization upon this fine old seventeenth-century hall in the heart of Broome Park. Far removed from the turmoil of London and the popular haunts of holiday-makers, it brought at least the atmosphere of peace in the days of Armageddon to the overworked War Minister on such occasions as he could pay a flying visit from town, sometimes staying over the week-end, motoring down on the Saturday and returning on the following evening. He took the greatest pride in the old hall and its surroundings, and the work of restoration, the replanning of the grounds in the formal style of the seven- teenth century, and the gathering of such household gods as Chinese porcelain and antique furniture, were almost the sole distractions of his crowded life. The hall had long been deserted, and in sad need of repair when Lord Kitchener bought it from the Oxenden family in 1911, but the work of restoration, begun at once, was in every respect worthy of the new owner's motto, " Thorough ", which he had carved in stone over his mantelpiece in the handsome oak-panelled hall. This hall was raised in order to take in the rooms on the story above, thus making it correspond with the famous Oxenden drawing-room. A charming host, and rare friend to those privileged to enjoy his confidence in private life, he meant every word of the hospitable inscription over the massive oak doors which he had provided at the main entrance to the mansion — "Mea domus tua" . The whole of the south front had been restored with the old bricks removed from " My Lord's " wall, as it was called, forming part of the estate at one time owned by Lord Cowper on the road between Sandwich and Canterbury. Always a great lover of flowers, Lord Kitchener had given them a large place in his plans for
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 43
Broome Park. It has been said that, had he lived to enjoy sufficient leisure, he might have become as famous for his geraniums as was Joseph Chamberlain for his orchids. Only a few days before taking his last journey he entertained in his grounds a party of wounded soldiers from Folkestone, and made a point of inviting the men to pick bunches of flowers to take back with them.
Lord Kitchener, as already mentioned, became the owner of Broome in 1911. The Oxendens, from whom he bought the estate, with its 550 acres — some of the most beautiful in all the Garden of England — had been resident in Kent since the days of Henry VII. One of them, in the seventeenth century, became Governor of the fort and island of Bombay. The hall was built, about 1620, by Basil Dixwell, who be- longed to a collateral branch of the Oxenden family, and was knighted by Charles I. Thence it passed to his nephew, Mark Dixwell, whose son was created a baronet by the Merry Monarch. It was Mark Dixwell's son, Sir Basil, who, dying at Broome in 1750, left this, among the rest of his estates, to his kinsman, George Oxenden, second son of Sir George Oxenden, Bart., of Dean, with the proviso that he took the name and arms of Dixwell as well. Shortly afterwards, how- ever, young George Oxenden died, and the manor and seat of Broome fell to his father, the handsome Sir George, who is remembered to-day more for his profligacies than any ser- vices he rendered either as Lord of the Admiralty and of the Treasury or as Member of Parliament for Sandwich. Horace Walpole, Lord Harvey, Lady Mary Montagu, all bear witness to his lurid reputation.
The whole parish of Barham, in which Broome Park is situated, is rich in legendary and historical associations. Bar- ham Downs was the scene of Caesar's decisive battle with the Britons little less than nineteen hundred years before Lord Kitchener was born. It is no wide stretch of imagination to
44 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
suppose that as the conqueror of the Soudan paced these downs on which Caesar's disciplined Romans hurled back the heroic but hopeless onslaught of the uncivilized Britons, his mind would revert to his own one-sided triumph over the Mahdist host at Omdurman. The scene of the last stand of the ancient Britons is still pointed out as "Old England's Hole ".
The same downs are also known as the " Tappington Moor " of that grim legend, the " Hand of Glory ", in the Ingoldsby Legends of Richard Barham, himself a native of the district. Broome Park stands in the very centre of the Ingoldsby country, and the hall itself has been identified as the real original of Tappington Hall,1 the home of the " bad Sir Giles " in " The Spectre of Tappington " — not the picturesque old manor-house of that name, where the guilty bloodstains of Great Eliza's day may still, we are told, be seen on the oaken stairs. When Lord Kitchener bought Broome Park the hall still contained its old " powdering closet ", into which my lady of bygone days, when head-dresses were the crowning glory of the fashionable world, would thrust her head through a hatch in the wall to prevent the otherwise inevitable scattering of powder all over her room.
What first attracted Lord Kitchener to the Ingoldsby country is not clear. He had friends at Dover and Folkestone — not many miles distant on the coast — and Sturry Court, where his old colleague, Lord Milner, lived was only a short distance away by car, on the other side of Canterbury. The charm of the place was doubtless the impressive, old-world dignity of its hall, the grace of its typical English landscape, and the spirit of peace which seemed to pervade the whole country-side. Before the overwhelming tragedy of his death was more than a few days old, we ventured to follow Lord Kitchener's footsteps through the grounds of his beloved
1 The Ingoldsby Countrv. C. G. Harper. 1906.
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 45
Broome. " Silence deep as death " had descended upon hall and park alike. The hall itself, with its unfinished gardens all in disarray, and the little railway surrounding it all lifeless and abandoned, were hushed with a stillness more eloquent than words. But even as we stood and grieved, and wondered at the cruel stroke which had robbed the nation of such a man at such a time, the boom of a distant gun, and the buzzing of a vigilant air-scout overhead, served to remind us that though the great warrior had gone to his rest he had left the whole of the machinery of his mighty armies in running order, and that his skilled engineers were " carrying on ".
Another place that would have been his occasional home affords so brilliant a light upon the character of Lord Kitchener, and introduces us to so comparatively little known a side of his character, that we may usefully dwell upon it at some length. We refer to Lord Kitchener's estate in British East Africa. When he was Captain Kitchener he had gone out in 1886, at the instance of the Foreign Office, to investigate the boundaries of the Sultan of Zanzibar's dominions — this at a time when Germany had been actively acquiring concessions along the east coast of Africa. Before he next visited that region a quarter of a century had passed. His quality of leaving an ineffaceable impression wherever he went was shown by the warm welcome his old Arab friends extended to him when they met him again in 1911 after all those years. He was on a private trip, and before it was over he had purchased an estate of some 5000 acres of agricultural and grazing land at Muhoroni, on the Uganda line, about forty miles on the eastern side of Victoria Nyanza. The ground was well chosen. Lying in the north basin near the Nandi hills, it is in the country of the most hard-working of the Kaffir tribes, the Kavirondo, who, from their habits of industry and thrift, have earned the title of <c the Scots of East Africa ". Lord Kitchener's intention was to make of this a model estate, which
46 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
should be to Tropical Africa what Cecil Rhodes's well-known farm in the Matoppo Hills was to be to Rhodesia and South Africa generally.
Kitchener knew Rhodes, and had the greatest admiration for him. We may pause to let the imagination play upon " what might have been " had those two super-Britons been spared to spend the evening of their days in quiet retirement. Imagine the man who thought in continents and the man who fashioned the mightiest British army in history meeting in those circumstances. Conjuring up this scene, we can hear them talking, not about the military triumphs or conquests they had obtained for the Empire, but about their respective farming achievements, operations, ideas. To anyone who knew both, the picture will not seem unduly fanciful. In the con- versation the sword would have been turned into the plough- share. They would have visited each other, those Empire- builders and administrators, and discussed the pedigrees of cattle, the latest improvement of crops, the developments in agriculture all round. They would have debated the influence those developments were having on the population of Rhodesia and East Africa, countries which in the boyhood of many readers of this biography were not yet reclaimed from bar- barism. Whatever was to create in those lands better condi- tions for the black man and healthy homes for the white man would have won keen sympathy from both. For it is another feature of resemblance between them that neither Kitchener nor Rhodes ever forgot that Africa was the home of the black before ever it became the home of the white man. To improve the lot of the black inhabitant was in their scheme of things no less essential than to secure the prosperity of the white immigrant. Hence the great pleasure Kitchener took in the visits of native chiefs to his farm.
His principles in the conduct of this occasional home-that- was-to-be in East Africa afford valuable insight into his real
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 47
character, which was that of practical idealist. Lord Kitchener was an economist in the strictest sense of the term. He knew the value of a sovereign as well as any man. His place must pay its way. But this does not mean that it was to be run for the sake of profit. Not at all. It means simply that he was setting up a model estate, and unless it were so run that it paid, its value as a model would be impaired — it would not be a real but an artificial model for the country around. He threw everything open to inspection; and he made no secret to his managers that the estate must be run on thorough business lines in order that nobody who came to see should be misled into copying or following an example which they would repent having followed. His motto of "thorough" was carried into every conception. If he built a new sort of cattle- dip, it was not begun until after the most complete investiga- tion— involving quite extensive correspondence with agricul- turists all over the world — had satisfied him absolutely as to the best lines of construction. The amount accomplished from the time of acquiring the estate in 1912 and the outbreak of war in 1914 was perfectly marvellous. Coffee seeds being wanted, he exerted his influence and acquaintance with Mo- hammedans to give the experiment of coffee-growing on his estate the most advantageous start possible, the seeds being sent down from districts in the interior of Arabia which, on account of the proximity of the Holy Places, are inaccessible to Europeans. It was well known throughout British East Africa that in the case of every experiment the results were freely at the disposal of all the white settlers in the country, while parties of native chiefs, under Government tutelage, were welcome visitors when they arrived to see the most up-to-date forms of agriculture. The war, of course, checked developments, and robbed Lord Kitchener of any time to devote to East Africa. But just before the war he had imported special cattle from Egypt, highly productive milking
48 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
strains, with the idea of improving the cattle breeds of East Africa. The Agricultural Department of the Protectorate, moreover, anxious to introduce the best kinds of tobacco, asked to be allowed to carry out some experiments on his land, as they thought it suitable; and those experiments were started, under the supervision of Lord Kitchener's manager. The Field-Marshal always expressed the hope and intention of going out and seeing for himself, from time to time, the prac- tical fulfilling of his ambition to make a great model estate for all possible classes of agriculture.
By inclination he was really a farmer. His love for the country and for engineering things, especially the construction of railways, were part of one and the same character — the character of the cultivator. The impression we derive from studying his estate in British East Africa is confirmed by an incident which belongs to a slightly earlier period. About the year 1903-4, when the Indian expedition was going on across Tibet, some farmers in South Africa read in the papers that the troops in India were reaping fields of wheat at an altitude of 12,000 feet in the Himalayas, on the borders of Tibet. The idea occurred to those Boers that the wheat might be suitable for the high-veldt farms in South Africa, where, owing to altitude, the growing of wheat is difficult. They wrote, therefore, to Lord Kitchener, who was then Commander-in- Chief in India, to enquire about this Tibetan wheat. A few months later two tons of the wheat arrived as a present to the South African farmers from Lord Kitchener. He had had it carried down from the plateau of Tibet. For years after- wards he took the greatest interest in following up the results of its planting in South Africa. It impressed upon him that good farmers must ever be on the alert, and he stored this in his mind as a lesson to convey to others. During an interval spent in England in 1911 we find him visiting the Suffolk Agricultural Show, and specially referring to it as an illustra-
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 49
tion. Dutch farmers, generally supposed to be backward, had seen an opportunity for enterprise in this wheat of Tibet. British farmers, with the world to select from, should con- stantly keep their eyes open for the possibility of overcoming difficulties, getting the best seed, and in every way keeping march with the most modern ideas.
Away on the Nile, behind Elephantine, when he was Sirdar, Lord Kitchener had a bungalow home. The native owners of this island had quarrelled, and its cultivation was being sadly neglected. Kitchener bought it. " He has now a little bit of Egypt of his own ", wrote one who called upon him there in 1899. "He hopes some day, when his fighting is done, to retire there to rest upon his laurels." The fact is, that Lord Kitchener had an idea of displaying the most perfect forms of agriculture here. He gave up the island, however, about the time he went to India, as he thought he would never return to Egypt to be able to look after it. But it is rather amusing that wild pigeons helped him to come to this decision. He was greatly bothered by them. " I don't know how I am to get rid of the pigeons," he would say; "they come into everything. I've got every man, with every single gun — and they can't hit them." So he sold the island.
When in London in the early 'nineties the Junior United Service Club was practically his home ; though, as it had no sleep- ing accommodation, he took a bedroom near by. Many officers now serving in the war will remember how he used to inter- view them in the little private smoking-room at the club in the year 1895, when he was selecting young officers for the purpose of his advance, then about to begin, for the recovery of the Soudan. Returning from Khartoum, he visited at Lord Desborough's beautiful Thames-side residence of Taplow Court. " I come to this place as my home," he confided to his friend and host ; " I have no home of my own." It was still the soldier and hard campaigner who some five years ago
50 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
came home to England on a visit. He rented a little un- furnished flat in Whitehall Court for a few months. Situated at the top of the building, it was the quaintest sight, for the whole furniture consisted of a camp-bed, a deal table, and a few deal chairs. When he became Secretary of State for War, Lady Wantage lent him her house at 2 Carlton Gardens. Here Lord Kitchener spent over six months during that deeply critical stage of the war, after which the King, in March, 1915, placed York House at his disposal for the period of the war.
It has been convenient to digress in order to give this glimpse of some of the homes that figure in the wonderful story of Lord Kitchener's life. We now return to the con- secutive story of his career, and that of his brothers. Their parents had five children — Henry Elliot Chevallier, born in India in 1846; Horatio Herbert, the future Field-Marshal; Arthur Buck,1 born 1852, who became a mining engineer, and died in 1907; Frederick Walter, born 1858; and Francis Emily Jane, afterwards the wife of Mr. Harry Rainy Parker (who died in 1890) of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire. In 1865, a year after his wife's death, Lord Kitchener's father married Emma Green, and the daughter born of this marriage, at Wakonaiti, New Zealand, in 1867, was named Henrietta Letitia Emma Kawara — the last name being from the river near their house in New Zealand, where Colonel Kitchener owned some property. Three of the Colonel's sons followed the soldier's profession. When the old man died at the age of nearly eighty- nine on 1 4th August, 1894, at the Manor House, Cossington, Leicester, the position of those sons was : Lieutenant-Colonel H. E. C. Kitchener, D.A.A.G., Jamaica; Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Kitchener, A.D.C. to the Queen, Sirdar of the
l Lord Kitchener's great-grandfather was named Buck. The following notice of the death of Lord Kitchener's grandmother appears in The Gentleman's Magazine^ 1853: —
"June 16, died at Bury, aged 81, Emma, relict of William Kitchener, of Finsbury Place, London, and niece of William Buck, formerly of Bury ".
HOMES AND UPBRINGING ji
Egyptian Army; and Major F. W. Kitchener, D.A.A.G., at Bombay. Henry Elliott Chevallier Kitchener's steps were these: joined the old 46th Foot in 1866; lieutenant, 1869; captain in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, 1875; major, 1885; lieutenant -colonel on the Staff, 1893. He served with distinction in Burma, was chief transport officer with the Manipur Field Force, and ultimately became colonel commanding the West Indies Depot at Jamaica. In 1877 he married the only child of Lieutenant-Colonel Frank- lin Lushington, C.B. (she died in 1 897), by whom he had a son, Commander Henry Franklin Chevallier Kitchener, R.N., and a daughter, who married in 1908 Captain Patrick A. F. W. a Beckett, formerly R.A. Notwithstanding his age he took part in the South-West African campaign, and, in 1916, when his brother's death made him Earl Kitchener, he was holding an important command in the East African campaign. Frederick Walter received his commission in the West Yorks regiment in 1876, rose to the rank of brevet-colonel by 1896, was major-general in 1900, and died, in 1912, as Lieutenant- General Sir F. W. Kitchener. He distinguished himself in the Afghan War as transport officer, with the Dongola Expedition of 1896, and in the Soudan Expedition of 1898. In the South African War he commanded the 7th Brigade, and when the campaign was over he took up, in 1903, the command of the 3rd Division the ist Army Corps in India. On relinquishing this in 1908 he became Governor and Com- mander-in-Chief of Bermuda. His wife, who predeceased him, was Caroline Fenton, daughter of a colonel in his father's old regiment, the 9th Foot.
No augury of glory attended the early years of Lord Kitchener's life. Through his youth and adolescence there is an almost entire absence of the signs and portents of genius which have been visible in the careers of many of our great men. Yet the setting of his life was invariably romantic, and
52 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
environment must have played its part in the moulding of his character from the earliest years. Not being an Irishman by blood, he could hardly be expected to find welling within him, even in Kerry, the full tide of native poetic sentiment:
"Dear Erin ! how sweetly thy green bosom rises,
An emerald set in the ring of the sea ; Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
Thou queen of the west ! the world's cush-la-machree."
But it would be no more possible for his English temperament to escape the influence in his formative years of the beautiful Kerry county in which he lived. Kerry is compact of illustra- tions ancient and modern. Its wild and rocky coast, washed by the turbulent ocean, was famous as the landing-place of the Milesians, and many centuries later its people were terrorized by the privateer Paul Jones. On the sides of the mountains, and among the rocks and caves on the coast, are found the transparent crystals known as " Kerry diamonds ", some fine examples of which were seen in the great Irish Exhibition held in Dublin when the future Field-Marshal had just learnt to walk. South and west of the Killarney district are lakes and mountains and romantic glens which rival that district in beauty. It was in a land of foxglove, heath, and bog-myrtle, which could boast the noblest of Irish rivers, and deplore some of the most miserable of Irish peasantry, that the boyhood of Lord Kitchener was spent. Amid such surroundings it can easily be understood that the blue-eyed lad acquired a habit of dreaminess. An only son would have been morbid: he was only shy and reticent. He remained throughout his life a shy and reticent man, one who, while absolutely straight in all his actions, never showed his feelings to anyone whom he did not know extremely well.
The boyhood of the brothers was normal rather than eventful. Colonel Kitchener was a kind-hearted man, but
LORD KITCHENER AS A BABY ON HIS MOTHER'S KNEE with his elder brother and his sister (now Mrs. E. J. Parker)
A group from a family album
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 53
extremely impulsive. In his own youth we find a trait which evidently his greatest son did not inherit, namely, that of play- ing all manner of audacious tricks — on one occasion, at the Chevalliers', he dressed in female clothes, got hired as a dairy- maid, and had the greatest difficulty in evading the pressing attentions of the grooms at Aspall! While Mrs. Kitchener remained throughout her life a very sweet-natured, quiet, genial, motherly woman, the Colonel grew into a rather peppery old fellow, who took violent likes and dislikes, and was altogether difficult. His boys had a governess, Miss Tucker, and afterwards two or three private tutors in succes- sion, one of whom, Mr. Allen Freeman, was chiefly concerned with Herbert. But Colonel Kitchener was annoyed to find that Herbert took so small an interest in his lessons, and one day, just before an examination, reproved him sharply for his remissness. " If you do not pass/' he said, " I will put you to the village school." When the results came out, it was found that Herbert had failed. So he was duly sent to the village school, and his father warned him that if he did not do better there he should be apprenticed to a hatter. From this point, it is said, an improvement set in. The boy gave his mind to study. He made good progress all round, and especially at arithmetic. He was never good at games, but he learnt to swim with his brothers at Bannastrand, a place on the coast — to which the boys used to drive in their father's trap — about seven miles from Crotta House. On Sunday, Herbert attended the Sunday class at Kilflynn Church, where the family worshipped.
Colonel Kitchener believed in his boys acquiring foreign languages. Herbert developed a remarkable gift in this re- spect. In after life he spoke French very well, and he had an extraordinary faculty for picking up Arab dialects. Thus the early inspiration of his father was highly useful. When Herbert was about thirteen the brothers went to a boarding-
54 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
school in Switzerland conducted by an English clergyman named Bennett, at Chateau au Grand Clos, Rennaz, near Villeneuve, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva. Louis XVII is said to have stayed at the chateau at one time. A table has been preserved on which Herbert Kitchener carved his name. It is at Grand Clos that we find first traces of the Kitchener quality of obstinate determination. Each morning when he woke it was Herbert's custom to decide whether he would be good or naughty during the day. If he decided to be naughty, nothing could be done with him! The boys greatly enjoyed their surroundings in the neighbourhood of the Castle of Chillon. In their leisure hours they engaged in bathing, boating, and mountain-climbing. The daughters of the Rev. J. Bennett took the young gentlemen of the boarding-school out riding, and inhabitants of the Aigle district who were boys then recall to-day their feelings of respectful admiration as they watched the cavalcade pass. But the Kitchener boys were also to remember their sojourn in the canton of Vaud on account of their first great sorrow. Their mother, who had suffered much from rheumatism in Ireland, died in October, 1864, at the Swiss village of Clarens, when Herbert was fourteen. Colonel Kitchener did not long remain a widower. He married again in the following year. Mean- while he had sold his Irish estate, and the family settled in the beautiful and picturesque old town of Dinan, in Brittany, where Lord Kitchener's stepmother still lives to-day. The death of their mother drew father and sons more closely together. Herbert, as he grew into manhood, was always fond of his father. They always got on well together. He was the one who had the same inclinations, leanings, and interests as his father. In after years the father used to go and stay with him on a visit at rooms near Kensington Barracks, London.
First of the boys to leave the family circle and go out into
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 55
the world was -Henry, who joined the army in 1866. Herbert likewise determined to follow his father's profession. After some further travel on the Continent he came to London to be coached for Woolwich. His crammer was the Rev. George Frost of 28 Kensington Square. When Mr. Frost died, many years later, the pupil of 1867 had acquired fame in the Soudan, and under the old man's pillow was found a letter from Lord Kitchener thanking him for the congratulations he had sent.
In former days any young man who desired to obtain the position of a gentleman cadet had to secure a nomination, in other words, to have his name inserted in the list of the Master-General of the Ordnance as a candidate; after which he was called upon, somewhere between the age of fifteen and seventeen, to pass a competitive examination, which gave him a chance of entering the Royal Military Academy. But already for a decade before young Kitchener's advent in Woolwich the system had been one of open examination, so that any lad was entitled to compete for entrance. Herbert passed the examination on 3ist January, 1868, and began his duties at the academy on Woolwich Common twelve days later. This year was distinguished in the history of the academy as the first in which dictionaries were no longer allowed at the examination in German and Hindustani. The Lieutenant- Governor at the time was Major-General J. W. Ormsby, R.A., who died, and was succeeded in March, 1869, by Major- General Sir J. Lintorn Simmons, K.C.B., R.E. There were about 200 cadets.
Early in the last century gentlemen cadets at Woolwich wore knee-breeches, dark-blue coatee, a cocked hat, and a pigtail. By 1840 the knee-breeches disappeared, and the dress then consisted of light-blue trousers and coatee, a forage cap in undress and a shako in full dress. Some time before Kitchener came, the old double-breasted coatee was replaced by a tunic, and a round hat and feather gave way to a busby
56 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
with a red bag and horse-hair plume on the left side. The peak of the forage-cap was also altered to a similar pattern to an officer's, and a few years later the cap again underwent a change. In 1870 the dress was slightly altered by the sub- stitution of the ordinary tunic collar for the old leather stock buckling at the back of the neck. One of the cadets of those days has described Kitchener as " rather a dandy who wore spurs". Bullying and drinking were still common at "the Shop'* — as the Academy is nicknamed — in his time, and for several years to follow. But we might almost say of Kitchener, as was said of Charles George Gordon (Chinese Gordon), who had preceded him there by twenty years, that he never joined in the ordinary frivolities of the other cadets, and that he "would at times, without apparent reason, with- draw himself from his friends, not speaking for days". Gordon, it was said, was a poor mathematician, Kitchener a proficient one, whose bent lay towards field-telegraphy, the making and working of railways, photography, and surveying. The career of a cadet at Woolwich is comparatively short. Within three years from the period of his being a schoolboy he becomes an officer in one or other of the two scientific corps. Prince Arthur, the third son of Queen Victoria (the Duke of Con- naught), joined the Royal Military Academy in 1867 at sixteen years and two months, and passed for a commission in the Royal Engineers on I9th June, 1868, or five months after Kitchener entered. Throughout all his term there Kit- chener devoted himself to work. His name does not figure in any of the cricket elevens that met Sandhurst. The first inter-collegiate athletic meeting was held at Beaufort House, Fulham, in 1868, when General Cameron and Colonel Ormsby, the Governors of Sandhurst and Woolwich respectively, pre- sented a shield to be competed for annually by the Royal Military Academy and the Royal Military College. But there is no trace of Kitchener shining in this gallery He did not
LORD KITCHENER AS A CADET AT WOOLWICH ACADEMY
about the age of 17 From a photograph in a family album
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 57
become entitled to the distinction of wearing the broad " blue, black, and yellow" — the "Shop" colours, which are supposed to stand for the ingredients of gunpowder: saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur. Many cadets thought this distinction the highest ambition attainable at the Royal Military Academy, but Kit- chener did not share their opinion. He had discovered the value of concentration. And it was no student's prank, but a spirit of earnest adventure, that led him, on the very threshold of his career, to join the French army for a few months.
Though Kitchener's name had become well known in the world by 1900, it is a remarkable fact that his service in France does not seem to have earned the notice of the historian of the Royal Military Academy. Major Guggisberg's book on The Shop, published in that year, does indeed mention that the Franco-German war affected the cadet company, but it is another than Kitchener to whom he refers. This was Gentle- man-cadet Coffey, who, we are told, packed his bag with a few necessaries in November, 1870, and shook the dust of "the Shop " off his feet without telling even his company officer. Coffey intended to fight for France against Germany. On his journey to Paris he fell in with a couple of French military officers ; much conversation and the loan of an artillery "manual" improved his knowledge of French field-guns, and, procuring an interview with the Chief of the Staff, he left the presence of that officer a full-blown sous-lieutenant. " He joined the 2 ist Army Corps, fought in one or two skirmishes, was appointed A.D.C. to the general commanding the artillery of the corps, fought in more battles, and was promoted lieutenant. He was honourably mentioned in dispatches and recommended for further advancement. On the conclusion of the war he returned home; and in view of the special circumstances of the case and the distinction he had gained he was permitted to return to the Academy." The historian adds that Coffey's
58 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
reception by his comrades Was magnificent, and that the memory of his extraordinary feat will never die in the annals of "the Shop". How strange to find the exploit of the famous engineer officer ignored! But the Coffey affair is useful as showing that the cause of France was engaging the attention of the cadets at large. The instructor in French at the Academy, moreover, M. Valentin, had resigned his appoint- ment and crossed the Channel to fight for his country. So there was more than his residence in France to create in Kitchener the desire to serve. Leaving Woolwich, i6th De- cember, 1870 (by no means a brilliant pass), commissioned in the Royal Engineers, 4th January, he was not due at Chatham till spring. Between Woolwich and Chatham came his service in France.
Kitchener decided to enlist as a private in the Sixth Battalion of the Mobile Guard of the D£partement of the C6tes-du-Nord. His battalion belonged to the reserves of General Antoine Chanzy's Second Army of the Loire. At Laval, on the Mayenne, Kitchener's technical knowledge of engineering brought him under the notice of his officers. He took part in a somewhat perilous balloon ascent, and while assisting a French officer in this way he caught a chill which developed into pneumonia. He was invalided home, and only the possession of an exceptional constitution enabled him to recover. His experiences in the French army must have made an extraordinary impression on his serious mind. Before hostilities began, the War Minister, Lebceuf, had declared that the French army was in a state of preparation so perfect that not even a single gaiter button would be required for a year to come. Kitchener saw how imperfectly in fact the French army was prepared for war, and how defective were the mobilization arrangements made by the too -confident minister. He saw " how not to do it". We may be sure the young Englishman had his eyes open to the military chaos
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 59
around him. Miles upon miles of rolling-stock that might have been utilized to bring up reliefs and supplies stood stationary on the lines. Roads were blocked with baggage. Soldiers were disheartened, and many suffered from frost-bite in the hard trials that lay before them. Chanzy lost all but honour. Though defeat was inevitable, he displayed stubborn valour. On the second of the six days' fight which he put up around Le Mans, in January, 1871, he said to an Englishman who was with him : " It is a question whether the officers of any other country would think it necessary to continue such a struggle. But to a Frenchman there is no alternative so long as there is a chance, however remote, of removing the foot of an invader from the soil of France." Upon Kitchener, who was slow at Woolwich and took longer than most fellows to assimilate knowledge, France must have made one ineffaceable impression — the vital importance of organizing every detail before embarking on a military campaign.
Kitchener's early association with French valour was not forgotten in France. Forty-five years later, in August, 1915, at a review within the French lines during the Great War, Kitchener was presented by Joffre with the black-and-green ribbon granted to the stubborn French defenders.
When the young man came to London after obtaining his memorable insight into bad organization, he was taken before the Duke of Cambridge. Besides being General-Commanding- in-Chief, the Duke had a special interest in gentlemen cadets of Woolwich. As a result of the abolition of the Board of Ordnance, the artillery and engineers were under his authority. The Duke had been made colonel of the two corps in 1861, and in the following year Governor of the Academy. Hence it was no unfriendly eye he cast on the young officer when asking why he joined the French army. " I thought I should not be wanted for a time, sir, and I was anxious to learn something," replied young Kitchener. The answer pleased
60 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
the Duke. "I saw", he said afterwards, "that there was real grit in the young fellow." So Kitchener, already a good horseman, went on to Chatham and the mounted troop, Royal Engineers.
It was a period now when the whole scheme of things military in Great Britain was engaging the attention of the Government and the experts. Visionaries who, on the strength of the first great Exhibition in Hyde Park, dreamt during the first year or two of Lord Kitchener's life that an era of peace and goodwill on earth had dawned, were rudely awakened. The people of this country had kept their eyes on the American Civil War and the Austro-Prussian War, while they reflected on the lessons of the breakdown of our own army administration in the Crimea. In 1854 there were no fewer than seven departments connected with army adminis- tration. There were a Secretary of State for War and a Secre- tary at War (the two were merged in 1855). The Home Secretary, with the Secretary at War, controlled the militia; the Treasury had the direct management of the Commissariat Department, and through its commissariat officers provided provisions, fuel, and light for the troops employed abroad and in Ireland.
When our little army perished before Sebastopol we had no troops to replace it. This fact sank deeply into the minds of all thinking soldiers. But the reforms introduced after the Crimea touched the whole question only in a small way. The Secretary of State for War, an office which had been united with that of the Colonies till 1854, took over the powers of the Secretary at War and of the Board of Ordnance. He also took over the militia and yeomanry from the Home Office and the commissariat from the Treasury. He became responsible to Parliament for the whole military administration ; but the General-Commanding-in-Chief (the Duke of Cambridge), as representing the Crown, enjoyed some independence in matters
LORD KITCHENER AS A YOUNG OFFICER OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS
From a photograph in a family album
HOMES AND UPBRINGING 61
of discipline and command, appointments and promotion. A few years later the Staff College at Sandhurst was inaugurated. A healthy agitation had begun ; and when at length the Franco- German War opened the eyes of the British people to the real state of our out-of-date army, a powerful impetus was given to the movement which aimed at restoring military efficiency.
Young Kitchener in his spare moments at Woolwich must have been following closely in the newspapers the development of those army troubles. Before he had been at the academy a year Gladstone was in power (December, 1868) and had appointed Mr. Edward Cardwell Secretary for War. His Under-Secretary was Lord Northbrook (Thomas George Bar- ing). Mr. Cardwell set up a small committee, under North- brook, to enquire into the arrangements in force for the conduct of business in the army departments. Out of the reports of this committee came proposals for great reforms. A struggle ensued. The opponents of reform had possession of all the high posts in the army. To differ from them was to be called a Radical and a positive danger to the State. Chief of the opponents of reform was the Duke of Cambridge himself. By 1869 he had been for thirteen years the General Commanding - in - Chief, and though in that time he had repeatedly remonstrated with ministers against reductions, and urged increase of the army, no very serious dispute between him and the Secretary for War had occurred till now. The reforms that he abhorred went on in spite of him. Dual control of the army — in other words, his own separate estab- lishment— was abolished. The Quarterly Review, in 1870, waxed indignant over this, which it called " the strangest pro- posal ever hazarded". "A Parliamentary Officer", it observed with bitter irony, "appointing his own Chief of the Staff, monopolizes the patronage and absorbs all authority over the army ; and to the House of Commons, no longer to the Crown, is entrusted the defence of the realm — we beg pardon
62 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
— not of the realm but of the commonwealth". Yet Mr. (Viscount) Cardwell afterwards came to be described by Viscount Wolseley as the first Secretary of State who, during peace, ever attempted to prepare for the possibility of our being engaged in any big war. The formation of an army reserve was an essential part of the scheme which was carried. While keeping a small peace establishment, Cardwell aimed at making it capable of expansion at short notice by means of a reserve. The success of the Prussians in the Seven Weeks' War drove home that lesson ; while the introduction of breech -loading rifles necessitated a new system of tactics. Associated with Cardwell was Northbrook, who piloted the Regulation of the Forces Bill through the House of Lords, and witnessed the struggle which ended in the abolition of the purchase system. Seniority tempered by selection became the principle of promotion. Other reforms were the adoption of short service, the linking of battalions and their localization. To all innovation the Duke was opposed, and he regarded his removal from Horse Guards to the War Office in Pall Mall as so serious a blow to the rights of the Crown and to his own dignity that Queen Victoria intervened on his behalf. But he had to accept the great scheme of 1871— 2, just as he had the welding of the linked battalions into territorial regi- ments by Mr. Childers ten years later.
It was in this military environment, and while Parliament was still in the thick of the fight for army reform, that Herbert Kitchener successfully graduated from the Royal Military Academy. On 4th January, 1871, with sixteen other cadets, he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers G. T.
CHAPTER III
Palestine Exploration
Lieutenant Kitchener's Appointment to the Survey of Palestine — Work of the Palestine Exploration Fund — Kitchener's Archaeological Work — His Rescue of Lieutenant Conder from Drowning — The Attack on Lieutenant Conder and Lieu- tenant Kitchener at Safed — Lieutenant Kitchener's Second Visit to Palestine, as Director of the Survey — The Last Fight of the Crusaders — Caves of Irbid — Survey of the Shores of the Sea of Galilee — Kitchener's Description of his Dealings with the Natives and of their Customs — Jews, Christians, and Bedouins — End and Summary of the Survey — Cyprus, Anatolia, and Egypt — A Journey to Palestine from Egypt for the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1883 — The Sinai Peninsula — The Tomb of Aaron — Kitchener's Return to Egypt by the Desert.
IN a paper which Lieutenant H. H. Kitchener, R.E., F.R.G.S., read before the Geographical Section of the British Association, in 1878, he described the work which he had shared in making as a map of Palestine on the model of the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey. This work had been undertaken at the instance of the Palestine Exploration Fund, which projected a map from Dan to Beer- sheba on the i-inch scale. It was begun when the Fund sent out Major Stewart, R.E., and a party of non-commissioned officers at the end of 1871. Major Stewart was invalided home after a very short period of service, during which he had, however, established a base line on the plain near Ramleh. This base line was over four miles long, and was calculated with considerable accuracy. Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake had charge of the party till the arrival of Lieutenant Claude Conder in 1872. The work then proceeded regularly, the triangulation
63
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being carried southwards to the hill country, and then north as far as the plain of Esdraelon, on which another base line was measured. Unhappily, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, whose work had been of the greatest assistance to the Survey, was seized with fever and died in June, 1874. Lieutenant Conder felt the need of another assistant, preferably a Royal Engineer, and recommended Lieutenant Kitchener to the Committee in September, 1874. In November Lieutenant Kitchener, seiz- ing the opportunity presented to him, at once joined the party in Palestine, and did a year's work in Philistia. During this time his name appears regularly in Lieutenant Conder's reports, and his growing interest in the archaeological and historical aspect of the work becomes manifest. It was a characteristic of Kitchener, which first became manifest in the work he undertook in Palestine, to make himself a master of any subject in which his energies were involved. Nothing was too minute for him ; if he was inspecting commissariat he must know the cost of every item and the quality and useful- ness of every detail ; and when, later in life, he collected china, his avidity for information and for exact knowledge of glazes and periods was greater than his desire to add fine pieces to his collection. So it was in Palestine, where, at the end of his period of work, he had become an expert and a controversialist. Had not greater work called Kitchener, had there been no such things as wars and empires, he would have developed into an Oriental scholar.
At first he was clearly interested in the surveying experi- ence— rather arduous work as he afterwards observes:
" During our triangulation we found some little difficulty from the natives who thought we were magicians with power to find hidden treasure underground, and that our cairns were marks to remember the places by. It was an unfortunate idea, as the result was that in the night-time our cairns often disappeared, and the natives groped through any earth to the rock below, hoping to forestall us. After making the
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 65
offenders rebuild the cairns on one or two occasions these annoyances dis- appeared."
On the completion of the triangulation the levelling had to be taken up from the last point on the line. It was most fatiguing work dragging th« levelling-staves and heavy instru- ments over the rough country, and when the descent below the sea-level, in a steep, narrow gorge, was attained it was extremely trying; however, in seven days' work 16^ miles were accomplished and the seashore was reached, giving a depression of 682 feet 6 inches below the Mediterranean. The survey of the detail had then to be done, and Kitchener describes the careful way in which this was accomplished — the ascertainment of heights of all places by aneroid, besides the calculated heights of all triangulation parts; the checking of the aneroids by a standard barometer; the nomenclature by an Arab scribe; and the checking of the scribe by the guide and by the people in the neighbourhood. "Dishonest guides were dismissed, and as these were peculiarly susceptible of sarcasm, the offenders were not happy when they were laughed out of camp for not knowing their own country as well as we knew it." One can perceive in the last commentary the acquisition of that compre- hension of the native, and the ability to handle him, which was afterwards to prove of such value in directing Lieutenant Kitchener's own career. The interest in archaeology which has been noted finds its first concrete expression in his identi- fication of the Cave or Caves of Adullam. In Lieutenant Conder's report for the 2oth March, 1875, appears the fol- lowing note: —
" Lieutenant Kitchener took two very successful photographs of Adullam — a cave which, though called 'Aid-el-Mieh' by the native Arabs, and identified by them with some traditional < Feast of the Hundred', appears to be the authentic Cave of Adullam which sheltered the outlaws of King David's day. It was so identified at any rate by M. Clermont Ganneau."
VOL. i. 6
66 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
Kitchener says that the caves were not vast places. Nobody- would ever willingly inhabit a vast and draughty cavern, he observes practically, because such places are dark and damp. The Caves of Adullam form a series of convenient habitations, small enough to be warmed by a fire and to give light to their dwellers. Lieutenant Kitchener adhered resolutely to his identification and was supported by M. Clermont Ganneau, a French archaeologist of great discernment and ability, who had been lent by the Exploration Fund of the French Foreign Office. M. Clermont Ganneau left some impressions of his new colleague that are not at all like those which were circu- lated in later years. He speaks of Lieutenant Kitchener's frank- ness and outspokenness, his high spirits and cheeriness — and (though this excites no surprise) his ardour for work. "Grad- ually he began to take an interest in archaeological discoveries, and acquired in these matters a marked proficiency." He was extremely popular with his colleagues, and between himself and Conder a close friendship was cemented by the perils they shared together. On one occasion, when the two were bath- ing in the Mediterranean, off Ascalon, Lieutenant Conder was carried away by the current. His friend, a much stronger swimmer, went immediately to his help, and succeeded, not without difficulty, in bringing him back to safety. It was not the only occasion when Lieutenant Conder and Lieutenant Kitchener stood in danger of ending their careers in Pales- tine.
After a year's work in Philistia, the party, under Lieutenant Conder, began the survey of Galilee, when it was interrupted by an incident which had a marked influence on Lieutenant Kitchener's career. When near Safed they were attacked by some natives. The following letters, written by Lieutenant Kitchener and by Lieutenant Conder, and appearing in the Reports of the Palestine Exploration Fund, explain what hap- pened.
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 67
Lieutenant Kitchener writes from Mount Carmel on i$th July, 1875:
" Being placed in command of the expedition owing to the tem- porary illness of Lieutenant Conder I write by his wish to inform the Committee that the survey is at present entirely suspended in con- sequence of two causes — the first being a murderous and unprovoked attack on the party by Moslem inhabitants of Safed; the second the gradual spread of cholera over the north of Palestine. Lieutenant Conder and myself consider under these circumstances that we cannot take the responsibility of again conducting the party into the field till a very severe punishment has been awarded to the inhabitants of Safed and until the steady advance of the cholera has been checked. . . .
" Lieutenant Conder is at present in bed, recovering from an attack of fever, brought on by the severe nature of the wounds on the head he received in the fight at Safed, and I myself am still suffering from the bruises I received during the engagement."
Lieutenant Conder wrote a formal complaint to the Consul- General at Beyrout :
"On Saturday, the loth of July, we arrived about 4 p.m. at Safed from El Ba'ineh and erected our tents on a piece of uncultivated ground under clover near Hin el Beida, north of the Moslem quarter. A number of Moslems became spectators of our proceedings. A small English tent was being erected when many of these persons, including one well dressed in a turban and white jibba, came down to it and in a very insolent manner to examine it, laying their fingers on everything and behaving with marked want of courtesy and respect. I am informed that they said they had seen 'many dogs like us before*.
"A ten-chambered revolver, hanging on a tree by the tent was missed at this moment, and its owner, one of my servants, began to enquire if anyone had seen it. I am informed that the leader of the Moslems cursed him in reply. At this moment I came out of my tent where I was resting, and heard my head-servant address this man with civility, using the expression hadrabuk, and telling him to go away, as it was not his business. I heard the sheikh reply violently with imprecations, and saw him fling two or perhaps three very large stones at my head-servant. The latter did not reply by violence, but took the
68 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
bystanders to witness that an unprovoked assault had been made on him. I advanced as quickly as I could without arms and with nothing in my hands. Before I spoke a single word the sheikh seized me violently by the throat. In defence I struck him on the face with my fist and knocked him down. He got up and again assaulted me, when I struck him right and left, and cut open his lip. When on the ground he drew a knife which measures half a foot length of blade. My head-servant, fortunately, saw him just before he stabbed me, and two of my people took it away from him, and seized him, intending to retain him till the arrival of Government officials. They also bound him, but not by my order.
"The sheikh called out many times: < Where are my young men?' and some of those who were with him ran to the houses. A crowd collected in an astonishingly short time, and in a few minutes it must have numbered two hundred or more men. I ordered the sheikh to be immediately released, but he refused at first to leave the camp, though he subsequently retired for arms. Meanwhile he encouraged his people to kill all the Christians. They began by a shower of enormous stones upon our party, which numbered only fifteen persons, two of whom were ill at the time.
"Lieutenant Kitchener and myself, supported by our three non- commissioned officers, none having any firearms or other offensive weapons in our hands or about our persons, endeavoured to calm the disturbance, and to separate the crowd from our servants, who, infuriated at the treatment I had received, were anxious in spite of their small numbers to attack the Moslems. The five Europeans were in imminent danger of their lives from the falling stones. While thus engaged Lieutenant Kitchener was seriously injured on the thigh with a huge stone. Corporal Armstrong and Corporal Brophy less severely on the feet. We restrained both parties and entirely prevented our servants from using any offensive weapon, though many of them were struck on the head and body with stones. As soon as a separation had been made I ordered all my party into the tents, to prevent any aggravation of the infuriated mob, who were heaping every species of blasphemous epithets upon our religion and upon the Saviour. The natives of my party were too excited to obey my order. I went out in front and threatened the mob with heavy future punishment, daring them to stone me, but they had lost their senses too much to be intimidated. At this moment there
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 69
arrived a number of armed men, apparently the sheikhs of the quarter, who encouraged the crowd. Of these one man had a large scimitar and carbine, another had a battle-axe; two had large clubs, and another a long gun.
" Lieutenant Kitchener and I were immediately surrounded. Three came to me with curses and asked what I was doing. An old man thrust his battle-axe violently into my side, but I did not like to strike him, though I now had a hunting-crop in my hand. I told them that they were mad and would be severely punished if they struck an Englishman. About this time other members of the party saw a gun levelled at me five yards off, but fortunately the man's hand was caught before he fired. A man now came into the crowd which surrounded me, and dealt me a blow on the head with a large club with great violence, causing two wounds on the side of my head, covering my face with blood. A second blow, directed with full force at the top of my head, must inevitably have brained me had I not put my head down to my assailant's chest. My servants gave me up for dead. The blow fell on my neck which ever since then has been so stiff and swollen that it is impossible to turn it round. The rest of the party saw me fall. As soon as I got up I dealt this man a blow on the face with a whip which staggered him, but my whip flew out of my hand and left me entirely unarmed.
" I must inevitably have been murdered but for the cool and prompt assistance of Lieutenant Kitchener, who managed to get to- me, and engaged one of the club men, covering my retreat. A blow descending on my head he parried with a cane which was broken by the force of the blow. A second wounded his arm. His escape is unaccountable. Having retired a few paces from the thick of the fray, I saw that the Moslems were gradually surrounding us, stealing behind trees and through vineyards, and I well understood that in such a case, unless the soldiers arrived at once, we must all die. Many of the servants, indeed, had already given up all hope, though none had fled. I gave the order to leave the tents and fly round the hill.
" Lieutenant Kitchener was the last to obey this order, being engaged in front. He returned to his tent, and while running he was fired at and heard the bullet whistle by his head. He was also followed for some distance by a man with a huge scimitar, who subsequently wounded with it more than one of our people.
70 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
" Gaining the cover of some trees we stopped on a bare hill-side to consult, and ventured back to the brow to reconnoitre. At this moment the soldiers arrived with an officer, and the English Consular Agent, Herr Marcus Cigal. I am informed that all the offensive weapons were immediately concealed, the stoning and blasphemous language ceased at once, and not an individual of the crowd remained."
Lieutenant Conder then recites the injuries to the party, to himself, Lieutenant Kitchener, Corporals Armstrong and Brophy, and the others ; and to his report Lieutenant Kitchener tersely adds that "it was left unfinished when Lieutenant Conder was taken ill. It will, I think, inform the Committee of all the necessary particulars of the conflict."
The vigorous representations of Lieutenant Conder were successful in bringing the offenders to justice. The trial was held at Acre, before a special commission consisting of Colonel Rushdi Bey, chief of the police force in the vilayet of Syria, Mr. Noel Temple Moore, British Consul at Jerusalem, the Cadi, and two members of the local medjliss, or council, one a Christian and the other a Mohammedan. There was a good deal of difficulty at the outset in finding who were the de- linquents, lying being not a monopoly of any race. But, by dint of cross-examination, thirteen defendants were unable to show that they had not been concerned in the outrage. Three more were added later. Lieutenant Conder and Lieu- tenant Kitchener attended the greater part of the tedious sit- tings at the court in Acre, and after a trial lasting from the nth to the 28th of September, in which justice marched with leaden foot, the local medjliss appears to have impressed on the tribunal the desirability of letting 'the offenders down lightly. Of the sixteen men convicted beyond the shadow of a doubt, two were given a year's imprisonment. These were Kahloush and a negro, Massoud, who had been seen carrying weapons — one of them pistols and a club, and the other a gun and a sword — immediately after the fray. Even the local medjliss
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 71
did not believe that these implements could have been carried for display. Ali Agha Alan, the sheikh who had begun the whole business, got off with three months, probably because he was a connection of the Emir Abd el Kadr, and five others of his young men were imprisoned with him for the same period. Eight others, Algerines living at Safed, were imprisoned for two months. The moral and intellectual damage to the British party was assessed at £112, IQS.
When these recommendations were read out, Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener made strong remonstrances at the inadequacy of the punishments, which were ludicrous in the circumstances, and, in the case of the shorter terms of im- prisonment, implied little more than a peaceful holiday, sup- ported by the administrations of admiring friends. Moreover, it was by no means sure that the punishments would be carried out. The tribunal was eventually induced to add both to the imprisonment and — what would hurt more — to the fine, £37, i os. being reckoned as an extra for articles stolen from the tents. The court at Damascus, however, to whom the sentences were referred, took a serious view of the case, largely owing to the determined attitude of Mr. Moore, and, probably to the surprise of the local sheikh, did put him in prison and kept him there.
The party all suffered from fever after the attack on them, if not because of it, and Lieutenant Conder's health was severely shaken. The country was evidently rather disturbed, and, more than that, cholera was spreading. It was decided, therefore, to withdraw the party, and the two leaders and the non-commissioned officers returned to England. Here eighteen months were spent in plotting and re-drawing the map surveys that had been made. It was then proposed that, as Lieutenant Conder's health would not allow him to return to Palestine, Lieutenant Kitchener should be entrusted with the command of a new expedition to finish the survey of Galilee.
72 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
The Ordnance Survey appointed three non-commissioned officers of the Royal Engineers to help him, and Kitchener left England in January, 1877. He went, according to his itinerary, from Beyrout to Damascus, and so to Haifa. At Beyrout he interested the new Wali of Syria in the work he was doing, and he saw also the Emir Abd el Kadr, who ex- pressed his deep regret for the outrage, at Safed, which had been prompted by his connection, the local sheikh, and who gave Lieutenant Kitchener letters which would secure him and his party against any repetition of such attacks.
Kitchener's letter to the Palestine Exploration Fund re- cording these occurrences, continues: —
" While at Damascus I heard of the arrival of my non-commissioned officers at Beyrout, having been driven past Haifa by stress of weather. As the Wali did not seem likely to attempt the crossing of the moun- tains, I went back to Beyrout. After three days, as my party was now complete, I started for Haifa, where I arrived with my non-commissioned officers on Saturday, the 24th of February (1877). . . .
" Owing to the lateness of the rainy season this year, the country is still in a very swampy condition, and even had we not been unavoidably delayed, work could hardly have been begun before. The Kishon had to be crossed in a boat, the horses and mules swimming, and as we had to cross it twice every day it has caused great loss of time. The first day we found considerable difficulty in crossing the Plain of Acca owing to the marshy nature of the ground after the late rains, and could only get to our work by making a long detour after some of us had experi- enced the pleasures of a mud bath."
The rest of the letter is occupied with a recital of the writer's efforts to identify a place named " Kulmon " or " Kalamon ", which appears on several maps, but of which nobody in the neighbourhood ever seems to have heard. " Kalamon " remains an unsolved mystery, and Lieutenant Kitchener dryly observes that it may have been supplied in the maps by some too enthusiastic traveller, "who looked more for what ought to be in the country than whaf is".
ELISHA'S FOUNTAIN AT JERICHO
This is one of a series of photographs taken by Lieutenant H. H. Kitchener for the
Palestine Exploration Fund, and is reproduced by kind permission of the Society.
The figure is that of Lieutenant Conder
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 73
The progress of the work can be followed by the in- dustriously compiled Journal of the Survey, from which the succeeding extracts are made: —
" TIBERIAS, March 30^, 1877.
" We are getting on all right with the work, and I hope in another fortnight to have finished the shores of the Sea of Galilee and be on the road to Safed again. . . . The Druses are giving a good deal of trouble, cutting people's throats on the road to Damascus. In the south near Hebron the Arab tribes, Tarabin and Teyyaha, have had a fight. The latter lost 101 men killed, the former only 12. Consul Moore has telegraphed and sent out people to stop all travellers from going that way. It is lucky I am doing the north after all."
But he, at any rate, was light-hearted about any risks that were run, and the following account of his triumphal re-entry into Safed, where the alarming encounter had taken place two years before, has more than a touch of humour in it.
"SAFED, April nth.
"You will be glad to hear that we have made a most successful entry into Safed. The Governor, the Kadi, and Her Britannic Majesty's Consular Agent, with twenty-two followers, came out about an hour and a half on the road to meet me. We rode into the town in quite a triumphal procession. . . . Nothing could be more civil and obliging than everybody was. To-day I have had the Governor, the British Consul, and an old enemy, AH Agha Alan, the cause of the row; the latter ex- pressed deep sorrow for what he had done, as well he may, as I hear he and the Magrebbins are all but ruined. . . . On Monday I shall move to Meiron, where we shall have rather a long camp, working up to date and carrying the triangulation north."
In the subsequent paragraphs of this instalment of the Journal, Lieutenant Kitchener speaks of the imminent declara- tion of war between Russia and Turkey, and hopes to get his work finished unimpeded by it. By 25th May, when the declaration of war was an accomplished fact, he was at the northern boundary of the work he had set himself, and the total amount surveyed was 530 square miles. In this portion
74 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
of the survey, of which he sends a supplementary report, he notes that he has mapped five extinct volcanoes, from which the basalt has been thrown out over the surrounding country; "and the plains, being covered by the ashes and boulders of basalt, are rendered extremely fertile".
But he is clearly touched by the poetry and history of Palestine, apart from its profoundly interesting archaeology and geography.
u Immediately above our camp at Hattin ", he writes, " was the field of the last great fight of the Crusaders. The Kurn [which he thought was an extinct volcano] rises in rocky ridges above the plain on the south-west, while on the north and east there is a very steep descent to another plain, the Sahel Hattin, which terminates abruptly above the Sea of Galilee. The Kurn Hattin, or * Horns of Hattin ', was the last place held by the king and his brave knights when surrounded by the forces of Saladin. The rocky top seems a natural fortress and well adapted to be defended by superior numbers. The Crusaders were, however, worn out by their long marching and their hard fighting, and after they had driven back the stormers three times the place was carried, the king surrendered with the remnant of his forces, and the Christian kingdom in Palestine ceased to exist."
Lieutenant Kitchener notes, too, that the plateau which extends to the south-east is called the Plain of the Burnus or the Prince, and can be identified therefore with the story of Count Renaud de Chatillon, Lord of Kerak, who was the cause of the war and was always called El Bftrnus, or Emir of Kerak. The story goes that after the battle the King of Jerusalem, while in Saladin's tent, gave water to El Burnus, but Saladin would not admit that this was an "act of hospitality" which would guarantee the prisoner's life. Afterwards Saladin offered Count Renaud his life if he would change his religion. El Burnus refused, and, as there was nothing more to be said, Saladin did him the honour of slaying him with his own hand. Kitchener relates all this at length with obvious interest in the
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 75
old story. Other passages in the Journal, which is very de- tailed, accurate, and "archaeological", describe the celebrated caves, east of Irbid, whence Herod the Great dislodged the robbers by attacking them from above. Herod let down his soldiers on platforms, supported by ropes: when there was no more hope of resistance, the outlaws in the caves slew one another. The military possibilities of the position have evi- dently great interest for the Royal Engineer.
"The first cave entered is a large natural cavern which probably served as a stable for the horses of the garrison; from this a staircase leads up to smaller caves opening from a gallery in the face of the rock ; stairs led up from either end of this gallery to similar caves in different tiers. Some are now quite inaccessible from below. The place is inhabited by immense flocks of pigeons, and a great number of vultures and eagles. Water was brought from Irbid by an aqueduct running along the face of the cliff above the castle. . . . This fortress rendered impregnable by nature and art might afford accommodation for six hundred or seven hundred men, and commands the main highway from Damascus to western Palestine."
The next instalment of the journal deals with the survey of the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The Engineer surveyor has not many sentences to spare on negligible descriptions, but the beauty of the land finds expression in his terse sentences. He was a little disappointed with the Sea of Galilee at first — the hills on the eastern side have an almost perfectly level out- line, scarcely broken by any valley of importance, and decidedly monotonous in appearance. "Still, the bright sunshine throws a rosy haze over the country, and the contrast with the bright blue water is very beautiful. . . . The best views of the lake are from a distance — from the many heights from which it is visible. As thus seen in the evening it is particularly lovely. Deep blue shadows seem to increase the size of the hills and there is always a rosy flush in the sky and over snow-clad Hermon."
76 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
He notes that the road at the eastern end of the Sea of Galilee passes through Kerak, which appears to have been a fortified place of considerable strength. Military possibilities perhaps scarcely seem within the scope of the peaceful surveys of the Palestine Exploration Fund, but Lieutenant Kitchener is always awake to them, and describes carefully the position and the remains of two castles which must have stood on either side of the road. "The place must have been of great impor- tance, as it closes the passage of the valley, and also that of the Jordan at the northern extremity, where it is now crossed by a ferry. It also must have required a large garrison owring to the great size of the plateau." He thinks that this plateau was the camp of the Roman army which Vespasian brought to the attack of Tiberias, as described by Josephus, and that the castle or station was that named by Josephus as Sennabris. Many other places near the Sea of Galilee are described by Lieutenant Kitchener, the chief of them Tiberias, its ruins, and the remains of the sea-wall, with towers along the coast, and next to that Capernaum. He alludes to the curious legend that the fountain of Capernaum was a vein of the Nile, because a Nile fish called " coracinus " is found in the waters, and he has a note on Meiron, the Jewish holy place. " Over the tomb of Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai is a building where the Jews come from all parts of Palestine to hold a sort of revel, lasting two or three days and nights. They dance and pray and light fires over the tomb. It is very extraordinary to see them in their long dressing-gowns and large hats dancing round in a circle."
In a paper read some years later, before the British Asso- ciation, he gave some further account of their curious festival.
"At Meiron the great pilgrimage of the year came off while we were there. The Jews arrived in thousands, on foot, on donkeys, camels and mules: some came from great distances — some it was said came from England ; and yet it was a very bad year owing to the disturbed state
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 77
of the country. The Governor arrived to keep order and a guard of soldiers protected the roads. This was no unnecessary precaution, as the first day they brought in an Arab they had shot while rifling some stragglers on the line. In the evening began the ceremonies over the tomb of the Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai. The whole place was turned into a fair — feasting, dancing and singing went on all night: great torches were lighted over the tomb and lit up the motley crowd : upon these torches the devotees cast embroidered scarves, silks and dresses. The Chief Rabbi sells by auction the right to light up these fires and is said to clear ^"200 each night. The men kept up an incessant din with rude instruments and singing : they ran round and round in circles hold- each other's hands and occasionally throwing up their arms. Lit up by the blazing torches they had the most grotesque appearance. The con- trast between all these intensely excited Jews, some of them apparently intoxicated, and the solemn unmoved serenity of the Turkish Governor and officials, seated on their mats smoking, was very striking. The women occupied the upper chambers of the building and seemed more devout : some of them were engaged in prayer. They have a firm con- viction that these pilgrimages ensure their having children."
There are a number of passages scattered in the Journal and in the letters, as well as in his address to the British Association, which testify to the way in which the beauty, the interest, the sentiment of the Holy Land had seized on their observer :
"While observing from Mount Tabor I examined three chapels recently unearthed by Roman Catholic monks. They date from Crusading times, when this was supposed to be the Mount of the Transfiguration, and the three chapels are mentioned in old chronicles of the time. The massive fortifications on the top of the mount were probably those erected here in order to resist the Roman armies under Vespasian: they consist of a solid wall built of large drafted stones, flanked at intervals by square towers enclosing a large rectangular space that covered the top of the hill.
" Looking down on the broad plain of Esdraelon stretched out from our feet, it is impossible not to remember that this is the greatest battle- field of the world, from the days of Joshua and the defeat of the mighty
78 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
hosts of Sisera, till almost in our own days Napoleon fought the battle of Mount Tabor ; and here also is ancient Megiddo, where the last great battle of Armageddon is to be fought."
In the accompanying passages is expressed not only sympathy with the villagers of Palestine, but a sound com- prehension of the political situation: —
"On the 3rd of May I moved camp to Dihl, a Christian village. The inhabitants were packing their few portable articles and preparing for flight to Tyre when we arrived. . . . Our greeting was most enthusiastic, as they at once determined not to desert their village and crops and to remain under our protection." [Lieutenant Kitchener had prudently attached four useful Bashi-Bazouks to his party as guards, and, as he observes, was thus quite in a position to repress any small fanatical rising; and the larger part of the population had been con- scripted.] "There are a good many Christian villages in this part of the country quite distinct from the Moslems. A Christian village can be known from a distance by the greenness of its vineyards and fields in striking contrast to the barren desolation surrounding most Moslem villages. The terrible fatalism of their religion destroys the country. ' If God wills, that fruit trees or vineyards should grow they will grow ', says the Moslem, as he sits and smokes.
"These Christians are perfectly distinct from the Levantine mongrel race of Greeks who inhabit the towns on the sea-coast. They are poor, honest, and very religious, though not very intelligent. ... It was soon spread through the neighbouring villages that we had arrived and a deputation of priests came to me for advice. I recommended them to remain quietly at their villages and to warn their people not to get into any dispute with the Moslems.
" They were very anxious to get arms and to defend themselves, but that course might have led to what they most dreaded. I am glad to say that our influence on the country at this crisis caused these poor Christians to remain in their villages, which if they had deserted would have been seized by the Moslems, and would have undoubtedly led to a grave disturbance. I must also bear testimony to the stringent orders sent from Constantinople to the Turkish governors and officials to pro- tect these Christians, and to put down any attempt to drive them out of the country. There was more cause to fear this, as the ignorance of the
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 79
people led them to believe the war was one of religion — Moslem against Christian, instead of Turk against Russian.
" Every evening after sunset a bell was beaten in the village, and all the male population went to the poor chapel, where there was a short service: after this they came and danced and sang in front of our tents sometimes for hours together."
He was quite as much at home in dealing with people of other religions, race, and psychology:
"One evening about eighty Bedouin Arabs with their wives and families arrived. Their chief's son had been ill and they had taken him three days' journey to the tomb of the famous prophet Joshua: this was supposed to have cured him and they were now returning joyful from their pilgrimage. I had a goat killed in their honour, which made us the best friends, and they kept up singing and dancing round fires in front of our tents all night. The men went through the usual war dance, imitating the attack and defeat of an enemy to the accompani- ment of clapping hands: but what was more curious was later in the evening when two of the prettiest women were called out by their husbands and went through a peculiar and very graceful dance with swords — they were unveiled and looked very handsome by the firelight. Having rewarded them with lumps of sugar I left them singing songs in our honour. Next morning they were all gone, having left pressing invitations to us to visit them. Two days later the chief came to thank me for the medicine I had given his boy."
The foregoing passages have a specific interest. Kitchener had learnt on the 28th of April, by a telegram sent on to him, that war had been declared between Turkey and Russia. "1 hope", he writes in the Journal, "this sad news will not interfere with the successful completion of the survey of Galilee." It did not interfere, but in a disturbed country it was largely owing to his tact and ability that it did not. More than that, though he was too modest to say so, his presence had a calming effect on the general situation. This service was fully recognized by the authorities, and Major Wilson, C.B., F.R.S., the President of the Geographical Section of the
80 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
British Association, publicly declared that "the tact and energy of Lieutenant Kitchener had greatly tended to the preservation of peace in Palestine during the war". Testimony to this was borne by the Consuls.
Meanwhile, war or no war, the survey went on steadily, as the following passages from the Journal and from letters home certify: —
" June 2^thy Nahura. — All well so far. I hope that before you get this you will have got a telegram: ' North finished : all well : Lebanon', which will mean that I have finished the north and am off to Lebanon for a few weeks' rest.
"Haifa, July nth. — I have finished the north under my original estimate and without Armstrong, and there has been no accident. We are now off for the Lebanon for the three weeks' rest which we sadly want. ... A report was started in the Beyrout paper that I had been attacked and wounded by Bedouins near Banias. Eldridge sent soldiers and scoured the country. I in the meantime had gone peacefully to Tyre, so there was no end of alarm at my not being heard of." [The report probably arose from a distorted version of the friendly colloquy with the wandering Bedouins.]
They arrived at Mount Lebanon on the 2ist of July, after a hot march from Haifa, and found it " charmingly cool ". They also found Mr. Eldridge and other Europeans living there for the hot months: "In fact it is quite a return to civi- lization again". Here he stopped, making plans, duplicates, and writing up the observations and notes. Thence Kitchener, having sent one of his non-commissioned officers, Sergeant Malings, home with the original work, and having repaired Corporal Brophy, who had had a bad fall with a horse ("it was a wonder he was not killed — a loose seat saved him"), went on to Jerusalem, reaching there after a " dreadfully hot journey down the coast". Temperature on one day 114° in the shade. " I got a slight sunstroke on the plain near the seashore. Everybody was much done up. Next day we
LORD KITCHENER (SEATED) AND HIS ELDEST BROTHER
who succeeded him in the Earldom
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 81
started in the evening and travelled in the night. We made Tyre, Acre, and then Nazareth. At Nazareth I presented the gun to Abdallah Agah, who wishes to present his thanks to the Committee, and say that he is entirely at their service for anything that may be wanted. The 'gun was very suitable'." The Journal continues: —
" On leaving Nazareth I paid a visit to the tents of Feudy-el-Feis, the chief of the Beni Sahr. The sheikh was very civil, and I spent two hours in his tent. He showed me a coat of mail (probably Saracenic) and a Damascus sword he was very proud of. The Government are on very good terms with the Beni Sahr, as Fendy-el-Feis can muster 4500 spears, which renders him an undesirable enemy. The Arabs show no great enthusiasm for their co-religionists at war : they hate the Turk and do not much care in which way the war goes."
Fendy-el-Feis ultimately came into collision with the Turks. In an affray his son was killed by a Turkish bullet. But Fendy remarked philosophically : " My son and I were servants of the Sultan, now he has one less", which, as Kitchener notes, was taken to mean that he did not intend making a feud of it.
The Journal is full of interesting passages which invite quotation, for the double reason that they are extremely vivacious, interesting, and observant in themselves, and that they afford one of the few self- revelations which Kitchener ever made in writing. No man, one might say of him, ever did more and wrote less about it. But in these passages he shows the things that interested him, and gives a glimpse of that unconventional and shrewd outlook which his friends declared that he always exhibited in conversation. Here is a passage which describes a visit he paid to the Mukam Benat Yakub, "the sacred places of the daughters of Jacob": —
" Many legends were attached to the place. I was shown without difficulty into a little mosque, and then into a large square cave, which had originally been a tomb of some importance. Two rows of recesses
&
f-
mu
82 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
for sarcophagi lined the walls. Here tradition relates that Jacob and his children lived, and that when he was old and blind they brought him Joseph's coat, and the smell of it at once cured him. On regaining the outer mosque I saw a small door with a green curtain hanging over it and incense burning in front : this I was told was the tomb of the seven daughters of Jacob. There they were said to be all as in life, their beauty unimpaired, but it was too sacred to be approached by any but a true believer. I insisted and was then told that these beautiful and holy maids were very quick to take offence, and devoured anyone who came too near their place of rest. However, after a little per- suasion I pushed the sheikh aside, and squeezed through the hole, being nearly stifled with the bad incense. After a drop of some feet I found myself on the floor of a cave that opened into another. I explored the caves, one of which had been a tomb : the roof had fallen in : probably in the earthquake of 1838. No recumbent Semitic beauties awaited me. I was very glad to get out into the fresh air again."
Here is a curious intermingling of the consciousness of the ancient history of Palestine and its preservation of odd customs:
" I rode down the great valley that witnessed the flight and pursuit of the Philistines by Joshua on the day that was like no other. I returned by Beit Sira and met a bridal party. Our village had arranged to give a bride to a man of Bir Hain in exchange for one of great beauty and wealth for one of their sons. Both brides started at a given time from their villages accompanied by all the women in their gayest attire, and escorted by mounted men galloping frantically about, performing 'fan- tasia'. The brides were so muffled up that they could hardly move. The women kept up a chant the whole way. When the two proces- sions came in sight of one another they halted and the brides were dragged off their horses with a good deal of lamentation. . . . The men changed horses and brought back the new brides. They were at once received with great joy, and had to dismount again to receive the congratulations of their new friends."
A subject which was of unending interest to him was the disposition as well as the structure of the Crusading castles, and he continually noted the purposes to which they were put for defence. He became enthusiastic over Kalat esh Shukif,
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 83
the Crusading castle of Belfert, " much the finest building in this part of the country", and describes minutely from the engineer's point of view its fortifications and defences. " The Crusaders evidently knew the value of stone walls against the attack of irregular forces. Small garrisons in Belfert and Hunin must have kept the whole of the north secure against raids." He outlines with equal particularity the castles of Kalat el Kurein, the old Crusading "Chateau de Montfort", and the castle of Banias, at least as fine as Belfert, and called by the natives Kalat es Subeibeh. He photographed most of these castles. He had always a soldier's eye for the country and for its military associations. He made a special journey to identify the Tombs of the Maccabees, and in one place, where an identification was doubtful, he pointed out, by refer- ence to the Scriptural account of what took place when the people of Bethel attacked the Israelites, that there could be, from a military point of view, only one place for Michmash. There are several dealings with natives:
" North of Kades occur the ruins of a small Crusading fortress called Kalat el Dubbah. It is so shut in by hills that I believe it has never been seen by travellers before. To the west of the castle is the village of Shahra" where I obtained a copy of an inscription. . . . The sheikh of the village was extremely rude, and threw stones against the inscrip- tion while I was endeavouring to copy it. I therefore left without doing so and reported the matter to the Governor, who immediately put the sheikh in prison. The next time I went to the village there was no objection to my copying the inscription. I therefore had the sheikh set at liberty."
And again:
" On the 26th of September we moved camp to Bis es Seba.1 We had been warned of some danger from the Arabs in this part but found the country entirely deserted . . . Our journey back was rapid owing to all our bread having gone mouldy, and our provisions run short. Our
1 It was from this camp that the last stage of the work was entered upon.
84 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
first day took us to Dura on the road. At the wells near El Burg some fellahin were watering their flocks of goats. Seeing a mountain-party arrive from the Bedouin country they raised a shout of * Bedouins'. Away went the goats at a gallop up the hills. This we were used to, and rode on trying to reassure them by shouting < Soldiers ! ' when about fifteen men ran together behind some stone walls, and after gesticulating frantically opened fire upon us. The balls whistled by and threw up the dust under our horses' feet ; so we pulled up and after some difficulty made them understood who we were. After all we ran more danger from our friends than from the much-dreaded Arabs. At Dura some boys threw stones at Corporal Sutherland, so I had them publicly flogged."
He notes that the country in November was in a much more dangerous state than at any time before in the year, and attributes it to the elation felt by the Mohammedans at having been able to beat so large a Christian Power as Russia.
He thus announced the end of the great work: —
" Jerusalem, 2nd October, 1877. — I am sure you will be glad to hear that the map is an accomplished fact, and six years' work has been finished. We wound up at Beersheba, on the 28th of September, much quicker than I had expected. . . . The fact is we had to work hard, the water was so bad, being salt and the colour of weak tea, and our bread all went mouldy. The country we have been in is inhabited only by Arabs, who have been at war among themselves for the last three years. They said no European had ever been in this part of the country before, which I can well believe from the very bad state of the maps of the district. ... I had some difficulty in getting rid of the expensive escorts the Kaimacam of Gaza wanted to impose upon me, but at last we started with only our own party. We got back here a week earlier than I had calculated upon. From Beersheba I had to take my camels by force, as those that brought us wished to desert and leave us there, in which case we might be there now."
x»
But there was a great deal of clearing up to be done, a good deal of revision, and a number of points which he wished to settle. Almost to the time of leaving Palestine he was
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 85
engaged in a struggle with the local authorities about the pro- tection which he wished to afford to the site of Jacob's Well. He had begun by going to Palestine as a surveying engineer; he left it an Oriental — in knowledge and in authority. The East, as it is sometimes expressed, had laid hold of him. There is a passage in one of his few public utterances — it was made at this time — in which he urges the duty of preserving the relics of history in which Palestine is so rich. But in the same sentence, half expressed, is the wish to leave some imprint on that immemorial land.
His actual and practical achievement was considerable. In taking leave of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Lieutenant Kitchener briefly summarized the work that had been done and the results of it which the Fund possessed.
"A completed survey, i-inch scale, of rather more than 6000 square miles, prepared for publication with hill shading by the Ordnance Department. Twenty-six volumes of memoirs — twenty by Lieutenant Conder, and six by Lieutenant Kitchener — comprising the notes made by the survey party while at work ; a reduced map made by Lieutenant Kitchener for the engraver ; a number of photographs taken by Lieu- tenant Kitchener ; a number of special plans."
It should be added that, according to a gratified announce- ment made in the Quarterly Journal, Lieutenant Kitchener had done the work at a lower cost than had been estimated. It was a foreshadowing of other work that he was afterwards to conduct, and of which Lord Salisbury said that he was the only general, who had ever conducted a campaign for half a million less than he asked for.
The mapping of Palestine did not terminate Kitchener's connection with the Palestine Exploration Fund, but almost as many years as the map had taken to complete went by before he resumed it. In that time he had been in Cyprus, in Anatolia, and had taken service in Egypt. In Cyprus he
86 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
had made the i-inch trigonometrical survey of the island which is the standard survey of the island, and had performed administrative duties respecting the chaotic land tenure of Cyprus; in Anatolia he had helped Sir Charles Wilson, the British Consul -General, to relieve the fugitives who were crowding to the coast towns in consequence of that Russo- Turkish War, the beginning of which is noted in an entry of his Palestine journal; in Egypt he had been employed in the making of the new Egyptian army. The work he under- took in the winter of 1883 was by way of being a holiday excursion, though it was no doubt associated in his mind and in those of his official superiors with the need of obtain- ing trustworthy information regarding the state of native feeling.
The work of the Palestine survey had been long inter- rupted through the opposition of the Turkish Government, but in 1883 an opportunity offered to continue it, and Pro- fessor Hull, F.R.S., the geologist, who was very much inter- ested in the geology of the region, accepted a proposal made by the Palestine Exploration Fund to investigate the physio- graphical features of western Palestine, the valley of the Jordan, and the Dead Sea. Kitchener, now become Major Kitchener of the Egyptian army, was nominated by the com- mittee to undertake the topographical survey of the Wady-el- Arabah as far as the shores of the Dead Sea. By so doing he would join up the triangulation of a portion of the Sinai Peninsula with his old triangulation of Palestine — and no doubt the predilection of Kitchener for finishing up a job which he had begun contributed to his willingness to accept this opportunity of doing so. He had with him Armstrong, one of his old non-commissioned officers in Palestine, now retired from the army.
Major Kitchener was a valuable accession to the party, as Professor Hull heartily admits, both because of his experience
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 87
of the work and his knowledge of the character and customs of the Arab tribes among which the party was to travel. Professor Hull bears the warmest testimony to the value of Kitchener's help. " It inspired an amount of confidence of ultimate success", he remarks, "which I should not otherwise have felt." One particularly notes the word " confidence " as applied to Kitchener; it was what he always inspired. It was a matter of first importance for the safety of the party that they should have somebody with them who was competent to deal with the Bedouins, for quite recently there had taken place a tragedy of a kind peculiarly alarming to peaceful scientists in this very neighbourhood which they were about to traverse. An exploring-party — Professor Palmer, Lieu- tenant Gill, and their companions — had been savagely mur- dered by the Bedouin Arabs; and though the murder had been promptly avenged by Colonel Sir Charles Warren, who captured and executed the murderers, the region was still in what is inadequately described as an unsettled condition. It was Major Kitchener's opinion that the murder had been insti- gated by agents of Arabi Pasha, and in a letter written to the Palestine Exploration Fund he furnishes a curious piece of corroborative detail:
" I obtained from an Arab of the Hainat tribe a story of the murder which I have never seen published in any account of it. I give it merely for what it is worth; Arabs, as everybody knows who has had to do with them, have a remarkable facility for making up a story to meet a supposed occasion. This was the story in the Arab's own words :
" ' Arabi Pasha, directed by the Evil One — may he never rest in peace! — sent to his lordship the Governor of Nakhl to tell him he had utterly destroyed all the Christian ships of war at Alexandria and Suez ; also that he had destroyed their houses in the same places, and that the Governor of Nakhl was to take care if he saw any Christians running about in his country, like rats with no holes, that the Arabs were to finish them at once.
88 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
"'On hearing this news, a party of Arabs started to loot Ayun Musa and Suez. Coming down Wady Sudur they met the great Sheikh Abdullah and his party. They thought they were the Christians spoken of by Arabi Pasha, so they surrounded them in the wady. But the Arabs ran away from the English, who defended themselves in the wady: all night they stepped round them, but did not dare to take them till just at dawn, when they made a rush at them from every side and seized them all.
" * The Arab sheikh who had come with the party ran away with the money.
"'The Arabs did not know Sheikh Abdullah and did not believe his statement, and when he offered money his own sheikh would not give it, so they believed the party were running away from Suez, and so finished them there. Afterwards the great colonel came and caught them and they were finished at Zag ez Zig. May their graves be defiled!'
" Such was the story I heard, and there seems to me to be some amount of truth in it.
" Colonel Sir Charles Warren's energetic action in the capture and bringing to justice the perpetrators of the crime has created a deep impression, and I consider the whole peninsula is for foreign travellers now as safe as, if not safer than, it was previously."
It was no doubt part of Kitchener's intention to ascertain exactly how the tribes stood and what they felt about the state of affairs in Egypt. He says very little on the subject in his journal, but there are one or two passages, such as his description of some Arab tribes, as well as his resolve about the route of his return journey, which indicate what was in his mind. But for the most part his long, carefully written letters to the Palestine Exploration Fund are filled with observations of the topography and archaeology of the region. His old interest in these things revived under the spell of their presence, and though his chief preoccupation was his triangulation-work, in pursuit of which he ascended Jebel Musa and Jebel Harun (the Mountains of Moses and of Aaron) for his "angles of observation ", he is often seized with his old enthusiasm.
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 89
The following account of his ascent of Mount Hor is like a reminiscence of his old Palestine journal: —
"The eastern hills here recede, leaving a sort of amphitheatre in front of Jebel Harun, the Mount Hor of Scripture, which rises magnifi- cently in the centre. There is a mountain of white limestone imme- diately south of Mount Hor, over which it towers and gains by the con- trast of its dark-red hue over the white. Looking thus at Mount Hor from the south it appears to rise in several pinnacles, the highest of which is surrounded by a glistening white dome covering the tomb of the patriarch Aaron.
"I was very anxious to complete my observations by obtaining a round of angles from the dome of Mount Hor. Next day, therefore, an attempt was made to go up without warning the Arabs; but that was frustrated, as I expected, by the Arabs having heard of our coming and being on the alert. . . ."
However, after a great deal of argument and persuasion the Arabs came to terms, and the party were allowed to ascend by a steep zigzag path to a mountain saddle from which Mount Hor arose, a mountain on a mountain. The morning was very hazy, and observation impracticable for the moment, and they went on therefore to the tomb.
"An old path, similar to that on Jebel Mus4 (the Mountain of Moses), with worn steps made out of boulders at difficult parts led up the mountain to another level space from which the highest peak rises abruptly. Passing over some ruined arches on an ancient cistern or building the path leads steeply by steps cut out of the rock to the summit where there is the usual little round dome on a square building covering the tomb of the patriarch Aaron. Looking inside one saw the usual carpet-covered cenotaph with some ostrich eggs hanging over it — all in an uncared-for condition."
They were able, when the day cleared, to make the trigono- metrical observations to extend the triangulation to the north; and hence went on to Petra and its tombs, " immense in num- ber, the ornamentations being as fresh and clear as when first
90 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
cut, particularly those at Pharaoh's tombs. The colours of the rocks are wonderfully variegated and most brilliant : red to purple and blue are the predominant colours, and these are set off by a cold grey background of limestone hills."
Interspersed with the archaeological observations and records of exploration and trigonometrical work are others relating to the Arab tribes, of which Major Kitchener was able to form a shrewd and frank estimate. He notes the Maazi Arabs as thieves and poor; the Taiyyah as having no friends, with a great feud with the Hevveitat family; and the rich Terabin as at peace with their neighbours. But the journey which pros- pered so well for many pleasant days and weeks came abruptly to an end.
When the party had reached Palestine, on Christmas Eve, 1883, came a message from Sir Evelyn Baring, brought by four Arab messengers on swift camels, telling them of the disaster to Hicks Pasha in the Soudan, and expressing a fear lest the spreading rumours should put the party into a posi- tion of danger. Professor Hull's party went on its mission; but the news called Kitchener back from surveying. Egypt was his work in life. He determined to return at once; and with the four Arabs who had brought the message set off on the return journey. He determined to take a direct route to Ismailia, 140 miles across the desert. He writes: —
"As the El Arish road was well known I determined instead to march direct on Ismailia, thus striking out a new line and passing through much more interesting country. One of my party, Abu Suweilim, had been employed by Sir Charles Warren in hunting the murderers of Professor Palmer, and was one of the most energetic, useful Arabs I have ever met; he had been the road we were about to take fifteen years before; the others did not know the road at all, and were of the usual Bedouin type, lazy and greedy. . . .
" We pushed on over open country until dark, when we made our camp-fire on an open plain with a number of Bedouins' fires blazing
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 91
round us. I was passed as Abdullah Bey, an Egyptian official passing back to Egypt after having been to Jerusalem, and although it was only borne for that little while, I thus revived the name borne by a much more distinguished traveller, the great Sheikh Abdullah. It was stated thus only to stop the curiosity of the Arabs we met, but I soon found I was called nothing else."
The letter, in spite of all its terse businesslike phrases, furnishes a striking picture of the journey: the halts by wayside wells ; the bread baked for the meal ; the starlit nights; the sense of space; the never absent spice of danger. It was the life that Kitchener had chosen; and one can well believe that on his way back his mind was busy with expecta- tion of what the future had in store for him and for Egypt, the land of his adoption. Little of all this is perceptible. His dispatch is almost official, especially in these its closing passages: —
" Crossing the ridge (from Jebel el Urf) an immense extent of sand- hills appeared as far as the eye could reach. I do not think I have ever seen so desolate and dreary a country; nothing but ridge after ridge of sand-dunes for an immense distance. The wind blew a strong gale from the west, sending the sand up into our faces so sharply that the camels would at times hardly face it. This wind lasted unfortunately till we were nearly at Ismailia.
" We camped under a sand-hill and had a very cold and windy night. Next morning it was found we had no water. The Arabs are always most improvident about water, and require continual watching. During the night they had used up the last drop, and in the morning said they could not go on without a fresh supply, as there was no chance of water before Ismailia, and they did not know how long it would take to get it. ... They said they could find rain water in Jebel Felleh."
They had, however, reckoned without their host.
" I, however, insisted on going on, and with some difficulty got the camels under way. Two of my Arabs had been lagging behind for some time, so one of the Arabs and myself went back and drove up
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the camels. The other two Arabs were sulky and deserted. . . . However, we got the camels all right.
" Pushing on through a blinding storm of sand over hill and valley, with only the compass to guide us, at 4 p.m. I saw Lake Tumah, and skirting the shore reached the ferry over the canal at dusk. I had some little difficulty in getting the party across the canal and was not sorry when I reached comfortable quarters in Ismailia."
It was in September, 1878, that Captain Kitchener went to Cyprus on Government service. Cyprus was occupied and administered by Great Britain after the Russo-Turkish War, according to the provisions of the Cyprus Convention; though it remained nominally Turkish till November, 1914, when, owing to the participation of Turkey in the European War as an ally of Germany, Great Britain formally annexed the island. It has never been one of our prized possessions, though more than one military authority has urged the con- version of its harbour of Famagusta into a second Malta; and Kitchener at one time thought Great Britain might make use of it. His views, which appeared in an article on Cyprus in Blackwood's Magazine (August, 1879), were tnat measures might be taken to raise there friendly territorial forces on a basis similar to that on which the Egyptian army was sub- sequently organized. He believed and wrote that the Turkish soldier made splendid fighting material, and that all that was wanted to convert him into the most valuable of allies was the provision of good officers, discipline, and commissariat. If we raised and maintained a Turkish regiment in Cyprus we could find out by experience what reforms were necessary. The regiment and the island would become the training-school for officers, and these in their turn could carry out the same reforms in Asia Minor. In case of war we should then have men able to raise troops among the many warlike tribes of
PALESTINE EXPLORATION 93
Syria and Asia Minor, and they would be troops who would unhesitatingly follow British officers. By thus employing Cyprus we should make its possession of the highest political importance: we should have in it the key of the East.
These opinions are of the greatest interest. We cannot tell if Lord Kitchener ever relinquished them. He may have done so, since he was member of a cabinet which offered Cyprus to Greece as the price of Greek redemption of its pledges to Serbia ; but he was a consistent admirer of the Turk as a soldier, and may have felt that with such a point of vantage as the Island of Cyprus pointing its nose into the Gulf of Alexandretta, on the flank of the Baghdad Railway, we ought to make of Turkey a Power which should be naturally an ally, but should never be allowed to become an enemy. " These Turkish soldiers ", he once wrote, " are perfect heroes, enduring any hardships without a murmur. Always ready to fight, never conquered except by over- powering numbers, their motto might well be: c While we have life we will fight'/'1 Kitchener never had the oppor- tunity to make the experiment he desired with Turkish soldiers, but the precepts he advocated he carried into practice with the far inferior material of the Egyptian fellaheen.
In Cyprus — first under Sir Garnet Wolseley and subse- quently under Sir Charles Wilson — his duties were nearly altogether pacific. His survey of the island bears all the marks of his thoroughness and carefulness, and is the only one extant. In addition to preparing it, he was charged with organizing a system of land registration. The task was almost as difficult as that which in another hemisphere the authorities experienced in delimitating the claims in the as- phalt crater of Trinidad, which had a knack of disappearing in the night. The allotments were supposed to be marked with stones, as in that scriptural time and locality of which
1 Black-wood's Magazine, February, 1898.
94 FIELD-MARSHAL LORD KITCHENER
it was written : " Cursed he be who removeth his neighbour's landmark ". But the stones generally and frequently dis- appeared, and the holdings were matters of belief or legend. Baksheesh was a ready means of abrogating a title-deed with a Turkish official, and there were over 40,000 disputed claims to be settled when Kitchener began to superintend this chaos. He did his task, as he did all others, to the complete satis- faction of the authorities, and to all but the corrupt minority in the island, who were anxious to keep things as they were. But while he was thus fulfilling the daily round of pacific work the East was fermenting all about him. From Anatolia to the Sinai Peninsula, and from Alexandria to the Soudan, the call to arms was being heard. In Anatolia, in sharing the difficult task of providing for the refugees who were streaming through Sivas, west of Erzerum, in consequence of the Russian advance, he saw one of the evils of war. In Egypt the new wars were just beginning.
[We wish to express our great indebtedness to the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund for their kindness in giving us access to their Quarterly Reports containing Lord Kitchener's letters and journals, and for permitting us to make extracts from them. The photograph taken by Lord Kitchener in Palestine is also reproduced by their permission.]
E. S. G.
CHAPTER IV
Lord Kitchener's Early Campaigns in Egypt
Kitchener's First Associations with Egypt — Salient Features of his Egyptian and Soudanese Record — Egypt before the British Occupation — Origin of British Power in Egypt — Ismail's Ruinous Reign — The Story of Arabi Pasha — Kitchener's Share in the Egyptian Campaign of 1882 — Evelyn Wood as Sirdar — Kitchener as Second in Command of Egyptian Cavalry — The Rise of Mahdism — Loss of the Soudan — Kitchener and Gordon — How he won over the Mudir of Dongola — His Adventures in Disguise — Bennet Burleigh's Impressions — Kitchener's Efforts to save Gordon — Gordon's Faith in Kitchener — Fall of Khartoum — Kitchener's Official Report.
MANY years before the Great World War, when the German philosophic mind was still sane, when German professors still thought philanthropy worth cultivating, a scholar of their race wrote these words : " When a people has suffered too long it is as much as they can do, in their prostration, to summon up strength enough to kiss the hand that saves them ". These pathetic words apply very directly to that wonderful country which, from the very dawn of history, has been the goal of all conquerors, from Menes to Mehemet Ali — "the most important country in the world", as it was emphatically said to be by the greatest of all con- querors, Napoleon, who, early in his career, recognized the commercial and imperial influence of Egypt. With the Suez Canal, which the imagination of Napoleon always pictured as a necessary adjunct, Egypt was to be the keystone, as Dr. Holland Rose tells us in his Life of Napoleon^ of that " arch of empire which was to span the oceans and link the prairies
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of the Far West to the teeming plains of India and the far Austral Isles".
Napoleon's dream of Empire passed; but the remembrance of it was his legacy to the French people, cherished by them down to the time, within living memory, when, finally, at a remote spot on the banks of the Nile, a thousand miles from that Mediterranean bay where Napoleon's fleet was destroyed by Nelson, the long contest for Egypt was decided. It is a far cry from Aboukir to Fashoda; many years separate Nelson from Kitchener; but what Nelson began Kitchener finished; and there still lives to mourn the untimely end of his great and generous rival the gallant Frenchman, Marchand, who met him in the summer of 1897 in that far land, and decided with him there the destiny of Egypt.
The Fashoda incident fell about midway in Kitchener's long association with Egypt. But it is necessary to seize upon that meeting of Kitchener and Marchand as a salient feature of Kitchener's whole career, for, as already pointed out, it revealed him as statesman as well as soldier. Like many other great men, Kitchener was modest and shy, and would not readily have admitted that he was a statesman. He would certainly have denied, probably with some warmth, that he was a politician.
No, Kitchener was no politician, but that he was a states- man will be further proved as time goes on and as he takes his proper place in the perspective of history. And it was in Egypt that his statesmanlike quality was made manifest, in spite of the immense difficulties that beset all who attempt to govern in that remarkable land. These difficulties have been pointed out by all the administrators whom Britain has sent since the day when the power of Arabi the Egyptian was broken at Tel-el-Kebir on I3th September, 1882, and by none better than by Lord Milner, formerly Under Secretary for Finance in Egypt :
EARLY CAMPAIGNS IN EGYPT 97
" Among the thousands of travellers who annually visit Egypt ", he says, " there are perhaps one per cent who, despite the attraction of the ancient monuments of the country and the striking features which char- acterize its present life, have still some interest to spare for the social and economic conditions on which the welfare of its picturesque inhabi- tants depends, and for the strange political experiment, unique in history, of which it is the scene. I have a vivid recollection of the look of strained attention, passing through blank bewilderment to ultimate despair, with which they followed my well-meant efforts to guide them amidst the labyrinth of jarring interests, conflicting authorities, and hopelessly disintegrated sovereignty. It is not given to mortal intelli- gence to master at one blow the complexities of Turkish suzerainty and foreign treaty rights; to realize the various powers of interference and obstruction possessed by Consuls and Consuls-General, by Commis- sioners of the Public Debt and other 'Mixed Administrations'; to distinguish English officers who are English from English officers who are Egyptian, foreign judges of the International Courts from foreign judges of the Native Courts; to follow the writhings of the Egyptian Government in its struggle to escape from the fine meshes of the Capitu- lations; to appreciate precisely what laws that Government can make with the consent of only six Powers, and for what laws it requires the consent of no less than fourteen. Imagine a people, the most docile and good-tempered in the world, in the grip of a religion the most intolerant