KITCHENER'S QUALIFICATIONS

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 146, 21 June 1915, Page 6

KITCHENER'S QUALIFICATIONS

" DAILY MAII/S " ATTACKS. SOLDIER OR ORGANISER? A SPIRITED REPLY. (By Telegraph.'—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Newspaper attacks on Lord Kitchener, ■which preceded the Ministerial rearrangement, have been fairly fully cabled to New Zealand, but a "Daily Mail" extract, dated London, May 2i, contains a violent article not reproduced 'here, in the course of which it says: "It never has been pretended that Kitchener is a soldier in the sense that Pield-Marhhal French is a soldier. Kitchener is a gatherer of men—a very fine gatherer, too —but his record in the South African war as a fighting general, apart from excellent organising work as Chief of Staff, was not brilliant. Nothing in Kitchener';; experience euggesta that he has the qualifications required for conducting a European campaign in the field. We can only hope no such misfortune will befall this nation aa that ho should be permitted to interfere witli the actual strategy of this gigantic war."

The "Mail" adds: "If by any chance Kitchener went to France to conduct the campaign we should probably have a costly object-lesson in the difference between African and European warfare."

Other newspaper organs defended Kitchener strongly, the "Pall Mall Gazette , '' declaring the Secretary for War more powerful than ever as the result of public indignation at the attacks. The "Pall Mall Gazette" adds: "Wo fear that the result will be an. increase in the stringency of regulations imposed on newspapers. If the working of the constitutional machine is made more difficult we shall be very near such a situation as drives democracy in war to a dictatorship. If we are to hare a dictatorship, Kitchener undoubtedly will be the dictator. The country would demand it, and the Press would count for nothing."