LORD KITCHENER

Evening Star, Issue 16196, 18 August 1916, Page 8

LORD KITCHENER

INTIMATE RECOLLECTIONS. Lord Desborough, on the occasion of a memorial service for Earl Kitchener held at the Canadian Red Cross Hospital at Cliveden, gave some intimate recollections of tho great soldier, who frequently had been his guest at Taplow Court. It was there that I.ord Kitci'ener said, when he came homo after the capture of Khartum : "When I come here I feel like coming home; I have no home." " Wherever Kitchener went," said Lord Desborough, " throughout the Empire— Et-ypt, the Dominions, Tndia, Egypt again —he at once became the dominating figure for friends and foes alike, end something great always happened. This was due to the mysterious foresight he possessed, hu realisation of gTeat ends, and the unflinching methods with which he sought to gain those ends. Abroad in this war he may be said to have stood for English military power in the minds of our Allies and our enemies —Always Working.— " When I first knew him he was a most striking figure, tall, spare, with the most wonderful piercing, bright blue eyes set very far apart. His eyes were what he called ' burnt out' afterwards. He was doing a desert ride on camels with a Bedouin Arab tribe with whom he wa« I' blood brother,' and the sun off the sand in their long ride, like sun off snow, nearly ruined his eyes. I asked him why h-3 did not wear colored glasses, but he said a ' blood brother' of an Arab tribe could not weai glasses. I remember my brother, who was in the 10th Hussars, saying that Kitchener was always working, up at sunrise drilling his men, and learning Arabic, of which he knew even the dialects.

"Another physical calamity befell him ■when his horse fell on him when he wa3 riding alone in India. Some natives saw th<s accident, but were too terrified to go near him, but at last they summoned up courage to bring the news that the ' Lord of War/ as they called him, was lying seriously hurt He suffered much from his bioken leg afterwifrds. Indeed, when he came back from India he determined to get bis leg broken and set again, but he could not find a surgeon who would do it, and this was one of the few occasions on which he did not get hh way. The feelings of- tho natives of India were shared by those in Africa. On the field of Omdurmari I met one who had been'through tho advance up the Nile. He said Kitchener never slept, and appeared when least expected among every unit of the force, which his spirit pervaded. " Once again when he was at Taplow I asked him abont South Africa, and he told me everything without the slightest ' swagger' or self-praise; in fact, I think modesty was one of his greatest qualities. He looked just the same as before the war, except that he was a little more simburnt. He said that he wondered what tho Boers would think of our lifo over here in the bummer, going lazily on the river in boats and lounging about all day, and he said that ther ' did not look at life that way.' Whatever was going on | he seemed to pay the greatest attention to it, even if it was not of the slightest I importance.

—ln Private Life.— "Lord Kitchener was not in private life the stern, unbending sphinx of popular imagination. Indeed, no one to his friendi was a more- stimulating companion. When alone with voa he was very talkative, an-\ his curous tumor and his quaint summing up of individuals and situations was ai. unfailing source oE interest and surprise. He was absolutely unaffected, and had ati engrained distaste of popular demonstration, speechifying, and banquets. " Children accepted him as a natura.' friend. I remember my little girl onemeeting us_ as we came 'in for tea from a walk, outside the tea room (she was, 1 may say, his god-daughter), and she immediately taid to the great Lord Kitchener : ' Don't go in there ; they are making such a chatter; come up and have ten with, me,' and up he went, right to th. top of the houfe, with his lame leg, and sat down with Imogen and her nurse and had a long talk. " There is one short story about hin and the army I think I may tell, as it helps you to understand him. A high staff officer, who hai now a command, came to see him from the front, and ho put searching questions to him about munitions ; and then he said : ' I hope the army does not think I have let them down,' and two largo tears rolled down from his stern'eyes. The munitions difF culty was part of our unpreparedness foi war. The contractors undertook to carrj cut contracts, but ot\ing ii; a great measure to their best men leaving for the war found themselves unable to do so, and Lord Kitchener had terrible disappointments. " Work was the keynote of Lord Kitchener's life, and work is the legacy he leaves to us. Amusements, as such, did not amuse him: his aim was always to get something big accomplished, and lie accomplished it. And now he is gone, and it feels, as I havb seen it described, 'like Nelson's column falling—something national, almost symbolic, gone'; but his work and his example remain, and, if it had to be, I hope he may lie where ho is with a British warship for his coffin."