ATTACKS ON KITCHENER.

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 July 1915, Page 3

ATTACKS ON KITCHENER.

CHURCHILL CENSURED BY OLD FRIENDS. < ."■' LONDON, May 21;-. Two men specially selected for attack by the press are Kitchener and Churchill. Kitchener is blamed from 1 all sides, the Government supporters regarding' him as the main cause of their downfall. Journals of the most opposite schools join in criticism. The Times says : "Kitchener's orders for shells wore given too late, complaints and warnings disregarded, and the nation lulled into an utterly'false security by misleading official reports. The consequence is that hundreds and thousands of British lives haye been sacrificed in an unequal contest. Tlie whole trouble arose because Kitchener assumed an impossible burden." The Manchester Guardian says it is nothing less than a scandal that we should still be sacrificing thousands of precious lives and .holding back the march of oar armies because the supply of ammunition is short. "It is impossible that Lord Kitchener should escape the responsibility, and the chief responsibility, for this failure," it says. "It is an open secret that, quite early in the war, pressure was put upon him to adopt some of the means for increasing our supplies, which have, quite recently, been adopted. He resisted them." The Guardian urges that Kitchener be transferred to some other field, not less honorable, and leave his present post for a man possessing special gifts which the entirely new and unexampled situation demands. The Daily Mail to-day prints a long nnd bitter editorial attack based on a de claration that Lord Kitchener has starved the army in France through the shortage of high explosives aiu shells. The. Chronicle declares that Kitchener's neglect to inform the Cabinet concerning the deficiency of high explosives, and his omission to communicate to it Sir John French's appeals has led to disastrous political and other consequences. Tt began the Cabinet crisis, nnd the ultimate results of the concatenation of grave events was the rather inebrious extinction of a. great and able Liberal Government. It declares that then- is- an absolute necessity for some division, of labor in (he War Office. The Daily News, while attacking Lord Northcliffe 'for criticising Kitchener, declares that there is a feeling on both sides that Kitchener's great services would he best utilised not in civil administration, but ; n more purely military duties. "Lord Northcliffe,"'the News says, "is to-day the greatest peril which threatens the Empire! It was he who made Lord Kitchener Minister of War by his clamor ing at the beginning of the. war. Kitchener at the War Office is Northcliffe's nominee, and if* Kitchener at the War Office is, as Northcliffe now insists, the architect of the. nation's misfortunes in war, then the man who should he hanged is the man who forced him on the country —Lord Northcliffe." The News gives prominence to the Liberal hostility developed against Winston Churchill in the new Ministry.

"It is felt by the Greater number of Liberals." it says, "that Churchill has been one factor in jeopardising the Liberal Government's chances." The "Daily Mail and other newspapers under the same ownership have been most violent in their attacks on Lord Kitchener. The Daily Mail says : "It never has been pretended tmit Kit.

ehener is a soldier in the sense that Field Marshal Sir John French is a soldier. Kitchener, is a gatherer of. men, and a verv fine gatherer, too, but his record in

the South African war. as a fighting general, apart from his excellent'organising Work as chief of staff, was not brilliant. "Nothing in Kitchener's experience sug-

gests that he has the qualifications required for conducting a European campaign in the field, and wc can only hope, that, no such misfortune will befall this nation as that he should be permitted to .interfere with the actual strategy of flu's

gigantic war." Proceeding to accuse Lord Kitchener of bavins.; "ordered the wrong kind of shells," the Daily .Mail asserts thai "despite repealed warnings that a high explosive shell was required, Lord Kitchener persisted' in sending shrapnel, such a? be used against the Boers, thus causing the deaths of thousands "f British soldiers, ami incidentally bringing about a Cabinet crisis."