KITCHENER AS KNOWN TO HIS STAFF

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1618, 4 March 1903, Page 76 (Supplement)

KITCHENER AS KNOWN TO HIS STAFF

“A Staff Officer” in “Blackwood” describes “Campaigning with. Kitchener.” It is a thoroughgoing panegyric, only redeemed from fuisomeness by the frank acknowledgment that his hero is “ntf drill master.” “ONE OF THE HARDEST OF THINKERS.” Here, for example, i 9 one eulogy: “Kitchener is one of the hardest and most accurate thinkers I can name; he is always thinking; not meandering aimlessly through a wilderness ox casual imaginings, but thinking up and down and round and through his subject; planning every move, foreseeing every coun-ter-move, registering every want, forestalling every demand, so that when lie conducts a campaign with that unerring certainty that seems to recall the onward march of destiny, luck has had very little to do with the affair, for K. has> arranged that everything shall happen as it does happen, and that particular way and no other.”

HIS UNERRING PRESCIENCE

And this i 3 the fact to substantiate the eulogy: “•tomnewher© in the oubliette of Pall Mall there is a paper with the record of a meeting that took piacq at the Egyptian War Office before the final compaign. Only Kitchener, Wingate and another officer were present. In less than two hours K. laid bare the entire plan of subsequent operations, mot every inquiry, formulated every want, satisfied every objection. Ho had worked right through the campaign in his mind, and saw daylight on the farther side of - it. Everything was ready. There were so many boats to take, so many men and guns anxl animals at a certain fixed date, depending on the Nile flood, which oould bo calculated with precision; there were so many weeks' supplies to be at this place and that, and the British contingent—calculated economically to that fraction of a guardsman by the order to leave bandboys behind —was requested to arrivo at a given date, to steam and march to a certain point, to fight its usual battle 1600 miles from the chair in which K. was sitting, and to leave ior London the very next day with its work accomplished. And all these things happened precisely as ordained at that meeting, so that aae momentarily believed that even the unexpected had been banished from, the art of war.” HIS UNBENDING SEVERITY. Part of his wonderful success is attributed to the “unbending severity” with which he treated all failures. Generous to acknowledge good work well done, “no one was every more unforgiving of failure, to no matter what cause the failure might be due.”

Another explanation is his freedom from the curse of penmanship: “Kitchener's office stationery consisted of a sheaf of fcolegraph-forms. which he carried in his helmet, and a pencil wh-ich he carried in his pocket and that sufficed. Moreover, he seldom read an official letter, and never wrote one.” HIS CHOICE OF TOOLS. More important is the next consideration, “Much of K.'s sucoess was no doubt due to liis wise choice of the tools he used —they really at ere tools rather than men; and no finer body of young fellows ever wore SAverd than those splendid 'officers who Atorked and slaved for him, day after day, in these God-forsaken sandsAvept Avastes. But no one knows, no one perhaps Avill ever fully knoAV, the extent to Avhich K. was implored, beseeched, cajoled by the highest in the land to' employ A. or B. on his staff, or anywhere. K. Avas adamant to such requests. . . . This happened in hundreds of oases. K. was not then the poAver he is now. and hia> implacable disregard of the pets of society argues a strength of character which has always seemed to me one of the greatest proofs of his fearless independence.”

NOT “GOOD AT THE BATTLE-SHOUT.” There is real humour in this description of Kitchener's attitude to mere fighting:

“1 thi'nk he looked on a battle as a necessary but exceedingly vulgar and noisy brawl, and that the intellectual part of him always regretted when he could not strangle or starve the enemy out without a crude appeal to brute force. If he could have been induced to issue an order for the battle, it would have read somewhat as follows if it had come from his heart: 'Here you are. O troops! and there is your enemy. I have clothed you, fed you, cared for you, placed you in the most advantageous tactical and strategical position possible, so now please go and fight it out, and let me know when it is all over/ " \ RADICATj CRITIC OF THE WAR OFFICE. One trait of the grim general's character is mentioned which has not often iiad prominence given to it, and it stirs vague" hopes of Army Reform otherwise unattainable: "During many an evening in camp or bivouac Kitchener often talked long, openly and convincingly upon reforms needed in the War Office and the Army. Of his .opinions on these points it is V;o soon to speak, for he may yet have'occasion to put them into practice. {?o I shall only say that many of his ideas were novel and all were radical, and that they are calculated to produce a very considerable fluttering in Pall Mall dovecots and among the old women of both seSes when Big Ben chimes out K/s hour of office and responsibility." OUR FUTURE CHIEF OF STAFF ?

Of what that office should be, the writer has no doubt. It is not that of Com-mander-in-Chief, who has too many ceremonial and decorative duties to discharge. He says: ‘‘There is one post to which Kitchener is suited, and which is suited to him—> namely, that of Chief-of-the-Staff, carryi ns with it, call it by what name you will.

the sole, solitary and exclusive duty of preparation for Avar.

“Kitchener’s strength lies in his poAver to create.—surely the supremest and grandest faculty of Nature herself.”